Monday, October 18, 2010

I'm Hosting The Financial Track at qCon London 2011

As astute and long-term readers would no doubt be aware, I presented on RESTful Approaches to Financial Systems Integration at qCon London 2009 in the Financial Technology track. Then qCon London 2010 came, and I attended, and I was a little bit frustrated that in the city of the world most known for innovation in Financial Technology, there was no Financial Technology track.

Well, the masses have spoken. qCon London 2011 will have a Financial Technology track.

Even more humbling for me, I've been recommended as the host of the track, and I've accepted. I will be the Finance War Stories track host for qCon 2011.

I plan on making sure that this track follows on from the 2009 track, which was one of the highest rated and most oversubscribed tracks in the whole conference. Moreover, I plan on making sure that the track presentations are approachable and interesting for developers from finance as well as from people trying to learn from the financial technology industry.

I've long been of the opinion that the rest of the world, particularly web-scale industries, have a lot to teach the relatively insular community of financial technologists. I am also of the opinion that many problems people outside finance face are being reinvented by people who aren't familiar with the technologies, techniques, and architectures that have been second nature to financial industry professionals for years. I hope that we can continue breaking down the boundaries between financial technology professionals and the industry at large.

If you're interested in giving a talk, please feel free to contact me: kirk at opengamma dot com or a comment on this blog post is the best way to to the head of the list. In addition, if there's someone you really want to see presenting in this track, or something you want to see a talk about, please don't hesitate to contact me as well.

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