Speakers and Panelists

Amandine le Pape (Keynote)

 Amandine Le Pape is Head of Section – Business & Impact at the  Open Source Academy, as well as COO and Co-Founder of  Element.

See  Amandine Le Pape.

Adrienne Fichter

 Adrienne Fichter is a Political Scientist and Tech Journalist.

Christoph Schnidrig

 Christoph Schnidrig is Head of Technology at  AWS Switzerland.

 Christoph Schnidrig combines deep technical expertise with a profound understanding of data protection and digital sovereignty. He began his career as a Systems Engineer and Ethical Hacker –– a background that gave him a heightened awareness of security and the protection of sensitive data.

As Head of Technology at AWS in Zurich, he played a key role in establishing the Swiss AWS Region, enabling Swiss companies to store and process their data locally. His current focus is on supporting customers with data privacy and AI topics –– with the goal of deploying innovative technologies responsibly and in alignment with local requirements.

Daniel Caduff

 Daniel Caduff is Security Assurance Principal of the D/A/CH region at  AWS.

 Daniel Caduff is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and senior expert in cybersecurity and strategic risk management. He studied political science, with a background in Critical Infrastructure Protection and National Security. In 2018, he became a member of the Steering Committee of the Swiss National Cybersecurity Strategy as Deputy Managing Director.

Since 2023, Daniel has been responsible for Security Assurance for the D/A/CH region (Germany / Austria / Switzerland) at AWS. In this role, he supports customers, regulators and cybersecurity authorities navigating through complex requirements around security, privacy, and sovereignty.

Frank Karlitschek

 Frank Karlitschek is Co-Founder and CEO of  Nextcloud.

 Frank Karlitschek founded  Nextcloud in 2016 to create a secure, open-source alternative to proprietary services such as Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. In addition to this, he is involved in several other open-source projects — among them  KDE, where he previously served on the executive board.

Frank Karlitschek has given talks at MIT, CERN, and ETH Zurich, and keynote addresses at LinuxCon, Latinoware, Akademy, FOSSASIA, openSUSE Conference, and many other events. He is the founder and CEO of  Nextcloud GmbH. Frank is a Fellow of Open Forum Europe and advises the United Nations on open-source matters.

Alexander Hofmann

 Alexander Hofmann is CTO of  MaibornWolff.

As CTO,  Alex Hofmann is responsible for the technological future and innovation leadership of  MaibornWolff GmbH – a leading IT service provider that has been designing, developing and operating software for customers such as BMW, Mercedes, Deutsche Bahn, Miele, STIHL, Dräger and others for more than 35 years with over 900 experts.

As a computer scientist and passionate software architect, he works closely with customers and technology partners, drives innovation and creates the technological foundation for new business models. His mission is to inspire  MaibornWolff’s customers with innovative, excellent software solutions and to use technology in a way that benefits them.

 Alex Hofmann’s areas of expertise include the development of complex software systems, software architecture, generative AI, agentic software engineering, cloud-native software, software modernisation and software audits.

Carla Bünger

 Carla Bünger is Vice President of the Board and Founder of  Phoenix Technologies.

 Carla Bünger is an influential figure in the digital landscape as Co-Founder and board member of the  Phoenix Technologies Group. This tech cluster specializes in providing a hyper-secure Swiss sovereign cloud as well as Software-as-a-Service solutions in the areas of frontier technologies such as generative AI, blockchain and quantum computing. Phoenix Technologies operates ISO-certified solutions at scale for large corporates.

 Carla Bünger was recognized as one of the 100 most influential “digital shapers” for 3 years in a row by Bilanz, driving digitization in Switzerland.

Dr. Joel Niklaus

 Dr. Joel Niklaus is a Machine Learning Engineer at  Hugging Face working on synthetic data.

Previously,  Joel was a Research Scientist at Harvey, specializing in large language model systems for legal applications.

Before that, he pretrained LLMs at (Google) X and Thomson Reuters Labs. Joel holds a PhD in NLP from the University of Bern and conducted research at Stanford University, leading projects for the Swiss Federal Supreme Court and AI startups such as Darrow and Libra. His multilingual datasets and benchmarks have shaped the evaluation of LLMs in the legal domain. He regularly contributes to open-source projects including datatrove, lighteval, and Marin.

His work has been published at top conferences, honored with an Outstanding Paper Award at ACL, and covered by Anthropic and the Swiss National Radio & Television. His teaching and speaking experience spans universities, high schools, and corporate audiences across NLP and computer science.

Dr. Axel Koldewey

Dr. Axel Koldewey is CIO of  adesso SE.

Dr. Axel Koldewey is Chief Innovation Officer of  adesso SE. He studied philosophy, medicine (neurology), and neuroinformatics and earned doctorates in all three disciplines: “On the Logic of Research” (Dr. phil.), “The Influence of Prenatal Factors on Brain Development” (Dr. med.), and “Singularity in Artificial Intelligence” (Dr. rer. nat.).

His professional career includes positions at banks (Chase Manhattan, Bank of America, VP Bank Liechtenstein), automotive manufacturers (Tesla, VW, Daimler), as well as Google, SpaceX, Neuralink, Pfizer, Obamacare, and Infineon.

Dr. Elmar Jürgens

 Dr. Elmar Jürgens is Founder of  CQSE.

 Dr. Elmar Jürgens received the Ernst Denert Foundation’s Software Engineering Award for his doctoral thesis on quality analysis. He is a Co-Founder of  CQSE GmbH, regularly speaks at international conferences, and was appointed a Junior Fellow of the German Informatics Society (Gesellschaft für Informatik) in 2015.

In 2024,  Elmar Jürgens received the German Software Quality Award, which is conferred by ASQF, ISTQB, and GI-TAV.

Till Gartner

 Till Gartner is Executive Board member of  mgm technology partners.

Dr. Vitor Bernardo

 Dr. Vitor Bernardo is Head of Architecture, Market Unit Public Sector at  adnovum.