Since its inception, ScotSoft has hosted an enormous variety of local and international speakers from organisations such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Cisco, CGI and more.
The Young Software Engineer Awards have featured After Dinner speakers from comedians like Kevin Bridges, to athletes like Sir Chris Hoy, to motivational speakers like SAS: Who Dares Wins’ Colin Maclachlan, to “People Hacker” Jenny Radcliffe.
Check out our speakers below as the 2024 lineup starts to take shape.
Keynote Speakers
Professor Joe Little
Joe Little is currently an Honorary Professor at the University of Stirling and Senior Advisor to the Chief futurist at Deloitte.
He has 37 years of industry experience at BP, BAe (Space and Comms) and beyond. His primary focus in the last decade and half has been researching emerging technology, educating executives and business leaders on their likely impact and disruption.
He a certified Futurist with the Institute For The Future, accepted into the Association of Professional Futurists in 2020, and recently helped author a report on the Future of Space for Deloitte NExT Futures team.
Lena Smart
An accomplished security professional with over 25 years of comprehensive experience in security, Lena is Chief Information Security Officer at MongoDB.
Her career has been built on a dedication to fostering trust with customers, driving strategic innovation and ensuring exemplary governance. She has ensured compliance and ethical standards across various industry verticals including Finance, FinTech, Utilities and Tech.
Lena is passionate about leveraging my experience to guide companies toward a manageable and sustainable security culture. I seek Board positions where I can contribute meaningfully to strategic decision-making, governance and corporate responsibility.
Speakers
Eyad Elyan
Professor of Machine Learning and Computer Vision
Eyad is a renowned researcher in Machine Learning and AI and leads Robert Gordon University’s Interactive Machine Vision research Group.
He has pioneered the development of AI-driven solutions across different domains and helped businesses to intelligently transform existing practices. Following his completion of a PhD in 3D modeling and human face recognition at the University of Bradford, he joined Robert Gordon University School of Computing as a lecturer in 2009. He then progressed to be a Senior Lecturer in 2015 and a Reader in 2018.
In 2020, he was promoted to the rank of full Professor in Machine Learning and Computer Vision. His research is focused on applied computer vision, deep learning, and machine learning. He collaborates extensively with various industries across Scotland, actively contributing to the creation of state-of-the-art AI solutions to optimise and digitally transform their operations. With a track record encompassing over 100 publications in AI and Machine Learning, supervision of 12 successful PhD completions, and leadership on more than 30 innovative industry projects, he was recognised with the Knowledge Transfer Partnership Academic of the Year award in 2023 and as a finalist for the 2024 Scottish Knowledge Exchange Award.
James Allman Talbot
Head of Incident Response and Threat Intelligence
James Allman-Talbot is Head of Incident Response and Threat Intelligence at Quorum Cyber.
James has over 14 years of experience working in cyber security, and has worked in a variety of industries including aerospace and defence, law enforcement, and professional services. Over the years he has built and developed incident response and threat intelligence capabilities for government bodies and multi-national organisations, and has worked closely with board level executives during incidents to advise on recovery and cyber risk management.
