SOFTECON 2024 - Transformation: Back to the Future

WHO WILL SPEAK AT THE CONFERENCE?

ŠIMON SKRAK (SOFTEC)
Šimon leads the Telco business unit for Slovakia and the Czech Republic at SOFTEC. His extensive experience includes both local and international client assignments in telco industry (Slovakia, Germany, Romania, Czech Republic, Hungary). Before joining SOFTEC in 2023, he spent more than 20 years at Accenture where he supported the fundamental transformation of Slovak Telekom and other important projects. During the past 6 years, he helped develop the newly established digital division Accenture Song in both Prague and Bratislava and was involved in the digital transformation of Škoda Auto, the largest exporter in the Czech Republic.

What will we talk about?
Similarly to the hero in our headline movie who travelled between the past, the present and the future, we will take a look back at the expectations brought by IT trends. How are we currently succeeding in meeting them? And how to be in control of the future so that we are prepared for further changes?

Dr. MARKO RANKOVIĆ (Raiffeisen Processing Centre)
Marko has spent most of his professional career in banking, specifically in card payment processing. The experience of being a soccer referee, a university professor, and working at a bank where he had many different technical and business tasks related to processing card payments, equipped him with a variety of unique perspectives. He is currently the General Manager and Executive Director of Raiffeisen Processing Centre, a part of Raiffeisen Bank International. He has published 4 books and more than 50 articles in scientific and professional journals. He is happily married and a proud father of 4 children.

What will we talk about?
Change, and thus transformation, is constant. Today’s businesses and organizations cannot afford to slow down and relax. Relaxation in the business environment has paradoxically become life-threatening. What is it like to be one of the largest card processing companies in the market and to reflect the speed of changes in the banking sector, which creates pressure to transform, and do business differently, better and more efficiently?

TOMÁŠ BELJAK (ex-Sygic)
With 20 years of experience primarily in IT, Tomáš is passionate about solving complex problems, crises, and challenges that we face when developing software. If asked about the key success factors, he would highlight the laser focus on the continuous delivery of value to end users at speed, on the leadership style that encourages individuals to take responsibility, and on the autonomy of team members.

What will we talk about?
Buzzwords - we all know them. They are often the driving force behind transformation. We innovate, we automate, we migrate, we deploy... But have we achieved the results expected at the beginning? And to what extent is their successful implementation being influenced by the culture of the team or the company?

MICHAL RAAB (Thermo Fisher Scientific)
Michal heads the research and development software center for the world’s leading manufacturer of laboratory measuring equipment. 12 years ago, he started as a research scientist at a small startup company, which he helped transform into a medium-sized subsidiary with 120 employees. He is particularly interested in modelling physicochemical processes to interpret measurements, but he is also fascinated by data analytics or machine learning. He and his colleagues often struggle with the pitfalls of DevOps and Cloud, as well as with the challenges of outdated applications in the rapidly changing world of (bio)chemical industry requirements.

What will we talk about?
A specific feature of the regulated industry is a conservative customer who, on the one hand, enjoys advances in information technology, but, on the other hand, rejects changes in their own structures, often running on archaic hardware and operating systems. In the university environment, openness and the possibility of cooperation are important for the advancement of science. However, the same science in a pharmaceutical company environment means a hermetically sealed infrastructure with the primary focus on security. We will discuss these and other conflicting customer requirements, as well as their impact on the structure of the organization and processes, from the perspective of a company that has been supplying products to these specific markets for the last 25 years.

JURAJ TLSTÝ (Slovenská sporiteľňa)
Juraj has 20 years of experience, mainly in banking, where he has held roles ranging from a developer to IT development management, DevOps and banking transformation. Juraj keeps looking for new ways to increase efficiency and organization’s performance, and how to improve the ways of working and people’s mindset.

What will we talk about?
Transformation - a word that makes every manager tingle, for better or for worse. In today's world of accelerating adoption of changes, technologies and client expectations, it is inevitable to transform the way how organizations operate. A typical response to problems is a switch to agile operating model, but what does such a change imply? What are the pitfalls and what are the potential benefits?

Prof. RNDr. JURAJ HROMKOVIČ, DrSc. (ETH Zürich)
Juraj studied computer science at the Comenius University in Bratislava and has worked as a professor at five universities - for the last 20 years at ETH Zürich. In his professional life, he has mainly focused on algorithmics, but teaching has always been his hobby. His books have been published in English, German, Spanish, Japanese, Russian, Slovak, French and Italian. In 2005, he founded the Centre for Computer Science Education at ETH intending to educate the teachers who teach children and students from kindergartens to high schools. As an endurance athlete (trail running), he successfully embarked on his longest track - to convince the Swiss society of the need to introduce a compulsory computer science subject at all school levels as a replacement for the superficial computer driving licence. Under his leadership, 18 computer science textbooks, and more than 20 interactive learning environments have been created, as well as more than 5,000 teachers and 600 classes have attended courses at the learning center.

What will we talk about?
Why do we still miss a universal guide on how to teach successfully? Because learning is nothing but a process of personal development, and as we know, it is difficult to give universal instructions on how to live properly. Today's schools live in a 200-year-old model, which mainly aims to teach how to perform activities correctly according to the given instructions. In the age of automation and AI, the ability to act according to a given pattern is "last winter's snow" and its value, like the snow, is fading fast. The professions of the future require flexibility, creativity, imagination and originality. The school of the future must not only teach about the finished products of science (facts, models, theorems, technological products) and how to use them, but also about the processes of discovering, verifying and creating them. In this session, we will use the example of teaching computer science to show how our knowledge of the historical development of the field we are studying allows us to find a way to teach it, during which our students will find their enthusiasm for discovery and thus develop their creative potential.

Moderators

JANA HERMANOVÁ
Jana is an enthusiast for constant change, dynamics, and improvement. She joined SOFTEC in 2023 and brings more than 20 years of experience in a variety of industries, including banking, insurance, energy, pharma, and healthcare. Jana has participated in several business and IT transformation projects in various roles, from process design expert to program manager. In her free time, she likes to seek adventure through travel, combining exploring cities and sights with spending time in nature.
 

MIRO VLADÁR
Miro has always been fascinated by innovations in technology and especially by the possibilities of their use in the enterprise world. He gradually moved from applying them in programming itself, through the possibility of using them in the design and implementation of software architecture to complex solutions for the modern transformation of key systems. He is interested in the pragmatic use of new approaches to digitalization and how to turn buzzwords like microservice, DevOps Cloud or Data mesh into meaningful solutions. He helps build a vision for a long-term sustainable FutureIT that enables the business to grow and respond to the rapid pace of change.