Speakers

Aleksandra Ignatoski is COO of Aestus and of Parra, a business-management app for micro and small companies. Growth, product, accounting at scale - she's done the messy middle of all three.

Croatian Association of Security Managers, Deputy President
SpotMe/Onomi, Chief Security and Trust Officer

Alessandro is a software engineer who loves immersing himself in the world of technology. Between coding sessions, he enjoys creating software solutions and discovering how to make projects more efficient, always keeping an eye on the DevOps world. When he's not in front of the computer, you can find him exploring new places and flavors.

Ana is an Agile and DevOps Consultant and Azure DevOps specialist with more than 20 years of experience in professional SW development. She believes that the right combination of agile practices and integrated tools helps teams achieve continuous value delivery for their customers.
Ana frequently speaks at various local and international industry conferences and regularly delivers training workshops. She has been awarded by Microsoft as MVP for Developer Technologies, is a licensed Professional Scrum Trainer (PST) at Scrum.org, and holds several Microsoft development and Scrum certifications.

2026: Speaker at the Unlock Rab and Expo Gamers Opatija conferences.

2025: Speaker at the Unlock Rijeka conference.

2024: Author of the article "New Regulations on Exercising the Right to Use Musical Performances on the Internet", published in Novi informator.

2023: Presenter on "Press publishers' related right as a solution for the press publishing industry in the digital environment" at an International Scientific Conference.

2022 & 2023: Author and facilitator of the workshops "Intellectual Property Protection – Tips & Tricks".

2022: Speaker at the RiDOC 2022 conference, presenting on "Press Publishers’ Right in Croatia".

2022: Presenter of "Survival of the press publishing industry in a digital environment: Legal analysis of the EU press publishers related right in comparison with the Australian and USA" at a doctoral conference in Ljubljana.

2021: Author of the article "Analysis of the Croatian Normative Framework and Practice Regarding Pre-trial Detention in Psychiatric Institutions", published in Novi informator.

2020: Author of the article "The New Patent Act – A Review of Recent Amendments", published in Novi informator.

2014: Co-author of the academic paper "Income of Natural Persons Generated in Virtual Worlds and the Theoretical Framework of Income Taxation", published in the Collection of Co-authored Papers.

Software developer based in Belgrade, Serbia, specializing in enterprise systems and modern SAP architectures. Currently at EPAM Systems, I focus on SAP BTP, ABAP, and SAP HANA, building scalable backend integrations and cloud-native solutions. Before EPAM, I engineered software across global tech stacks for brands like NIKE, Ericsson, and Awin.
When I’m not inside an enterprise codebase, I’m usually exploring the intersection of modern cloud architecture and system security.

Balazs Horvath has spent thirteen years on both sides of software projects, first implementing Microsoft transformations at KPMG and HCL, now running a Microsoft Partner Company he built. As Founder of VisualLabs, serving clients across the UK, US and Europe, he works with CFOs and COOs on the decisions that make technology investments actually change how a business performs, increasingly on where AI hype turns into AI value.

Boris Masnec is Chief Software Architect at Repsly, where he works across software architecture, engineering practices, infrastructure, and AI initiatives.

He has spent more than a decade building and evolving Repsly's B2B SaaS platform, from hands-on development and engineering management to long-term architecture and technical governance.

In recent years, he has increasingly focused on AI-assisted software development and AI product architecture. He led hands-on experimentation with agentic development and helped turn the lessons from building a production product with coding agents into engineering practices now being introduced across the wider development organization.

Catalin Gheorghiu is a solution architect from Timisoara Romania. The current interests are in the area of (I)IoT, industrial mobile and cloud solutions. In addition to addressing the software development and architecture, is a trainer and consultant. In his spare time is member of the technical community, contributing with articles and blogs (signed MrSmersh), presentations to several user groups/meetups (also is RONUA Timisoara user group leader), and lecturing all over Romania and abroad.
Since 2011, every year he was awarded the Microsoft MVP Award. Is also a current holder of the Intel Software Innovator Award. Is a current Microsoft Certified Trainer.

Programira još od osnovne škole, kada se sve vrtjelo oko QBasica. Prije svega je backend developer, ali mu nijedna tehnologija nije strana. Nakon dugogodišnjeg rada u korporaciji s enterprise klijentima, danas vodi vlastite tvrtke i gradi cloud platformu za izdavanje računa, fiskalizaciju, računovodstvo i upravljanje poslovanjem koju svakodnevno koriste desetci tisuća hrvatskih tvrtki. Osim programiranja, infrastrukturu drži pod nadzorom, a alate vezane uz umjetnu inteligenciju uspješno implementira i koristi na svakom životnom i poslovnom koraku.
Redovito predaje na regionalnim konferencijama o Azureu, sigurnosti i IoT-u, a u slobodno vrijeme povezuje sve što se povezati može.

For many years Damir is a passionate programmer and a Microsoft SQL Server developer (ver. 2000+).
He is a certificated Microsoft professional on various technologies.
He leads the Croatian SQL Server User Group and he introduced SQL Saturday Event in Croatia. He organizes various Data Platform events in Croatia.
Damir speaks on various community events, conferences and user groups.
When free he blogs about SQL @ https://blog.matesic.info.

https://damirdobric.me

I am an electrical engineer turned programmer. I love new technologies, smart homes and renewable energy as well as Science Fiction and fantasy and board games. I love making quizzes for conventions and playing board game tournaments or just attending a game day.
Also love badminton and everything related to it.

An experienced software developer, from .NET backend, Angular and React frontend, to cloud and mobile. Loves working in large teams and knowledge sharing with his colleagues, mentoring students and doing both internal and conference talks. Loves units tests, readable code and interesting question at pub quizzes, even if he doesn't know the answer. Hates the trend of mentioning the Terminator in every discussion about AI.

When I was growing up, I wanted to become a refuse truck driver, but then Microsoft Remote Desktop Services and Citrix XenApp sparked my interest, before. Today I’m tech-savvy and focused on Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, Microsoft 365, Entra/Azure AD.

I am a proud co-founder and inspiring leader of Syskit in a mission to change the way big enterprises manage and control Microsoft 365. Syskit pushes boundaries to continually bring new strategies into Microsoft 365 investment. I am a Microsoft MVP in Office 365 and SharePoint, which makes me one of the few with expertise in far apart things, like SharePoint and Remote Desktop Services. I am active a lot on LinkedIn as well as my private blog https://www.lemonbits.com/. I am the organizer of the MS Community in Croatia and CollabDays Zagreb in-person event dedicated to Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, Copilot, Azure, and Power Platform.

Hrvoje Kusulja, Master of IT, also Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for Office and Azure areas and Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) for 6+ years. Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer (COO) of global Nodefusion organization which is Microsoft Gold and CSP Direct partner. Specialist and Team lead of IT projects, system integration and development using Microsoft technologies, for on-premises, cloud, and hybrid. More than 15 years of experience in the IT field balancing IT system and Dev operations, working with the latest Microsoft technologies. Has, multiple certifications from IBM Storage, Lenovo servers, Cisco and mainly Microsoft.

Igor Pavlekovic is Principal Technical Consultant and Board Member at Nephos, where he helps international customers and Microsoft partners secure identities, data and, more and more, AI agents across the Microsoft cloud. Before Nephos, he spent nine years at Microsoft. His roles there included Cloud Solution Architect for Security, Compliance and Identity, working with partners from 32 countries in Central and Eastern Europe, and Account Technology Strategist for enterprise customers. Earlier, he was CTO of the Algebra education group and a trainer and lecturer on Microsoft technologies. A Microsoft Certified Trainer since 2006 and a former Microsoft MVP for Office 365, he still spends much of his time in the classroom, delivering security workshops for partners and enterprise teams across Europe.

Ivan is Co-Founder and CEO at Unitfly - company that successfully helps companies improve business as a long-term trusted advisor, who analyze and understand the business, deliver the highest quality software solutions, provide superior customer service, and continuously ideate and innovate. There are four pillars that Unitfly cares about: People, Business, Technology, and Innovation. Before Unitfly, Ivan has worked as Cloud Solutions Program Manager/Technology Evangelist, Software Developer, and as a student led team of Microsoft Student Partners. Interested in both technology and business, he is focused on mapping technology solutions to customer’s business needs. Ivan is US Department of State's alumni, YTILI 2019 Fellow, as well as recognized as 30-under-30 by Croatian business magazine Lider in 2020.

Ivan is Co-Founder and CTO of BillKO, a financial OS for small and medium enterprises. He started the company to fix the paperwork that quietly drains businesses, and today he leads its engineering team and product direction. Ivan is a hands-on technologist who cares about clean architecture, sustainable teams and software that earns its users' trust one invoice at a time.

Josip Rosandić je Data Engineer Specialist u tvrtki Span. Ima oko četiri godine iskustva u izgradnji data platformi koristeći Databricks, Azure, Delta Lake i Unity Catalog. Njegov se rad bazira na temeljima o kojima ovise analitika i AI, odnosno na oblikovanje obrazaca za integraciju podataka, semantičkih modela i načina isporuke te dijeljenja podataka unutar okvira ali i van data platformi.

Welcome to my short bio! Here you can find a guy who recently made the jump from the army to - let’s just say – a less stressful life. Eleven years in the armed forces, with a general specialization in IT and the latest years in cybersecurity, gave me the ticket to my current position in Performance Technologies S.A., as an Offensive Security Team Leader. In this role, I occupy myself with penetration tests, security assessments and consulting services. Moreover, I love sharing knowledge, so I also teach cybersecurity topics in New York College. Finally, in all the above let’s add the effort to get my PhD in Cybersecurity and all you have left is 6 hours of sleep!!!

'm Kristian Lovey, a Master's student in Computer Engineering at FER, University of Zagreb, and a Junior Technical Consultant at Nephos, where I work on Azure and agentic AI. I build solutions with Azure OpenAI and Azure AI Foundry.

Kris is a Growth & Partnership Lead specializing in AI security and blockchain ecosystems, with 20+ years across financial systems, startups, and enterprise partnerships. At Models Create, Kris leads go-to-market for an AI Agent Security & Assurance offering, helping enterprises move from experimental agentic AI deployments to systems they can actually govern and defend — drawing on frameworks like the EU AI Act, OWASP Agentic Top 10, and NIST AI RMF, and proof points from securing production AI systems at global enterprises including Pfizer.
Kris is also a prominent voice in the Cardano ecosystem, sitting on the Cardano Constitutional Committee and Budget Committee, and advising across programs with Cardano Foundation, Alpha Growth Prime, and Intersect — bringing a governance-first lens to emerging technology from both the AI and blockchain worlds.

Lucija Šikić je inženjerka za istraživanje i razvoj, specijalizirana za umjetnu inteligenciju i strojno učenje. Ima doktorat iz računarstva te više od osam godina iskustva u industriji i akademskoj zajednici.
Njezin rad obuhvaća sve faze razvoja inteligentnih sustava, od razumijevanja poslovnih potreba i pripreme podataka do implementacije i kontinuiranog unaprjeđenja. Tijekom karijere bavila se složenim problemima iz područja računalnog vida, razumijevanja dokumenata, optimizacije odlučivanja i konverzacijske umjetne inteligencije.
Posebno je usmjerena na povezivanje znanstvenih istraživanja s praktičnom poslovnom primjenom. Cilj joj je razvijati pouzdana, skalabilna i sigurna rješenja koja donose mjerljivu poslovnu vrijednost.

Luka Gospodnetic is a technology architect and software engineer with over 20 years of experience across industries including data centers, telecommunications, banking, retail, logistics, gaming, and a few others along the way. His career has taken him through software development, solution architecture, technical leadership, and management, with a focus on designing and building complex systems and occasionally wondering why he didn't stick to simpler ones. Throughout his career, he has worked with organizations such as Fleet Data Centers, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Rabobank Group, UniCredit Group, and Deutsche Telekom.

His work with Fleet Data Centers focuses on technology architecture for 200 MW hyperscale data center campuses, spanning compute infrastructure, networking, industrial automation, cybersecurity, and telemetry. A key part of his work involves bringing together IT and operational technology (OT) to create reliable, integrated infrastructure systems, which tends to be considerably easier on architecture diagrams than in real life.

Previously, his work with AWS focused on Data Center Design Engineering, developing software and automation solutions for hyperscale infrastructure, including power systems supporting AWS server racks.
Outside of work, Luka enjoys reading, cycling, rock climbing, alpinism, and mountaineering, occasionally getting injured along the way.

Founder of MovementNow, a Zagreb-based company that solves complex technology problems for multinational clients. 16+ years of experience with clients in automotive, financial services, pharma, logistics, manufacturing and agriculture, on problems that cut across systems, teams and markets.

Working with Microsoft technologies since 2010, backed by multiple certifications across solution architecture, AI engineering, agentic AI, DevOps and AI transformation leadership. Currently focused on using AI to build AI into the systems companies already run, which changes both delivery speed and what it takes to keep those systems reliable.

Microsoft Certified Trainer, lecturer at Algebra and SSBM Geneva, and regular speaker at regional technology conferences.

Marko Lohert is a senior software developer with 20+ years of professional experience. He has received Zagreb County ZTK Annual award for results achieved in programming and robotics. During his career Marko has worked on web and desktop applications using C# and C++. He has used different SQL databases (IBM DB2, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server), and a number of open source tools. Marko has presented at a number of conferences in Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Also, he has talked at meetups in Austria, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. In Span, where he is employed, Marko has worked on several international projects. In his free time, he volunteers teaching children programming, electronics (Arduino), and robotics.

Melissa Pruijn pushes for technology that works with humans, instead of against them. With a BSc in Psychology and Technology from Eindhoven University of Technology and an MSc in New Media Design (Cum Laude) from Tilburg University, her work is rooted in Human-Computer Interaction and cognitive design principles. Today, as Product Lead in AI at Bravx, she translates that understanding into practice, turning the technical potential of Copilot Studio into intuitive experiences that people naturally trust and adopt.

I am a Junior Technical Consultant at Nephos, where I design and deliver AI and cloud training for enterprise clients across Azure and Google Cloud. I have built multi-agent systems using Azure OpenAI and MCP, and worked on agentic data pipelines for real-world scientific and enterprise projects. I am currently completing an MSc in Biomedical Engineering at FER Zagreb. My work sits at the intersection of practical AI engineering and making these systems safe and observable in production environments.

12x Microsoft Azure MVP . Founder of the Polish Microsoft Azure User Group. Cloud Lead and Azure Lead Architect working with enterprises and gov also building Dynamics 365 Managed Environments for large business. Experienced in regulated envs like Banking and Insurance.

Oana Stroe is a Design Lead based in Barcelona, with more than 10 years of experience across product design, UX, strategy and leadership. She leads the design function at Hubtype, where she sets the design strategy, shapes product direction, and manages and mentors a team of designers. Her work sits where design, product and technology meet, with a particular focus on how designers and engineers can work together to build the right products.

Before Hubtype, she helped pioneer natural-language and AI-powered search at Dow Jones. Earlier, she spent five years as a founder, taking her fashion brand to New York, London and Copenhagen. She co-organises Ladies That UX Barcelona, mentors designers, and runs workshops.

Ognjen Bajic is a DevOps Consultant and Professional Scrum Trainer with over 20 years of experience in professional software development. Specializing in Microsoft ALM/DevOps tools, he has been working with Team Foundation Server (TFS) and later with Azure DevOps since 2004.
Ognjen helps teams and organizations adopt agile tools and practices, automate and optimize their development processes and achieve excellence in continuous delivery and DevOps.  In his work with teams, focusing on all three aspects of DevOps, people, processes and tools, he guides them on their journey to become successful professional development teams.
Ognjen has been speaking extensively about his experiences at various local and international conferences. He has been awarded by Microsoft as an MVP (Most Valuable Professional) for Visual Studio and Development Technologies annually since 2006. He also holds a number of Microsoft development, project management and Scrum certifications.  

Peter Hricak is currently steering the digital ship at Lucasfilm and Industrial Light & Magic. He has become a leader in IT, responsible for planning, management, and maintenance of mission-critical infrastructure for a diverse range of global organizations. Recognized for his extensive depth of technical knowledge, Peter ensures that the Force is always with the company's digital security.

Ratko is a senior software architect with more than 20 years of professional work in research, design and developing business systems, mostly on Microsoft platform. Areas of expertise include communication systems, ERP and UX products based on Cloud computing and related architecture patterns (microservices, SPAs, serverless, IoT). Also, in position of a mentor and a tech lead. In spare time, giving lectures at regional IT conferences.

I’m a software developer and lifelong learner with a decade in the Android ecosystem who enjoys turning complex ideas into practical solutions. I like making reliable products while keeping things simple and approachable. When I’m not coding, I’m reading, tinkering with small projects, and enjoying time outdoors. I’m excited to share what I’ve learned and to learn from others in the room.

Tomica is Microsoft MVP (currently) for Cloud and Datacenter Management from Croatia. You can find him presenting at various local and regional conferences, user group meetings or other events. In addition, he is also a Microsoft Certified Trainer and holder of many Microsoft certificates. He is fully engaged with Microsoft products and technologies, and mostly interested in products that are yet to be released.

With more than 10 years of experience in IT infrastructure, identity, and security, Tomislav Fučkar specializes in designing, managing, and securing enterprise Microsoft environments, with a strong focus on Active Directory, Microsoft Entra ID, Microsoft 365, hybrid identity, and Windows infrastructure.

His expertise spans identity and access management, Active Directory administration and hardening, hybrid identity integration, Conditional Access, MFA, Group Policy, PKI, Windows Server, virtualization, and Microsoft cloud technologies. He is particularly passionate about identity security, Zero Trust architecture, and modern Microsoft security practices.

Tomislav is a proactive and self-motivated professional focused on delivering reliable and secure solutions while continuously improving systems through automation, standardization, and best practices.

Beyond his engineering work, Tomislav actively contributes to the IT community as a speaker at conferences and events including CollabDays, KulenDayz, NT Konferenca, NetWork BiH, Advanced Technology Days, and MS Community BiH. He is also a trainer at Algebra Bernays University, where he educates and mentors future IT professionals.

Tomislav holds multiple Microsoft and security certifications, including Microsoft identity and security certifications and CEH. He continuously expands his technical and cybersecurity knowledge, with a particular interest in the evolving role of identity in modern security architectures.

His goal is to help organizations build secure, resilient, and modern identity-driven infrastructures while bridging traditional systems administration with modern cybersecurity practices.

Vjeran Bušelić holds a Ph.D. in Information and Communication Sciences after successful transformation from a 30-year IT career.
Started in 1981 as a Software Developer, Systems Engineer, Project Manager, GIS Pioneer, and in 1997 became Technical Sales in the newly opened office of Microsoft Croatia. Where learned how to motivate people for brand new technology adoption.
In 2010 started teaching at Algebra, TVZ, VERN, VSITE, FOI, Effecus, mostly non-technical courses, promoting Generic Competences, building students' employability in areas of Information Literacy and Critical Thinking, Soft Skills, Marketing, Project Management, and Digital Economy.
Upon the appearance of Generative AI, adopted most of the courses using and teaching this brand-new personal tutor tool. In 2025 wrote a personal book, “In Search of Knowledge: Reskilling for Generative AI”, and now teaching individuals how to teach themselves to be taught by Generative AI. In any given/chosen area.

I'm a CTO / Co-Founder of PROTOTYP, a product development agency from Osijek.

Currently working as a system architect focused on TypeScript, node.js & React projects.

And I like beer & kulen, regardless of the order 🙂

Yael Daihes is an AI leader and ML scientist with a foundation in cybersecurity, built over eight years in the Israeli defense forces. She went on to lead AI R&D initiatives in the private sector — including at companies that were later acquired — and advises companies across industries on transforming their core logic and algorithms with AI. That path led her to found Lumina: a new kind of social platform for women's health, where community, search, and real insights actually work. Live in production, Lumina answers women's health questions from the collective lived experience of thousands of women — and when an answer doesn't exist yet, it connects women on the same path so they can discover it together.

Software architect and full-stack developer of large-scale, enterprise systems. Loves finding as-simple-as-possible solutions for complex problems, with value for users and maintainability in mind.