Todd is a networking hacker who has researched, designed, and built numerous protocols, messaging-oriented middleware systems, and real-time data systems, done research for NASA, contributed to the IETF and IEEE, and co-founded two startups. He currently works for Kaazing as Chief Architect. @toddlmontgomery

Gil Tene is CTO and co-founder of Azul Systems. He has been involved with virtual machine technologies for the past 20 years and has been building Java technology-based products since 1995. Gil pioneered Azul's Continuously Concurrent Compacting Collector (C4), Java Virtualization, Elastic Memory, and various managed runtime and systems stack technologies that combine to deliver the industry's most scalable and robust Java platforms. In 2006 he was named one of the Top 50 Agenda Setters in the technology industry by Silicon.com. Prior to co-founding Azul, Gil held key technology positions at Nortel Networks, Shasta Networks and at Check Point Software Technologies, where he delivered several industry-leading traffic management solutions including the industry's first Firewall-1 based security appliance. He architected operating systems for Stratus Computer, clustering solutions at Qualix/Legato, and served as an officer in the Israeli Navy Computer R and D unit. Gil holds a BSEE from The Technion Israel Institute of Technology, and has been awarded 27 patents in computer-related technologies. @giltene

Michael Barker is a lead developer at LMAX Exchange and maintainer of the LMAX Disruptor (open source, high performance inter-thread messaging library). Intermingled with travelling to various countries around the world, Michael’s 10+ years of experience has been spent battling unnecessary complexity across a variety of industries (finance, telecoms, government) and in whatever technology that happens to have been hurled in his direction (Java/JavaEE, C++, .NET). He has been a sporadic contributor to a number of Open Source projects (GNU Classpath, JBoss, Mono, PostgreSQL). @mikeb2701

Tal Weiss is the CEO of Takipi - God Mode in Production Code. Tal has been designing scalable, real-time Java and C++ applications for the past 15 years. Previously, Tal was co-founder and CEO at VisualTao which was acquired by Autodesk (ADSK Inc.) in 2009. Following the acquisition Tal served as the director of the AutoCAD Web and Mobile product line used by 12 million professional users worldwide. Prior to founding VisualTao Tal worked as a software architect at IAI Space Industries focusing on distributed, real-time satellite tracking and control systems. He still enjoys analyzing a good core dump and instrumenting Java code. In his free time Tal plays Jazz drums. @weisstal