Tech Talks Central

Pawel Sawicz is the API Developer and Developer Evangelist at JustGiving, a global social platform for giving, consisting of more than 24 million users. He talks about their participation in the Athens Battlehack 2015, which does have as main theme the creation of an app for social good. Since he was born and raised in Poland, is now working in the UK and travelling a lot, he lists the similarities and differences of the startup ecosystems. We also talk about social entrepreneurship and how companies can make an impact in our lives and our society. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sawiczpawel and read his blog on .NET technical issues at http://pawel.sawicz.eu/. Interviewed by Sakis Triantafyllakis for Tech Talks Central.

Robin Johnson shares with us some interesting facts about Sendgrid, their amazing services and APIs and why they’re taking part at the Athens Battlehack 2015. He talks about the hackathons he’s taken part in and what his role, as a Developer Evangelist, encloses. We ask him about the core skills a developer should possess and he reveals some nice insights from his own experience. Last but not least we talk about which programming languages and frameworks are now hot or will be in the next years. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/rbin. Interviewed by Sakis Triantafyllakis for Tech Talks Central.

Hamilton Chapman talks about Pusher, what services it offers through its APIs and why they’re taking part at the Athens Battlehack 2015. We ask him about real time web technologies, where we find them and what we can hope to see in the future. Will it be only notifications, chat and dashboards, as we’ve seen most apps use it up to now, or can we expect to see more interesting instances appearing in IoT, health and other fields that will start to really impact our lives. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/hamchapman. Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech Talks Central.

Manolis Nikiforakis and his team (Dimitris Karagiannis and Thanasis Daglis) set out to create a multiplayer reactive game, using mostly Arduinos and Particle (Spark) Cores, where the losers’ money would automatically be donated to charity! Well, that was the main idea, but -unfortunately- time was not enough for them to fully implement it during the 24-hour duration of BattleHack. Nevertheless, Manolis (a seasoned researcher and developer with 12+ years of experience), confessed to us that he loves taking part in hackathons… just for the fun of it. And, surely enough, we also talked a lot about the opportunities arising all the time, as technology evolves, for example in the relatively new field of IoT. Interviewed by Yannis Rizopoulos for Tech Talks Central.

As the title suggests it’s all about taking care of the Developer Community, PayPal and Braintree have created, and Alberto Lopez Martin sure has the way to get everyone motivated. A very lively Spaniard, he himself is an experienced developer and understands the pains and gains. He talks about BattleHack, as a member of the team for the past year; what it strives to accomplish and which are the best apps he has seen being created up to now. He looks forward to joining the next BattleHack in Tokyo and honestly who wouldn’t be… Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/albertuslm. Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech Talks Central.

Fotos Georgiadis and his team (Dimitris Zorbas, Giannis Hatziioannidis, Javie Gonel) tried to find a viable solution, during BattleHack 2015 in Athens, to a very big problem, nowadays in Europe, mainly in Greece and Spain, but in other countries as well: the soaring unemployment amongst young people. Yet, many of them play and excel in trivia games. What if there was a mobile app that could match their skills and interests to prospective employees and vacant positions? Their idea proved to be bright enough to secure the 2nd place in the competition for them! Not bad. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/gfotos. Interviewed by Yannis Rizopoulos for Tech Talks Central.

John Lunn, the main evangelist for the BattleHack series of events, has become a sort of legend. The great marketing efforts of Braintree_dev has contributed to this but also, his years of expertise in development and the genuine admiration of the developers that attend the event in every city. During the Athens event, held in May of 2015, John told us what BattleHack aims to achieve; whether PayPal is looking to hire developers through the event and whether it has been successful all these years. Of course we did ask him about PayPal spinning off eBay and what they’re planning with their public offering. He talks about mobile payments and developers disrupting the Banking system with all these new fintech startups. Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech talks Central.

Dr. Aristotelis Chatziioannou, Electrical & Computer Engineer, Dr. Lefteris Pilalis, Biochemist and Dr. Ioannis Valavanis, Computer Engineer, all with a degree in Bioinformatics present http://e-nios.com, a spin-off they created from the National Hellenic Research Foundation. They talk about the solutions e-nios offers for analysing and interpreting data derived from modern high throughput Genomics technologies and the opportunities that open up for them in the future. They mention what it means to be a researcher and a startup founder; what kind of support they have received through mentoring and funding; whether they would prefer to be in some other country outside Greece and how they see their startup growing. They touch on the subject of data ethics and the future of medicine and patient care due to supporting technologies like theirs. Follow them on http://twitter.com/e_nios or sign up on their newsletter http://eepurl.com/bn1c8j. Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech Talks Central.

Shock, happiness, ecstasy, pure adrenaline and tiredness – those were the feelings moments after the announcement of the coveted victory… Shai Mishali, the global winner of BattleHack Competition Finals (https://2014.battlehack.org) in November 2014 (along with Pavel Kaminsky, as representatives of vibrant start-up city Tel Aviv, where they had won in the local competition), remembers the hot atmosphere, the VIP treatment and the unique experience of holding the Axe of Victory at San Jose, CA. He insists that he will take part again in the competition and urges every serious developer to join. Find him on Twitter under twitter.com/freak4pc. Interviewed by Yannis Rizopoulos for Tech Talks Central.

One of the greatest problems that network operators face in a daily basis, is how to keep their customers satisfied, in order to minimize churn. So, any serious proposal and solution on how to succeed in this endless battle, via controlling, configuring and testing a network, deserves attention. Paul Carter, president and CEO of Global Wireless Solutions, a data collection company specializing on information and competitive benchmarking, describes what it takes for the networks to ensure that their customers can use their mobile phones wherever they live, regardless of the device used, and also insists that “the third Internet wave is a big change for all of us”. Interviewed by Sakis Triantafyllakis for Tech Talks Central.