Technological evolution and its transformations are undoubtedly changing the professional landscape. Understanding the challenges and projecting an image of the impact in future jobs were the main goals of the 4th edition of the Porto Tech Hub Conference, which this year focused on the theme “Future Jobs and Technologies”.

The conference also featured structural changes. With two distinct stages, one dedicated to trending themes and the other focused mainly on the technical spectrum, the conference theme was passionately debated by well-known pioneers on different technological fields.

Line Up

8h30 – 9h15
Doors Open
9h15 – 9h30
Opening Session
9h30 – 10h20
Building a Second Brain: A New Paradigm for Productivity in the Digital Workplace
In recent years, advances in hardware and software have completely revolutionized how work is managed and executed. A whole new generation of devices, software programs, and online platforms has made digital technology central to most jobs. But for most people, this has created a situation of “information overload.” The volume and complexity of information heading their way has become unmanageable. Increasingly, technology feels like a barrier and a risk to productivity, instead of an enabler. In this talk, Tiago Forte will lay out a new vision for using technology as a “second brain”, an integrated system of productivity and organizational tools that dramatically increase the speed, impact, and effectiveness of knowledge workers
Tiago Forte
Founder @ Forte Labs and Editor @ Praxis
10h20 – 10h50
Coffee Break (Sala do Arquivo)
10h50 – 11h30
The Invisible Infrastructure
Antonio Alvarez
Head of EMEA Business Development Manager for Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, DevOps and Serverless Solutions @ AMAZON
11h40 – 12h20
Preparing Programmers for Quantum
At the dawn of a new era in computing, that of quantum machines, my talk will address a concern: are we preparing adequate resources for the times to come? Are we using the right programming tools? Shouldn’t we rethink syllabi and make Computer Science background more cross-cutting and global? All these questions will be presented and analyzed from different angles, ranging from computer science history and fundamentals to the challenges involved in developing software in the new paradigm empowered by quantum computers.
José Nuno Oliveira
Computer Scientist, Professor and Senior Researcher @ University of Minho & INESC TEC
12h20 – 14h00
Lunch
14h00 – 14h40
Urban Mobility: The Smart Way
Cities are attracting more and more population. This fact has had a negative impact on our lives. Some believe that the solution is again on the car, but through its redesign (electric, autonomous) and the way we use it (sharing, e-haling). I believe that the solution is in smartphones, integrating smartly all mobility services available, improving travelers’ experience and releasing physical space for people, which is nowadays occupied by vehicles.
Paulo Ferreira dos Santos
Chief Executive Officer @ Ubirider
14h50 - 15h30
Cyber-Physical Systems: Crossing Engineering Borders
Advances in networks, machine learning, cloud and edge computing are allowing us to create systems in which digital products are integrated into the physical and human environment to a greater degree than ever before. Such cyber-physical systems offer enormous opportunities and pose significant challenges to designers, because they require design processes, methods and tools that bridge established divides between disciplines and organizations. In this talk, we will look at ways in which innovation in model-based systems engineering is aiming to deliver tool chains and methods that enable co-creation of cyber-physical systems. Considering example application domains from machinery to buildings, we will consider the strengths and limitations of current practice, and identify important opportunities for the future.
John Fitzgerald
Head of School of Computing @ Newcastle University
15h40 - 16h20
The Next Frontier: Quantum Computing
Quantum Computing is a new paradigm based on the principles of quantum mechanics that takes a new approach to processing information, allowing for solving problems that have previously been considered unfeasible using classical computing, and leading to revolutionary breakthroughs in several fields, such as AI and chemistry. In this talk we will introduce the fundamental concepts of the technology and the current and future application and challenges, focusing on the IBM Q platform: an ecosystem that enables anyone to explore the Quantum Computing world, run algorithms on real quantum computing hardware seamlessly, and collaboratively explore what is and might be possible with Quantum Computing.
Diego Moreda
Lead QISKit Software Engineer, IBM Research @ IBM Research
16h20 - 16h50
Coffee Break
16h50 – 17h30
Social Networks: The European Way and How Technology Impacts Work Culture
Torben Schwellnus will give a talk about Social Networks from a European perspective. Among other aspects this will include his thoughts on how the specific EU regulations for how to handle users data impact the work and business of Social Networks and why we at XING believe that there is a lot of value in handling user data like this Helder Martins will explain how culture is around every boardroom and executive table these days. CEOs and leaders understand that it is not the highest pay anymore that attracts and retains the best talent, but an appealing company culture. Based on millions of company reviews and one decade of unparalleled transparency, kununu, the workplace insights platform that now operates offices in Vienna, Boston, Porto, and Berlin, shares its learnings on how people take action and use the platform to revolutionize their workplaces and get the jobs they love.
Torben Schwellnus and Helder Martins
VP Engineering @ XING and VP Enginnering @ Kununu
17h40 – 18h20
Preparing for a Digital Future
Addressing the continuous and rapid shift in the dynamics of how and why people work, and how organizations must embrace the underlying trends that we are facing – Technology and the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), shifting global demographics, and changes of individual expectations about what motivates the workforce; for example. The focus will be on external trends impacting the future of work and their implications for organizations. In this digital age, we will zoom into the five most significant and relevant trends for our organization and industry: • Rise of the bot (AI and automated work) – Rapid transformation of work and key skills • Diversity and inclusion is existential – Diversity & inclusion required for business success • Purpose and culture as currency – Purpose and culture as leading differentiators • Fluid and flexible – Shift from formal to dynamic teams and leadership • War for talent – Scarcity of critical talent in the digital era
Francisco Caldas
Global Executive Talent Acquisition in Europe @ MICROSOFT
18h20 – 18h50
Closing Session
19h00 – 20h00
Beer Party

Line Up

8h30 – 9h15
Doors Open
9h15 – 9h30
Opening Session
9h30 – 10h20
CRDT: the new way in client-server communications
We have great frameworks and technologies to create websites and mobile apps. We have great languages and databases for server back-end. But there are no many changes in a connection between client and server. Many application stops to work with a slow or unstable connection. Loaders block our UX on every small step. Most of the application doesn’t have offline support and live updates. We are not ready for next billion users with slow Internet. But also we are not ready for the unstable Internet in metro or low-signal LTE.
Andrey Sitnik
Lead front-end developer @ Evil Martians
10h20 – 10h50
Coffee Break (Sala do Arquivo)
10h50 – 11h30
Strip-down Design 4 a Symbiotic Game-Play
An inside look at FMQ’s new game development philosophy for the Mobile Market. We aim to achieve a symbiotic relation between the player’s lifestyle and the game by using a stripped down design. Learn about our approach to minimalistic design through the lens of the casino game industry.
Rui Pena
Online Division Leader @ Fabamaq
11h40 – 12h20
Web Perf... User Interface Matters!
In the last years, web ecosystem suffered a really heavy evolution – it has never been so complex and exciting as it is today. Single-page Apps (SPAs), New-age JavaScript, User Interface, State Management, Coding with Style, Maintainability, Testing, Linting JavaScript and CSS, Formatting Code, Types, Build Systems, Package Management, Continuous Integration… There is so much to learn. We’ve learned a lot about what it takes to build and maintain large applications. Web applications are really important for the business – they reflect our company and brand. As such as a website should be intuitive, user-friendly and easy to interact. It should be responsive and optimised for multiple mobile devices and networks. However when we are developing a web app we forget the most fundamental part… beyond the latest frameworks or technologies: speed a.k.a performance.
José Fonte
Software Engineer @ Robert Bosch GmbH
12h20 – 14h00
Lunch
14h00 – 14h40
The Marvel Guide to Developers
Iron Man. Thor. Black Widow. Spider-Man. Captain America. Forget ninja developers and rockstar developers. What I’m more interested in is the superhero developer: these are the developers that do their best to help others, that try to give back to their community, and generally make the world a better place.
Melinda Seckington
Technical Manager @ FutureLearn and owner of the blog missgeeky.com
14h50 – 15h30
Identity and Data Protection
Identity is nowadays the central focus of security in various type of scenarios, the importance that in general people give to data protection or identity protection is changing dramatically considering the new challenges of cybersecurity. The impact that in this days data leaks can originate is enormous, not only to the identity theft that was until now the primary concern, but the influence in general like big organizations, big platforms or countries is putting data protection in the major discussion. Old laws were already outdated to the requirements of modern societies.
Rui Costa
Technical Director Identity Manager and Security @ Armis
15h40 – 16h20
Industry 4.0 and Digital Assistants
Industry 4.0 offers an unprecedented opportunity for new technologies to invade the manufacturing landscape (Augmented Reality, IoT, Digital assistants). But there are many challenges regarding these technologies, mainly how they are applied into factories business and how they are used. This talk will focus on how digital assistants like Alexa or Siri, can help these factories to enter in Industry 4.0 and the challenges existing in the software companies to show the potential of these technologies and how to apply them to increase the factories productivity.
Samuel Rodrigues
Software Engineer @ Critical Manufacturing
16h20 – 16h50
Coffee Break
16h50 – 17h30
Building a Conversational Chatbot: Lessons Learned
Over the past year while looking the possibilities available to build chatbots for our customers we found out that even with technology available the challenge is far greater than just coding. In this talk I’ll show you some of these challenges and a few solutions and invite the audience to discuss ideas with me.
Cristóvão Morgado
Head of Mobile Product Development, Innovation & Research @ IT Sector
17h40 – 18h20
App store reviews: A love-hate relationship
The goal of this talk is to know how to take advantage of app store reviews. How to ask for it, analyze reviewers profile, know how to reply and take advantage of relevant info.
Liliana Sousa
Delivery Manager @ BLIP
18h20 – 18h50
Accelerate. Adapt. Evolve. Protect. - Infrastructure at Farfetch
The way of processing and taking our code from repo to live is critical to the modern era where our solutions are open 24/7 to the eyes of our customers. The need of evolving and correcting our product becomes more critical than ever. The next step consists on taking CI/CD to a natural and reactive level that adjusts to the Development needs of an evergrowing company while the process, itself, is treated as a product.
Domingos Silva
Senior Infrastructure Engineer @ Farfetch
19h00 – 20h00
Beer Party

Conference Highlights

On May 18, at Alfândega do Porto, we had a glimpse of the future thanks to the Porto Tech Hub Conference 2018. Check out the best moments and be ready for another time travel next year!

15
Sponsors & Partners
700
Attendees
50
Media Presence
15
Talks
2
Tracks

Gold sponsors

blip
Critical software
fmq
bosh
present-tech
xing
critical-manufacturing
it-sector
farfetch

Silver sponsors

Hostelworld
winprovit
bit

Partners

nos
fidelidade
porto-logo
isep
portocanal
Letra
FOL_Gourmet_popcorn
Highlights

Alfândega do Porto
Rua Nova da Alfândega
Porto
Portugal