MEET OUR SPEAKERS FOR DEVCON 2022

DevCon is a premium conference dedicated to the IT community, and this year we want to physically bring us together in a special setting dedicated to learning, quality content, but also fun and socializing You can meet top speakers from all over the world that will share with you from their knowledge and expertise. Emily Jiang, Andrei Goncharov and Gerrit Grunwald shared some thoughts with us. Read on to get to know them better.

1. People keep talking about how to become a successful person in your field. What does success look like to you and what motivates you every day?

Emily Jiang: I think for becoming a successful person in IT, learning continuously is key because IT moves so fast. In order to keep up with it and being successful, you need to be adaptive and embracing the changes. People define success based on different criteria. For me, a successful person means a true leader and thoughtful thinker. The motivation for me is to keep moving the open-source communities including MicroProfile, Jakarta EE and Open Liberty as well as inspiring and helping others.

Andrey Goncharov: It is the same old truth - do what you love and have fun while doing it!

Gerrit Grunwald: I think there are different ways looking at success. I think if you really enjoy what you are doing, you are successful, no matter what job it is. Find something that you like and you will be successful.

2. What would be the ups & downs of the pandemic on a personal and professional level?

Emily Jiang: The ups of the pandemic:

a. had my house renovated and moved into my new house after pandemic

b. spent more time with my family due to all activities were cancelled

c. had a book written on MicroProfile and Open Liberty, which is available on Amazon (ibm.biz/MicroProfileBook).

The downs of the pandemic:

a. Unable to go to conferences physically and meet up with the community. The online conferences are not as efficient as in-person ones.

b. Unable to go to offices and meet up with my teams. I really missed the corridor chats.

Andrey Goncharov: I joined Meta during the pandemic. It was definitely a level-up for me. At the same time, I gained 5 extra kilos while doing interviews and uni in parallel with the work.

Gerrit Grunwald: The ups are the ability to work from home. Due to the pandemic there was huge mindshift in companies and suddenly people can work from home and attend meetings online which is great. This is good for your private and professional life because it enables being with your family and having more freedom in your professional life. But there are no ups without downs. The whole social aspect of working in the office somehow suffered from working at home. You cannot replace an in-person meeting with a zoom call.

3. Can an IT speaker be funny?

Emily Jiang: Of course, she/he can be funny. Actually, being funny is a great thing.

Andrey Goncharov: I'd even say should, In my view, IT conferences are meant not to educate, per se, but to spark interest.

Gerrit Grunwald: Of course, speaking at IT conferences for me is totally unrelated to being a funny person. It can even help to be funny, it can make your session more interesting.

4. How do you see the involvement of technology to make a better world?

Emily Jiang: No matter whether you want to believe it or not, technology impacts the world in every dimension. Technologies can eventually replace the repetitive labour work such as doing some cleaning, driving the cars etc. It will change the job families of course. Maybe every one of us can have a few minors working for us ?.

Andrey Goncharov: Free up humans from the routine to focus on art and science.

Gerrit Grunwald: Well, there are so many things where technology helps to make a better world. One simple example might be the medical sector. Just think about diabetes and how technology like glucose sensors and insulin pumps gave the affected people a much better quality of living.

5. Do you think the financial crisis that is next to us like experts said, will impact the IT industry/what you to at your work? Why?

Emily Jiang: If there is a financial crisis, it will impact the IT industry as IT is everywhere. However, I think IT industry adapts very fast towards the changes so I hope the impact might not be very severe and lasting.

Andrey Goncharov: Like every crisis, it is going to transform the world to a certain degree. However, I am sure we'll adapt tp the new reality like we did a thousand times before.

Gerrit Grunwald: Hmm…good question, it’s hard to predict because it’s also related to the energy crisis, problems in the supply chains etc. If companies won’t be able to get their business running it won’t make a difference where you work…you will be affected by the crisis. The question is how big will be the impact. The good thing is that software makes the world go round and with the ability to work from home, companies can safe energy costs and that might also help but it’s to hard to say…

6. You`re a wine or a beer person?

Emily Jiang: I don't drink beer and I only drink sparkling wines occasionally.

Andrey Goncharov: Coffee and herbal tea.

Gerrit Grunwald: Wine

7. A message for the Romanian IT community ?

Emily Jiang: Romanian IT community is awesome. Keep up with your great work! Look forward to meeting many of you at DevCon.

Andrey Goncharov: ????

Thursday 27 Oct, 2022