Speakers/Presenters
Here are the biographical details of EuroPython 2008's presenters:
Adam Byrtek
No biographical details available
Ahik Man (Venvid Technologies Ltd)
Ahik Man is a long time video management, delivery and compression expert. Ahik's company: VenVid Technologies LTD. is providing consulting and professional service to media and technology companies such as: Content providers, TV studios, video-CDN and STB manufacturers. Prior to establishing VenVid, Ahik held leading position in media technology project at 500 Fortune company. Later he was a founder of a video compression start-up. During this time Ahik participated in the Motion Picture Expert Group (aka. MPEG).
Andreas Schreiber (DLR - German Aerospace Center)
Andreas Schreiber is head of the Department for Distributed Systems and Component Software of the German Aerospace Center's (DLR) Simulation and Software Technology division. He received a degree in industrial mathematics from Technical University Clausthal. His research fields include grid computing, cloud computing, modern software architectures, user interfaces, and software engineering. He has been a visiting scientist at the Argonne National Laboratory working in the Globus Project group. He has a 15-year history of Python development in the field of scientific and industrial applications and has convinced many engineers in the aerospace industry to use Python.
DLR is Germany's national research center for aeronautics and space. Its extensive research and development work in Aeronautics, Space, Transportation and Energy is integrated into national and international cooperative ventures. As Germany's space agency, DLR has been given responsibility for the forward planning and the implementation of the German space program by the German federal government as well as for the international representation of German interests. Furthermore, Germany's largest project-management agency is also part of DLR. Approximately 5,600 people are employed in DLR's 28 institutes and facilities at thirteen locations in Germany: Koeln-Porz (headquarters), Berlin-Adlershof, Bonn-Oberkassel, Braunschweig, Bremen, Göttingen, Hamburg, Lampoldshausen, Neustrelitz, Oberpfaffenhofen, Stuttgart, Trauen and Weilheim. DLR also operates offices in Brussels, Paris, and Washington, D.C.
Armin Rigo
Armin Rigo is the author of the Psyco JIT, as well as the key person behind many of PyPy's advanced details. He is one of the main implementors of PyPy's GCs.
Beatrice Düring (Changemaker)
Bea Düring has been involved in the project management of the EU-funded period of PyPy.
She has been working with agile project management at Open End AB since August 2007, still being involved in co-ordinating PyPy funded work. She has been employed since 2002 at Change Maker, a Chaos Pilot inspired company based in Sweden.
Carsten Rebbien (COM.lounge)
Carsten Rebbien is a senior programmer at COM.lounge. He is using Plone and Python for development for years and recently got involved with using and extending buildout.
Charlie Clark (Clark Consulting & Research)
Born and raised in the Republic of Mancunia I hold an MA in Film & Television from the University of Glasgow and a DESS in Audiovisual Production Management from the University of Valenciennes. I got into the web stuff pretty early on and now I am a Python and Zope consultant based in Germany.
Christian Tismer (tismerysoft GmbH)
I am known for being the Stackless Python guy. I joined the PyPy project as one of its founders and I am member of the core team. After a stroke, I'm recovering slowly by doing insane projects like psyco.
Christian Scholz (COM.lounge)
Christian Scholz is using Python since 1997, Zope since 1999 and Plone since version 0.9. He is co-founder of COM.lounge and doing Python/Zope/Plone consulting since 2000. Since 2007 COM.lounge additionally does Second Life Consulting.
Christian Scholz is also active in the DataPortability Project (http://dataportability.org) and the Architecture Working Group which is working on the Open Grid Protocol (http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Architecture_Working_Group).
Christian Theune (Gocept GmbH & Co. KG)
Christian is a Zope core developer and co-founder of gocept, a company specialized in Zope and Plone consulting and development. He is also chair of the German Zope Foundation.
Dinu Gherman
No biographical details available
Fabio Pliger (S3 s.r.l.)
Fabio Pliger is a lover of computer science and in the last 6 years this love has been dedicated particularly to Python. He works with it everyday at SIA s.r.l. and S3 s.r.l (his company) trying to introduce it into industrial and process control applications.
He also loves good drinking and food, sports, gaming and spending time with his wife and son.
Frank Wierzbicki (Sun Microsystems)
Frank Wierzbicki is the Jython Project Lead. He is employed by Sun Microsystems where he works on Jython full-time. He has been a Java and a Python developer for just short of a decade. Frank has a B.S. in Biochemistry from Old Dominion University and an All-But-Dissertation in Neuroscience from Baylor College of Medicine.
Gašper Žejn (Zemanta)
Gašper Žejn is a Python developer at Zemanta, a semantic web start-up from Slovenia. He has several years of experience with systems administration and is interested in distributed systems
Harald Armin Massa (GHUM Harald Massa)
Born in 1969, own company with Python since 1999
Holger Krekel (merlinux GmbH)
holger krekel programmed games in the late 80's, got a degree in computer science and worked for banks in the 90's and afterwards got involved with Python. He co-founded the PyPy project, maintains the py lib and the py.test tool and manages merlinux, a company offering Python based programming services and solutions.
Honza Král
I am a Django enthusiast, I have been using it since before magic-removal (last year professionally) - we have used the newforms-admin branch to develop a Django-based open source CMS ella which has been in production for almost 9 months now (including the admin interface which is used by our editorial staff). In the process we learned everything there was to know about the branch and also tried and contributed both ideas and actual code.
Ignas Mikalajūnas (Programmers of Vilnius)
Ignas is a programmer at PoV and the lead developer of SchoolTool the open source student information system.
Jack Diederich (Person at Large)
Jack Diederich is a serial dot-commer, Python core developer, and bar denizen. His most recent Python contribution was the class decorator patch for Python 3.0 (and 2.5, and 2.4, and 2.3)
Jacob Hallén
Jacob has been involved with the PyPy project since its first sprint. He has done a lot of auxiliary work like coding library modules, writing funding proposals and doing project management tasks. This means that he has had to bend his mind around the intricate results of the genius coders that surround him.
Jan Murre (Pareto)
Jan Murre is co-founder of Pareto, a web company in the Netherlands.
He discovered Python and Zope around 2000 and immediately fell in love with it. Reason enough to start an Open Source department at Pareto that is now mainly focussed on Plone and Django development and does it's share in Plone core development.
In his free time he loves to sing, mainly choral music.
Jim Baker (Zyasoft)
Jim Baker has over 15 years of professional software development experience, focusing on business intelligence, enterprise system management, and high-performance web applications. He co-founded both Empact Solutions, raising $10M in VC financing, and BizLogix. Jim also leads the Front Range Pythoneers, the Boulder Python Users Group. Jim graduated from Harvard College, A.B., Computer Science magna cum laude and Brown University, Sc.M., Computer Science (and an all-but-dissertation Ph.D. candidate). Jim is a Jython committer and lead developer of the Jython 2.5 compiler. He first started working with Java in 1995.
Jim has been actively involved in restarting the Jython project. He started updating the Jython compiler after PyCon 2007, and than proposed for the development to continue as a Google Summer of Code project.
John Pinner (Clockwork Software Systems)
John Pinner has been using Unix and then Linux for more years than he cares to remember. He and his company, Clockwork Software Systems, have been using Python as their main development language since 1999 for applications as diverse as electromagnetic compatibility testing and payroll. Through the Linux Emporium they offer both scheduled and bespoke Python training courses, and have provided tutorials at Free Software conferences.
Jonathan Fine
No biographical details available
Jonathan Share (Opera Software)
Jonathan Share has been working at Opera Software in the Web Applications Team for just under 3 years and was the lead developer on the widgets.opera.com project. He had no real Python experience before this project, working with Spring Framework-based web applications in previous projects for Opera.
Jussi Rasinmäki
No biographical details available
Lucio Torre
Serial Entrepreneur, pyweek participant since #2, founder of the Argentina Python user group (pyar), speaker at technical and industry conferences on software, mobile and open source all around the world.
Marc-André Lemburg (eGenix.com Software GmbH)
Marc-André is the CEO and founder of eGenix.com GmbH, a German consulting company focused on providing highly specialized skills and services in the areas of product development, application design and project management.
Marc-André holds a degree in mathematics from the University of Düsseldorf. He started his professional career in 1993 and has worked for many large companies such as IBM, GlaxoSmithKline and Deutsche Bank. Projects included building efficient large scale applications, successfully guiding teams through project rollouts and helping young software startups in their effort to create highly competitive products.
Marc-André is an expert for the object-oriented programming language Python. He is a Python Core Developer and has served on the board and as vice-president of the Python Software Foundation (PSF).
Maciej Fijalkowski (merlinux GmbH)
Maciej Fijalkowski is a core PyPy developer, particularly interested in the obscure details of various parts. He is always annoyed with existing code relying on reference counting, as well as lack of knowledge about how things like finalizers work.
Malthe Borch
Malthe Borch is an independent Zope developer. His contributions to the Zope community include a highly optimized template engine and a relational object persistence framework. He's also an active member of the Plone community.
In Winter 2008 he started a project to build a light-weight content management system on Zope 3.
Marcin Kaszynski
I am a software developer with 10 years of professional experience with a lot of languages and environments, mainly C, C++, Java, Perl and Python. Coding, analyzing requirements, managing, testing, marketing -- been there, done that, failed at least once at every single one. After 9 years I started freelancing to create the software I like (mainly web apps) in a language I liked.
During the last year I created a library that makes it easier to handle multilingual data with Django (django-multilingual, http://code.google.com/p/django-multilingual/) and several websites (http://el-monito.com/, http://oiola.com/, http://webcomicspot.com/, http://favpico.com/).
Mark Hammond (Canonical)
Mark has been involved in the Python community since 1994 and helped create the first 32bit Windows port of Python. He currently maintains the Python for Windows (pywin32) extensions and the Mozilla Python related extensions. He is based in Melbourne, Australia, and is currently is working part-time with Canonical on BZR for Windows, Enfold Systems (a vendor of Plone related technologies) and Mozilla.
Martijn Faassen (Startifact)
Over the years, Martijn Faassen has been the founder of a number of open source software projects, such as the lxml XML library for Python and the Five Zope 3/Zope 2 integration framework. Martijn was also one of the core developers of the Silva CMS system. Martijn is the proudest when these projects grow beyond him, making them projects that other people can call their own as well.
Martijn has been active in Zope core development (Zope 2 and Zope 3) for many years. Recently, Martijn has been one of the founders of the Grok project, an agile web development framework using Zope 3 technologies.
Besides his involvement as a developer, Martijn has also been a participant in the community in other capacities. Since 2006, Martijn has been a member of the board of the Zope Foundation. He is currently chairman of the board of the Zope Foundation.
Michael Meinel
After my studies of Information Technologies at the BA Mannheim, I joined the Simulation and Software Technology at the German Aerospace Center in October 2007 where I started working at the C2A2S2E. Here I am member of the core developer team for the Flow Simulator and mainly occupied with tasks in the area of the FSDM.
My experience with Python started back in school when Version 2.3 was released. Since then I realized smaller tools and scripts for personal needs as well as some web applications using Django and TurboGears. At Simulation and Software Technology, Python is the preferred language for small to mid scale projects and I always use it, when there is the need to have administration tasks done automatically.
The goal of the Center for Computer Applications in Aerospace Science and Engineering (C2A2S2E) is to establish an interdisciplinary center of excellence in numerical aircraft simulations. The main challenge is to „fly the virtual aircraft“, i.e. simulations of aerodynamics coupled with structure mechanics and the flight dynamics control laws. This will allow us to do numerical prediction of aircraft performance and handling qualities prior to the first flight. To achieve this, we operate a high-performance compute cluster. C2A2S2E is funded by Airbus, DLR and the Federal State of Niedersachsen.
DLR is Germany´s national research center for aeronautics and space. Its extensive research and development work in Aeronautics, Space, Transportation and Energy is integrated into national and international cooperative ventures. As Germany´s space agency, DLR has been given responsibility for the forward planning and the implementation of the German space program by the German federal government as well as for the international representation of German interests. Furthermore, Germany’s largest project-management agency is also part of DLR. Approximately 5,600 people are employed in DLR´s 28 institutes and facilities at thirteen locations in Germany: Koeln-Porz (headquarters), Berlin-Adlershof,
Mike Cariaso (BioTeam.net)
Mike works for BioTeam.net as a computer geek for biologists. He's currently on assignment in Wageningen, The Netherlands. He enjoys travel, skateboarding, reading genomes, and programming in Python.
Mike Pittaro (Co Founder, SnapLogic)
Mike has worked in the data analysis and data integration space for the past 12 years. He built his first financial data mart in 1996, and later worked on pool selection analysis for the asset-backed securitization industry. Mike joined Informatica in 1997, where he worked on product advocacy and developed the support infrastructure for the Global Support Organization, which used a mixture of commercial and Open Source software to enable collaboration and resource sharing across five distributed support centers. Before Informatica, Mike worked in the high performance computer industry, optimizing Fortran and C programs for massively parallel computers. Mike graduated from the Sligo Institute of Technology in 1983.
Nicolas Chauvat
No biographical details available
Peter Bulychev
No biographical details available
Raymond D. Hettinger (Self-employed)
Raymond is a core developer for the Python language and is responsible for introducing generator expressions, creating the itertools module, optimizing the implementation, and designing several builtin functions including any(), all(), set(), frozenset(), sorted(), reversed() and enumerate(). He is active in the developer newsgroup and serves as a board member for the Python Software Foundation. He is the author of 40+ recipes in the ASPN Python cookbook and actively maintains several third-party Python tools including a matrix/eigenvalue package and a generic puzzle solving framework.
Ricardo Quesada
Author of open-source games since 1996, involved in the linux indie gaming community since 2000, pyweek participant since #3, speaker at technical conferences.
Stani Michiels
Stani is both a visual artist and architect. In his photos, videos and installations, which are often created with self-designed software, he concentrates on the way architecture functions, particularly as a metaphor for contemporary society. His work has been exhibited in Palais de Tokyo (Paris), MUHKA (Antwerp), OK Video Festival (Jakarta), Galerie Air de Paris (Paris), CEAC (Xiamen, China), the Lyon Biennale 2005 and elsewhere. Stani started developing Phatch in 2007.
Stefan Behnel (Senacor Technologies AG)
Dr. Stefan Behnel is a Senior developer at Senacor Technologies AG in Germany, where he makes a living with service-oriented software architectures, process modeling and Java development. He made his Ph.D. in self-organising distributed systems design at the Darmstadt University of Technologies. His Open-Source involvement includes a number of important Python projects, such as the Cython compiler for Python C extensions, and the lxml XML toolkit.
Stefan Pielicke (Information Engineering, University of Applied Sciences Cologne)
After a vocational training in software development Stefan Pielicke is now studying Information Engineering at the University of Applied Sciences, Cologne. In his bachelor thesis he develops an enhanced plug-in technology for the SVNChecker to make it compatible with other VCS beside subversion. His main interest focuses on tools and concepts of the software engineering process.
Steve Alexander (Canonical)
Steve Alexander is manager of the Launchpad team at Canonical, and has been using Python since 2000.
Ted Leung (Sun Microsystems)
- I have several passions, which include:
- Fixing computers so that they actually help people.
- Helping to apply the open source/commons-based peer production model to relevant areas in the software and other industries.
I have worked on a number of software projects where advanced technology was used to solve human problems. Since 2000 I have been a part of the open source community, and have helped individuals and companies make the changes necessary to succeed in that environment.
I have presented at a number of industry conferences, including OSCON, Software Development, PyCon, and ApacheCon. My first book, "Professional XML Development with Apache Tools", was published by Wrox in December 2003. My Specialties include:
Open Source community building, software design and architecture, AJAX, Java, Python, XML, Web Services, C++, Object-oriented databases, Conference presentations
Tobias Ivarsson (Linköping University, Sweden)
Tobias Ivarsson is a M.Sc. student at Linköping University, Sweden. He also works as a Java developer for the promising Swedish development studio Neo Technology. He also has three years experience of teaching programming in a multitude of languages at Linköping University.
Jim Baker (qv) started updating the Jython compiler after PyCon 2007, and then proposed that the development continue as a Google Summer of Code project. Tobias Ivarsson wanted to use Python 2.5 syntax in Jython and liked the idea of Google sponsoring him scratching that itch. Tobias signed up to work with the Jython compiler during the summer of 2007 with Jim as mentor. This was a successful project, enabling Jython to load Python 2.5 bytecode as an intermediate form. Since then Jim and Tobias have continued to work on the Jython compiler, and are doing an additional Summer of Code on it this year. Tobias is also incorporating the work on the Jython compiler as part of his masters thesis. They are both active Jython committers and constitute the main part of the Jython 2.5 Compiler team.
Jim and Tobias are two of the most involved and knowledgeable Jython developers at the moment. They have been giving well received talks about the inner workings of Jython at other conferences such as JavaOne, PyCon and the Java Posse Roundup.
Tommi Virtanen
Tv's a software developer who's interested in file systems, networks, finding neat solutions to difficult problems, and shiny bits. He's been using computers since 1982, Linux since 1993 and Python since 2000. You can read his writings at http://eagain.net/