SOFTECON 2026 - Behind the curtAIn

Who will speak at the conference?

Libor David (Digital Architect, SOFTEC)
Libor David graduated from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Czech Technical University in Prague. Since 2021, he has been working with SOFTEC as a Digital Architect. Prior to that, he built his career in Accenture’s consulting division, progressing from early professional roles to leading the financial services client segment across the region. He has contributed to digital transformation initiatives for major financial institutions in Central Europe and gained additional international experience on projects in the United States. Alongside his work, he also mentors promising startups and collaborates with innovative startup accelerators. 

What will we talk about?
We hear it everywhere today: AI is going to replace people. Yet American author Kevin Kelly argues that AI delivers its greatest value when combined with human capabilities. In his session, Libor David will explain why the strongest outcomes come from the intersection of AI, traditional programming, and human expertise, and why projects built on AI alone so often fall short. He will also offer a surprising comparison: what do successful AI initiatives and building tunnels beneath the sea have in common? 

Martin Kobza (COO, Česká spořitelna - part of Erste Group)
Martin Kobza is a technology and digital banking leader with more than 20 years of international experience across Slovakia, Germany, and Central Europe. Since starting his career in 2003, he has held senior leadership roles in IT, digital transformation, and operations.  

After joining Erste through Slovenská sporiteľňa in 2008, he went on to serve as Managing Director of Erste Group IT SK and CIO of Slovenská sporiteľňa. He later joined Erste Group Bank AG, where he led Group Digital Governance in IT and Retail and helped establish the Digital Banking division within Erste Group IT.  

Martin also played a central role in the expansion of George (Erste Group’s digital banking platform) across multiple markets, later serving as CEO of George and Managing Director of George Labs. From late 2021, he is COO of Česká spořitelna, with responsibility for IT and Operations.  

What will we talk about?
With 4.5 million clients, Česká spořitelna is the largest bank in the Czech Republic and, in recent years, also one of its most awarded. It is also among the frontrunners in AI adoption in Czech banking. After years of hands-on experience and dozens of deployed use cases, its COO will offer an unfiltered perspective on which AI solutions have delivered measurable value and which ones, despite high expectations, have failed. In an organization of 10 000 employees, AI is not just a technological shift, but a business and human transformation as well. Which trends have they chosen to embrace in the AI era, and which principles remain unchanged? 

Pavel Kučera (Deputy Director of Claims, Kooperativa pojišťovna - part of Vienna Insurance Group) 
Pavel Kučera is an experienced leader with more than 20 years of expertise in digitalization, financial products management, and process optimization across financial services. He has held leadership roles at Volkswagen Financial Services and GE Money, where he managed large teams, built product portfolios, and drove innovation in process management. At Kooperativa, he is currently responsible for the development and methodology of claims management, with a focus on modernizing key processes, integrating claims handling into a new application and core system, and advancing automation and the practical use of AI. 

What will we talk about?
What does claims handling look like when automation, standardization, and AI come together behind the curtain? This session will openly walk through the journey of our project, from a fragmented process, through the introduction of unified rules, to the gradual integration of intelligent technologies. It will also highlight the practical use of Camunda, decisions around vendor lock-in, and why we keep critical parts of the process under our own control. No marketing buzzwords, just a real-world perspective on how automation and AI are reshaping the day-to-day work of claims professionals. 

Miroslav Chlipala (Lawyer, Advokáti Chlipala) 
A lawyer with 20 years of experience specialising in IT law and modern technologies. Under his leadership, his law firm has been consistently recognised in both domestic and international rankings for its expertise in these areas. He is a member of the Permanent Commission for AI Ethics and Regulation at MIRRI SR and a co-author of the commentary on the Cybersecurity Act. He also co-founded the course Information and Communication Technology Law at FIIT STU. In addition, he is an active author of numerous expert articles and several publications focused on IT law. 

What will we talk about?
AI is becoming an integral part of modern IT solutions. At the same time, a far-reaching regulatory framework is emerging, focused on safety, transparency, and risk management. The AI Act is fundamentally reshaping the rules for organizations that develop, implement, or use AI in their products and services. We will offer a practical perspective on what the new regulation means in the day-to-day reality of IT projects, from solution design to deployment. It will focus on key obligations, common areas of ambiguity, and the real risks organizations are facing today. The discussion will explore where companies most often make mistakes, what can no longer be ignored, and how to set up AI projects so they are not only innovative, but also sustainable from a regulatory perspective. 

Tomáš Sýkora, Principal GenAI GTM Specialist, Amazon Web Services  
Tomáš is a Principal GenAI GTM Specialist at Amazon Web Services (AWS), where he leads agentic AI strategy for software companies across EMEA. With over 20 years of experience spanning enterprise architecture, product management, and AI deployment, he helps organizations navigate the shift from traditional software to autonomous AI systems, covering everything from technical architecture to pricing models and go-to-market strategy.

Before stepping into his current role, he served as Principal Solutions Architect at AWS. He holds a Master’s degree from the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava with a thesis on neural networks and speech synthesis, and is the creator of Living Governance, an open-source framework for executable AI governance in enterprise environments. He lives in Munich with his family.
 

What will we talk about?
Every organization can build an AI demo in a week. Fewer than 10% get to production. This session draws on real deployment patterns across European software companies and enterprises to map what actually blocks the path to production and what accelerates it. 

We’ll cover the operational realities that don’t show up in proofs of concept: model routing and cost control, observability for autonomous agents, governance architectures that satisfy regulators without killing velocity, and the security threats emerging in multi-agent systems. 

The session closes with a practical framework for what technology leaders and software vendors can do today to position for production-ready AI even before the tooling fully matures.

Matej Balog, Team Lead, Google DeepMind 
Matej Balog is a research scientist at Google DeepMind in London, where he leads a team focused on developing AI systems capable of discovering new algorithms to solve complex computational problems and advance scientific discovery. Throughout his career, he has contributed to the development of breakthrough systems such as AlphaTensor, FunSearch, and AlphaEvolve. 

What will we talk about?
AI excels at generating text and writing code, yet when it comes to the most complex tasks, it still runs into limits of reliability and the problem of hallucinations. In this session, we will take a closer look at how agentic systems such as AlphaEvolve address this challenge by autonomously generating solutions, testing them rigorously, and improving them through iterative refinement. Through real-world examples, we will show how this agentic approach can optimise Google’s global computing infrastructure while also breaking mathematical records that have stood for decades. The talk will focus on the technical reality of autonomous discovery, its current limitations, and the impact AI agents may have on the future of software engineering and scientific research. 

Moderators