Speakers – ChurConf

Event Speakers

With over 25 years of hands-on Java development experience, Rob is a passionate software engineer focused on building high-performance, developer-friendly tools for the JVM ecosystem. He is the creator and co-maintainer of the Avaje libraries and Ebean ORM, used by developers worldwide to streamline backend development and improve application performance. He is also actively involved in the local tech community as a co-organiser of the Auckland JVM User Group, where I help foster knowledge sharing and discussion among developers passionate about Java and the broader JVM landscape. He thrives on simplicity in design, pragmatic solutions, and writing libraries that developers actually enjoy using.

Phillip Kruger

Quarkus Core contributor

Phillip Kruger

Quarkus Core contributor

Phillip Kruger is a Principal Software Engineer at Red Hat and a core contributor to the Quarkus project. He leads the development of key features like the Quarkus Dev UI, MicroProfile GraphQL, and OpenAPI support, and is the creator of tools like mvnpm and the Chappie AI assistant in Quarkus. Phillip is passionate about developer experience, cloud-native Java, and building intelligent tooling that makes developers more productive.

Ivar Grimstad

Jakarta EE Developer Advocate

Ivar Grimstad

Jakarta EE Developer Advocate

Ivar Grimstad is the Jakarta EE Developer Advocate at Eclipse Foundation. He is a Java Champion and JUG Leader based in Sweden. Besides advocating for the Jakarta EE technologies, Ivar contributes to the Jakarta EE specifications and is the PMC Lead for Eclipse Enterprise for Java (EE4J). He is also one of the specification leads for Jakarta MVC and represents Eclipse Foundation on the JCP Executive Committee. Ivar is also involved in various other open-source projects and communities. He is a frequent speaker at International developer conferences.

Tom Hombergs

Principal Developer at Atlassian

Tom Hombergs

Principal Developer at Atlassian

Tom is a software engineer, author, and simplicity nerd. Complexity is his kryptonite, so he works hard to break complex things down into simple pieces that he can understand. He passionately simplifies code as well as text, creating articles, books, and developer documentation that are a joy to read. Tom currently works as a Principal Developer at Atlassian in Sydney, Australia, where he is responsible for building services for data backup and recovery.

Martijn Verburg

Java Engineering Group at Microsoft

Martijn Verburg

Java Engineering Group at Microsoft

Principal Group SWE Manager (Java, Python, Go) @ Microsoft, former CEO of jClarity (acquired by Microsoft), Speaker, Author etc, aka "The Diabolical Developer"

Mihaela Gheorghe-Roman

Software architect

Mihaela Gheorghe-Roman

Software architect

Mihaela is a Software Architect at Systematic, Romania. Ph.D in artificial neural network algorithms, Assistant Professor at the University of Cybernetics and Informatics in Bucharest, she is a dedicated lead developer and architect who enjoys sharing her knowledge. In her professional career, spanning over 13+ years, she worked for telecom and defence domains with a focus on Java, Spring Boot, C, C#, Scala and Angular. Apart from her passion for programming, she loves parrots, she is enthusiastic about traveling the world and doing a lot of sports, from running at marathons, martial arts and to different aerobic trainings.

Baruch Sadogursky

Head of DevRel at TuxCare

Baruch Sadogursky

Head of DevRel at TuxCare

Baruch Sadogursky (@jbaruch) did Java before it had generics, DevOps before there was Docker, and DevRel before it had a name. He started DevRel at JFrog when it was ten people and took it all the way to a successful $6B IPO by helping engineers solve problems. Now, Baruch keeps helping engineers solve problems, but also helps companies help engineers solve problems. He is a co-author of the "Liquid Software" and "DevOps Tools for Java Developers" books, Java Champion and CNCF Ambassador alumni, serves on multiple conference program committees, and regularly speaks at numerous most prestigious industry conferences, such as DevNexus, DevOpsDays, Voxxed Days, Devoxx, DevRelCon, Kubecon and QCon. Today, he's taking care of developers at TuxCare.

Martin Toshev

Java consultant

Martin Toshev

Java consultant

With two decades of software development Martin is a solution architect and consultant and one of the leads of the Bulgarian Java User group where he is one of the organizers of the jPrime Java conference that attracts around 1200 developers and more than 30 sponsoring companies each year . For more than a decade he has been an international speaker on conferences like JavaZone, Oracle CodeOne, Devoxx, JavaLand, FOSDEM and a number of others.

Michael Barker

Software consultant

Michael Barker

Software consultant

Michael Barker is an independent software consultant who spends the vast majority of his time working on Aeron, which a platform for high performance messaging, persistence and clustered applications. Prior to his work on Aeron, he spent over 10 years working at LMAX implementing many elements of their broker, exchange and reliable messaging infrastructure.

Ivan Yonkov

Java consultant

Ivan Yonkov

Java consultant

With over a decade of active participation in the Bulgarian tech scene, Ivan is a software developer, educator, and speaker passionate about sharing knowledge and building impactful software. Throughout the years, he has enjoyed contributing to the growth of various communities, conferences, and educational centers. He previously served as Director of Training and Education at SoftUni, the largest educational center in the Balkans. In addition to being a regular speaker at conferences such as jPrime, jProfessionals, OpenFest, Java2Days, jsTalks, and jsExperts, Ivan leads a software development services company focused on delivering robust solutions using Java.

Visionary Speakers