Europe Symposium 2011 Speakers

Speakers will include the Liferay Leadership Team, Liferay Partners, and special guests from the Liferay Community.  

Please stay tuned as we add more speaker bios in the weeks to come!

Liferay Leadership

Brian Chan, Founder & Chief Software Architect

Brian Chan, Chief Software Architect and founder, created Liferay Portal in 2000 to provide non-profit organizations with an open source solution to facilitate collaboration on the Internet. He has since steered Liferay to become a worldwide leader in innovative open source enterprise solutions. With a strong foundation in software architecture and economics, Brian has solidified open source as a viable and high performance option for the enterprise with business benefits beyond cost savings.

Brian holds a dual B.S. degree in Economics and Computer Science from the University of Chicago. He is also a sought after speaker at major industry events such as JavaOne, JAX Asia and Europe and his thought leadership has gained him seats on the JSR-286 and JSF-314 specification committees.

Bryan Cheung, Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Bryan Cheung steers Liferay's strategic direction and worldwide business development efforts as one of the founders serving with the company since its inception in 2004. With technical experience to balance a strong commitment to end user experience, Bryan leads Liferay in meeting its commitment to deliver focused and effective business solutions to its customers and its community. Most recently, Bryan divides his time between Liferay's US and European headquarters and oversees Liferay's continued growth in its two largest markets. Bryan graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a bachelor's degree in Computer Science.

 

Paul Hinz, Chief Marketing Officer

Paul Hinz leads Liferay's product positioning, marketing and sales strategies. Paul comes to Liferay with over 20 years of engineering and product strategy experience in startup, government and Fortune 500 companies. He has unique experience in the fostering of open source communities which is supported by both investors as well as free and open source software advocates alike. Before joining Liferay, Paul led strategies for Java EE, the GlassFish Portfolio product lines and was Sun Microsystems' strategist for portals and collaboration while additionally coordinating with the MySQL team for open source marketing and sales. Prior to Sun, Mr. Hinz held multiple positions including Sun-Netscape, OSI, Hewlett-Packard and for the California Department of Transportation Research Laboratory. Paul holds a B.S. in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from California State University, Sacramento and a Masters of Business from the University of Maryland.

Brian Kim, Founder & Chief Operating Officer

Brian Kim, Chief Operating Officer and a founding partner, leads the company's Professional Services Organization and orchestrates the ongoing operations of a fast-growing global organization. He is also managing the strategic growth of the company's partnership network. Prior to Liferay, Brian worked alongside upper management at HubbardOne on internal company operations. He is also an alumnus of Accenture where he worked with marquée clients within the financial services sector. Brian holds a B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Chicago.

Michael Young, Founder & Chief Technology Officer

Michael Young, Chief Technology Officer and founding partner, steers product development alongside Brian Chan with focus on maintaining Liferay technology's ease of development and integration. One of the company's leading technologists, Michael manages all integration and technology partnerships and has lead the development of core features such as WSRP and Spring Framework integration. His technical prowess and experience has earned him seats on the OASIS WSRP and CMIS committees. Michael holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of California, San Diego.

Featured Speakers

Julio Camarero, Software Engineer, Liferay Spain

Julio Camarero is a Core Developer for Liferay Portal working from the office in Madrid. His work focuses mainly on user interface, accessibility and usability. He is also the main coordinator of the Liferay Translation Team and is an excellent teacher and has performed Liferay training courses throughout Spain. He also participates often as an Architectural Consultant for Liferay customers. Julio holds a bachelor's degree in Telecommunications Engineering and a master's degree in Computer Science from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain.

He is currently pursuing a Ph.D in this field, focusing his research on web and intelligent techniques applied to disaster management response.

Nate Cavanaugh, Director of User Interface Engineering, Liferay, Inc.

Nate Cavanaugh is the Director of User Interface Engineering for Liferay, in which he helps guide not only the interface for end user products, but also the interface for different development methodologies. Nate currently heads up Liferay's latest UI project, AlloyUI. He has a passion to help users at different levels to be more productive and get work done. He loves to create, whether it be beautiful interfaces, a piece of art, or just a small essay. He tends to be hyperbolic, and loves a good debate.

Edwin Chung, Director of Business Development, Liferay, Inc.

As the US Director of Business Development, Edwin Chung is responsible for business strategy execution and also leads the US and Asia Pacific sales teams, as well as setting overall sales goals and processes for Liferay's worldwide offices. Ed has been with Liferay since 2005 and has managed many of Liferay's strategic accounts. His work has included development of enterprise portal strategy, business process analysis, and business process re-engineering. Ed also has extensive experience around the overall design, development and implementation of internet, intranet, and extranet solutions. Ed joins Liferay with over 12 years of consulting and product management experience. Prior to Liferay, Ed's experience included providing portal solutions to Global 1000 companies. Ed holds a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles.

James Falkner, Community Manager, Liferay, Inc.

James Falkner oversees the 35,000-strong open source Liferay Community.  In this role, James provides information, education, and leadership development, while constantly encouraging participation and growth of the community.  James has over 14 years of experience in technology, and he blends his strong technical background with a passion for open source.  James has been involved with enterprise web development and the Liferay Community since 2008.
 
Prior to joining Liferay, James led development of several key technologies in Oracle's Web Center stack, including its collaboration and social networking services.  James is also an alumnus of Sun Microsystems, where he was the principal architect for Sun's portal technologies and participated in several open source projects such as OpenPortal, GlassFish, and Community Equity.  James holds a B.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of Florida.

Juan Fernández, Liferay Core Engineer, Liferay Spain

Juan Fernández joined Liferay Spain as a core engineer in its engineering center of Madrid after being a Liferay consultant and an active member of the community. He had previous experience in Liferay development, integration, customization, implementation, and offering consultancy services to customers. His mission in Liferay is to improve the core with new functionality and offer high quality consulting services all around the world.

Juan holds a master's degree in Software Engineering from the University of Seville, Spain.

Jorge Ferrer, General Manager, Liferay Spain and Software Architect, Liferay Inc.

Jorge Ferrer combines two roles at Liferay as the general Manager of Liferay Spain and Portugal and as a Software Architect of Liferay Portal. It's thanks to this combination that he's able to bring the technology closer to our users and learn from the needs of our clients with the goal of making products that are adapted to their needs. Jorge enjoys integrating technology with users because he believes that it's not only possible, but also a responsibility to use the technology to add value to our society.
 
Jorge holds a Telecommunications Engineering Degree with a master on Computer Science by Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain.

Sergio González, Core Engineer, Liferay Spain

Sergio González works as a Liferay core engineer in the Liferay Madrid office. He is mainly involved in systems administration, tuning and performance tests, as well as Liferay's core development and support. Lately, he has been more focused on user interface, accessibility, and usability developments for Liferay. Prior to Liferay, Sergio worked at KPMG as an IT Advisory Specialist auditing systems.

Sergio holds a bachelor's degree in Telecommunications Engineering and a master's degree in Computer Science from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain.

Michael Han, Director of Operations, US and APAC, Liferay, Inc.

Michael Han brings his background in capital markets and more than 12 years of technology management and architecture experience to Liferay. As Liferay's Director of Operations, US and Asia, Michael oversees Liferay's operations in Asia (both in China and Southeast Asia) as well as Liferay's support and training operations in the US. Michael also manages strategic client relationships in the high-tech and financial industries. Finally, Michael leverages his expertise in large-scale distributed systems to guide the benchmarking and performance management of Liferay's product lines. Prior to Liferay, Michael served as Chief Architect for Bank of America Global Foreign Exchange and as Managing Director for a proprietary trading firm. During his career, Mr. Han has specialized in leveraging Agile practices to deliver high-performance financial systems in distributed, multi-shore development models. Michael holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Olaf Kock, Senior Consultant, Liferay Germany

Olaf Kock, After being an active part of the Liferay community for two and a half years, Olaf Kock has joined Liferay GmbH as a Technical Consultant and Trainer. After several years of software development experience in various, mostly server-side projects, Olaf now supports client teams in the architecture, implementation and development of solutions using Liferay Portal.

Heiko Schönfelder, Sales & Account Manager, Liferay Germany

Heiko Schönfelder joined Liferay early 2008 after earning is colleague degree in business administration and financing from a Leipzig Academy. He started as a Sales Engineer their he, based on his day by day tasks, implemented a Key Account strategy as well as a solid business and customer relationship in the European market. Heiko currently holds the position of the Sales and Account Manager at Liferay GmbH there he works closely together with key customers, community members and Liferay partners.

Barrie Selack, Senior Software Engineer, Liferay, Inc.

Barrie joined Liferay in 2010 after working with Liferay for two years at an enterprise client. Since coming to Liferay, he has worked on new and upgrade Liferay installations with clients, as well as assisting with training materials development and on-site training. He has completed several architecture, design, and code reviews for clients and partners. Barrie's background includes working at various Fortune 500 companies, as well as several startup companies. His expertise and experience include WebSphere, JBoss, Tomcat, DB2, Oracle, and MySQL.

Joseph Shum, General Manager, Liferay Germany

Joseph Shum was one of the earliest members of the Liferay team, joining the company in 2005 as a software engineer and architect in the professional services division. After working closely with clients and partners at companies like Intuit and Napster, Joseph's skills were redirected to building Liferay's international alliance program and assisting Liferay's partners to build successful solutions for customers.

Most recently, Joseph has been serving as General Manager of Liferay GmbH, Liferay's headquarters for the European market. In his new role, Joseph oversees the day-to-day operations of Liferay's second largest business unit, as well as overall sales and cusotmer relationships throughout the European market. He holds a degree in Software Engineering from Lakehead University in Canada.

Igor Spasic, Senior Software Engineer, Liferay, Inc

Igor Spasic is a Senior Software Engineer at Liferay. He has been mastering the art of making elegant and sophisticated software for over a decade. He works out of Serbia and over looks the operation there. He is currently working on a few open-source projects and also a JUG (Java User Group) Chairman

Igor graduated from the University of Belgrade, Serbia in Automatic and Electronic Engineering majoring in Telecommunication.

Greg Amerson, Senior Software Engineer, Liferay, Inc.

Greg Amerson, Senior Software Engineer at Liferay, Inc., leads the developer tooling support for Liferay Portal. He is currently working on Liferay IDE, the officially supported developer tooling initially targeted for Liferay integration with Eclipse. Prior to Liferay, Greg worked in the developer tooling space with Genuitec, LLC (makers of MyEclipse products) where he was a Senior Developer for the MyEclipse Enterprise Workbench and the Lead Developer for the MyEclipse Blue Edition. Greg's emphasis included support for servers from IBM including Websphere Server and Websphere Portal. Greg holds a B.S. and a Masters of Computer Systems Engineering  from the University of Arkansas.

Armin Dahncke, Senior Consultant, Liferay GmbH

Armin has joined Liferay in 2008 with more then a decade background of Software Architecture, Project Managing, Test Center Leadership, Senior Consultancy in the J2EE scope, mainly focusing on interbranch creation of enterprise applications in the EMEA market. His current operating level is execution of public and private trainings, leading sponsored developments, speaking on roadshows into leading SWAT exertions.

Milen Dyankov, Senior IT Architect AMG.net, Poland

Milen Dyankov, Senior IT Architect at AMG.net – a company specializing in designing corporate portals and e-commerce solutions for major telecommunication and financial companies in Poland and abroad. Milen holds master's degree of computer science from "Sv. Sv. Kiril i Metodi'" university in Veliko Turnovo, Bulgaria.
Open source projects related experience:
Since 1997 he has been following, evaluating and sometimes contributing to a number of open
source initiatives like JBoss AS, JBoss JBPM, Mule ESB and Liferay to mention a few.
Milen is an active Liferay community member since 2008.

Uwe Weist, IT Development Donner & Reuschel

Uwe Weist is working for IT services companies since 1974. Since 1999 as a Software Architect with the Hamburg / Munich private bank "Donner & Reuschel AG". He is focused at CMS, CRM and Portal systems. Uwe has studied mathematics and cybernetics at the Dresden Technical University. The first program was a program for the Zuse computer ZRA1;)

Sascha Groß, Software Developer & Consultant, MATHEMA Software GmbH

Sascha Groß is a software developer, consultant and trainer for MATHEMA Software GmbH, his areas of expertise include GUI-and Web-Programming with Java/JEE. His main focus is on the ever-changing innovations in the world of Java (e.g. JSF) and he has shared this knowledge as a speaker at many conferences. He also has extensive knowledge of XML on which he has published the book "XML kompakt. Die wichtigsten Standards"(XML Compact. The Most Important Standards). Additionally to his work in customer projects, he is active as a trainer for MATHEMA and as a consultant in projects involving upgrading technology to JSF.

 

Michael Kienzler, Senior Product Manager, MATHEMA Software GmbH

Michael Kienzler is a Senior Product Manager responsible for the Liferay Project. He has been involved in knowledge management for over 10 years. Currently, he is focusing on projects for customers which integrate content from different providers under a single access point with semantic technologies.

Gregor Kasmann, Westernacher Products & Services GmbH

Gregor Kasmann finished his studies on the Technical University of Dortmund with a Diploma in Computer Science in 2008. Before that he was working as a developer for Java and .Net projects. He also administrated Microsoft Networks for the faculty of Bio-, Chemie- and Ingenieurwesen. In between he ran some middle size PHP and Java projects as a project manager. After 2008 he did reach on topics like cloud computing, web portals and semantics with the Fraunhofer Institut für Software und Systeme ISST and the chair Software Engineering on the faculty computer science at TU Dortmund. In this time he became an expert in web portals like IBM WebSphere Portal and Liferay Portal. After that he jointed the Open Source department of
Westernacher Products & Services AG. Since that he specialized in Liferay and Alfresco consulting.

Daniel Pitzer, Liebherr-Werk Ehingen GmbH

Daniel Pitzer completed his International Business Studies at the School of International Business in Reutlingen, before joining Liebherr-Werk Ehingen in 2006. He is working since that in the Sales Department as Sales Manager, responsible for the UK and Ireland.

Tomek Lipski, Chief of Research & Development Unit at BlueSoft, Poland

Tomek Lipski is a Chief of Research & Development Unit at BlueSoft. R&D Unit is responsible for introducing and deploying bleeding edge technologies and solutions to BlueSoft's customers. Liferay user since 2006. Polyglot programmer, Open Source enthusiast and evangelist. Over fourteen years of commercial experience in IT, and nine years of experience working in integration, VAS and traditional IT areas for the biggest companies in Poland. Web programmer from the start - first real-life web applications created in 1997. Working at BlueSoft, Poland, since 2002; in 2009 established a Research & Development Unit at BlueSoft. In 2011, Tomek has designed  BlueSoft's first Open Source solutions - Aperte Reports and Aperte Workflow and coordinated their launch.

Johannes Frasch, IT Project Manager, Robert BOSCH GmbH

Johannes Frasch studied business informatics (Dipl. Wirt-Inf. (BA)) in Stuttgart and has a bachelor degree in business administration. Since 2006, he holds the position of IT project manager for web and ecommerce projects.

Stefan Hüttenrauch, IT Consultant, PRODYNA AG

Stefan Hüttenrauch studied IT Systems Engineering (Master of Science) at Hasso-Plattner-Institute, University Potsdam. After spending a year abroad in California, he is an IT Consultant and Software Engineer with PRODYNA AG since 2009 and consults, implements, and manages various Liferay projects.

Ruud Kluivers, Innovation Manager, Wolters Kluwer

Ruud Kluivers has 20+ years of experience in pan-European publishing industry. He supports businesses to get the most value out of their IT investments by focusing on innovation and is strong on vision and strategy without losing touch with reality. During his career he initiated and managed multiple online business implementation and change projects. He knows from experience operating at the intersection of business and technology is one of the most rewarding and exciting areas in organizations. Having managed portal projects with IBM, BEA (Oracle) and Liferay he is no stranger to portal technology.

Jose Lopez, Project Manager, Wolters Kluwer

Jose Lopez has 10+ years of experience in international business specializing in emerging technologies with extensive experience in business process optimization and product development leading initiatives bridging business and technology in the support of transformative organizational growth.

Maciej Hoch, Development Manager, Wolters Kluwer

Munwar Shariff, Chief Technology Officer, CIGNEX Datamatics

Munwar Shariff has served as the Chief Architect and manager of engineering teams for 19 years in the areas of business application software, Internet applications, and mobile commerce applications for customers in the United States, Japan, Germany, UK, Hong Kong, Malaysia and India. He is an expert in Content Management Systems (CMS). Since co-founding CIGNEX Datamatics in late 2000, he has successfully delivered more than 200 enterprise applications using various Open Source technologies. He has written a number of articles on Open Source CMS, is an experienced trainer and a frequent speaker at conferences related to this topic. Munwar earned his MS in Digital Electronics and Advanced Communications from REC Surathkal, India. He has authored four technical books on Open Source CMS.

Andreas Firnau, Senior Product Manager, Business Solutions, USU AG

Andreas Firnau has been working with USU AG as a Senior Product Manager for Business Solutions since 2008. In this role, he supports the portal business development and consults various Liferay projects. Before, he was IT systems manager in the telecommunications industry.

Dr. Gunnar Fuelle, Business Unit Manager, Business Solutions, USU AG

Dr. Gunnar Fuelle has been working with USU AG as a Business Unit Manager in the Business Solutions division since 2009. He is responsible for the portal and knowledge management business. Before, he was a line manager in and a consultant to the publishing industry.

Uwe Steixner, Chief Consultant, Business Solutions, USU AG

Uwe Steixner is Chief Consultant at USU AG and responsible for the business unit "Process & System Integration". In several large customer projects he combined portal technologies with BPM suites and Services provided on ESB technologies either from Open Source solutions or commercial solutions from IBM, Software AG or TIBCO.

Alistair Oldfield, Project Manager, Emeldi Technologies s.r.o.

Alistair Oldfield has been an Emeldi Project Manager for the past 3 years for both Emeldi customer projects and internal R&D. He is specialized in project management in both banking and telecommunication technical projects with and during his time with Emeldi, has been ultimately responsible and successfully overseen over 45 Man Years of project lifecycles.

 

Tobias Dietze, Head of Marketing, Die p.A.- GmbH

Tobias Dietze is Head of Marketing at DIEpA – an innovative and expanding company in the setor of temporary agency work. In his function he is responsible for business development and the company's position at the German market. He also holds primary responsibility for the introduction of "Disponentenarbeitsplatz" – which is one elementary building block in the growth strategy of DIEpA. Tobias has studied media technics at the University of Applied Sciences Mittweida.

Jürgen Weismüller, Senior IT-Consultant, PRODYNA AG

Jürgen Weismüller is a senior IT-Consultant and software architect at PRODYNA AG in Frankfurt, Germany. His work focuses general application architecture in the Java ecosystem. While doing this, he archieved expert knowledge in IT security, model-driven software development, web and portal technology. Started with obtaining deep backend know-how, he broadens his expertise to system architecture and frontend aspects. Jürgen holds a diploma in Information Science from the Technische Universität Darmstadt.

Dr. Kálmán Szabó, IT Director, Fundamenta-Lakáskassza Zrt.

Kálmán Szabó currently heads the IT division of Fundamenta-Lakáskassza Zrt., the market leader of the building society in Hungary. He has been responsible for IT strategy, operation and development since 1997; since then he has built up the IT department of the company. He initiated the integration of the different front end sales systems into Liferay platform in 2009. Kálmán holds a MSc. degree in Electronics Engineering from the Technical University of Budapest and a phD degree in Physics. He took part in the scientific research and education at Technical Universities of Budapest and in Karlsruhe/Germany. Thereafter Kálmán broadened his software experience as a senior developer in Germany.

Olaf Fricke, Java Architect/Developer, HanseMerkur Versicherungen

Olaf Fricke is a senior software developer at HanseMerkur Versicherungen. He has been working with Liferay since 2006. In that time, he has created and maintained various web sites both public and internal for HanseMerkur.

Petros Giakouvakis, Senior Consultant, Amplexor

Petros Giakouvakis has been a consultant in document management solutions for ten years using mostly Documentum, but moved his main focus to Liferay three years ago. After he had  studied and tested the capabilities of Liferay,  Amplexor added Liferay to its offering. Since then he has been the technical lead and main developer on two large Liferay projects: the website of the socialist union (http://www.abvv.be ) and the intranet of the province of Antwerp.

Prof. Dr. E.J.R. (Rob) Koper, Open University The Netherlands

Prof. dr. Rob Koper is the Dean of the Centre for Learning Sciences and Technologies (CELSTEC), the research and innovation institute of the Open University of the Netherlands. The Centre has a history of about 30 years and gained worldwide recognition as one of the top research institutes in the field. See celstec.org for more information. Rob Koper has published more then 200 scientific journal articles and books in the intersection of ICT and Learning Sciences.

Ales Rybak, Senior Developer, IBA CZ

Ales Rybak has been working in the role of the Portal specialist, Liferay senior developer and architect in IBA CZ, residing in Brno, Czech Republic for the last four years. He has been engaged with multiple commercial implementations, especially where the Liferay portal has been deployed, scaling from medium size to large implementations. Ales holds his Master's degree from the Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic where his major was Computer science. Recently he has taught the Enterprise Portal course in the Faculty of Informatics in the Masaryk University of Brno, Czech Republic.

Dimitri Tischenko, CTO, Proteon NL

Born in St Petersburg, Dimitri moved to The Netherlands in 1979. He holds a MSc in Computer Science from the Delft University of Technology. In 1995 he co-founded Proteon, originally a software development company (using NeXT's technologies like WebObjects). Within a short time, the focus of company became primarily on development and managed hosting for Internet applications. Dimitri is an experienced developer, sysadmin, consultant and project manager. Lately, his interest is mainly focused on creating and maintaining error-free configurations with complex components such as the Liferay Platform. He introduced Puppet, a modern configuration management tool, to Proteon and is now the so-called ‘Puppet master' at the company.

Axel Stollfuß, Consultant & Project Manager, avono AG

Axel Stollfuß has been working on Java Enterprise Applications as consultant and project manager for more than 10 years. At avono he is responsible for technology and projects.

Tomas Wilhelm, Senior Consultant, avono AG

Thomas Wilhelm has been a Senior Consultant in Java technology for 5 years focusing on frontend technologies, portal platforms and generally all kinds of internet applications.

Micha Kiener, edorasware

MICHA KIENER is responsible for Research and Innovation at mimacom ag, a company specialized in Java and Open Source Technology applying agile methods. He is initiator and main committer of the Open Source framework edoras and participating in the development of ICEfaces, an Ajax-framework based on JSF as well as Liferay, an Open Source portal solution. He is co-leading the Spring 3.1 release where the conversation management of edoras is going to be part of Spring core. After his diploma thesis in artificial intelligence, he focused on Java, especially in light-weight, model- and process-driven architecture and framework developing.

Event Snapshot
Date: Oct 18-19, 2011

Standard Rate:
€449 (ends Oct. 14)

Late/On-Site:
€549

Location:
Sheraton Offenbach Hotel

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If you have questions about the Liferay Europe Symposium or need help registering, please email Laila Jung-Brown.