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10 minutes
Private Conversations

Meri is an experienced CTO and leader of technology organisations. They particularly enjoy helping others to level up as technical leaders and managers of organisations, and work as a CTO coach and tech advisor to various companies in this capacity through micro-consultancy ChromeRose. They have led teams ranging in size from 30 to 300, in a range of organisations from Procter & Gamble, to the Government Digital Service, award-winning online print company MOO, mobile-first challenger bank Monzo and patient-inspired AI-driven rare disease treatment discovery company Healx, as well as Europe’s leading spend management company Pleo. A published author and international speaker, they are the chair of the LeadDev conference, and a tech advisor for Kindred Capital. Together with their wife Elly, they run micro-charity One Goes Up to help young women & enby folks pursue STEM education & careers, and sponsor Arts Scholarships at the University of Bath.

Quasar is a Quantitative Developer at CME Group in London, writing production-grade C++ and Rust. Before CME he was a Quantitative Engineer at Goldman Sachs, and before that spent almost eight years at Credit Suisse building pricing and analytics for bonds, credit default swaps and structured credit products in C++ and F#. He began his career as a software developer in fintech, then moved into risk and quant work, passing CFA Levels 1 and 2 along the way. He shares practical modern C++ techniques with his 11,000 LinkedIn followers and is known for generously helping people who are starting out in quant finance.

Published author sharing from 25 years of lessons, mistakes and unexpected leadership journeys, from 2-person startups to investment banks. Paul has written software for 40+ years, leads an engineering team at Haven, has built and run three companies, and was a founding member of Norfolk Developers, chairing its nor(DEV):con conference for seven years. Happy to offer advice on: Leading software engineering teams; Software architecture and designing maintainable services; Software craftsmanship, code quality, and test-driven development; Cloud, serverless, API, and distributed-system engineering; Using AI responsibly in software development.

Paul is a Principal Architect at Vonage, working at the intersection of architecture, AI, and developer tooling, helping transform how developers interact with CPaaS and Network APIs. Having transitioned from managing Developer Relations teams to the central Architecture Team, he brings a unique perspective: understanding both the strategic vision required for enterprise architecture and the practical realities developers face daily. His path in technology began with Fortran and a PhD in Computational Physics from the University of Lancashire, UK. Decades of hands-on programming experience since then have shaped his approach to architecting systems that serve developer needs. Paul remains active in the developer community through speaking engagements and writing, with a particular focus on JavaScript, Ruby, Swift and Rust.