Overview of Speakers and Programme for the BTD11 on Mai 18th, 2018

Adventure

Pushing the Limits of Sport Climbing (in English)

Adam Ondra, the first climber to win both the Bouldering World Cup and the Lead Climbing World Cup

Adam Ondra talks not only about his successful climbing career but also about his life as such because climbing for him is a way of life. As he says, he is living the dream he had since he was a child. What does it take to get where he is? What is his key to his success? This and much more is the topic of Adam’s talk. He will also talk about his most recent successful projects such as climbing the legendary Dawn Wall, or climbing the world’s hardest route and establishing a new climbing grade 9c. All accompanied by stunning pictures and emotional videos.

Adam Ondra is a 24-year-old professional rock climber from the Czech Republic and one of the best climbers in the world. He started climbing at about the same time he learned to walk and he has not stopped ever since. At 8, he onsighted his first 7b+ (5.12c) route, at age 13 he climbed his first 9a (5.14d). He won his first lead Climbing World Cup, and ended up second in lead Climbing World Championships when he was 16. So far he has 3 gold medals from World Championships. In 2012 he climbed Change, the first route to receive a proposed grade of 9b+ (5.15c). In 2016 Adam repeated the legendary Dawn Wall in a very short time of 8 days. So far, Adam has climbed thousands of routes, 140 at the grade of 9a and higher. In September 2017 he made a little piece of climbing history when he finished his project in the Hanshelleren Cave, Flatanger, Norway and established the world’s first 9c route, currently the hardest and only route of this grade in the world.

Artificial Intelligence

Art is in the Eye of the Beholder? - Experience the World as a Painting with Deep Learning and Realtime Style Transfer

Thomas Endres and Martin FörtschTNG

What if augmented reality glasses could turn your environment into a huge spatial painting in real time, and everything would like an artwork of, say, Van Gogh? One of the many exciting developments in the field of deep learning is the so-called "style transfer". This is the possibility to create a kind of art patchwork (see pastiche) from two pictures. One image is the artistic style, while the other represents the actual content to be transformed. By using tools like OpenCV and TensorFlow, TNG’s Hardware Hacking Team has succeeded in creating such glasses. As a result, your everday environment can be displayed in the style of famous painters such as Claude Monet or Pablo Picasso. In this talk you will get an introduction to the world of real time style transfer. A special focus will be placed on deep learning techniques that can be applied to style transfer.

Martin Förtsch studied computer science and is working as a software consultant. Occupational his focus areas are Agile Development (mainly) in Java, Search Engine Technologies, Information Retrieval and Databases. As an Intel Software Innovator and Intel Black Belt Software Developer he is strongly involved in the development of open-source software for gesture control with 3D-cameras like e.g. Intel RealSense and has built an Augmented Reality wearable prototype device with his team based on this technology. Furthermore, he gives many talks on national and international conferences about Internet of Things, 3D-camera technologies, Augmented Reality and Test Driven Development as well and was awarded with the JavaOne Rockstar award. He is an author for the technical blog ParrotsOnJava.com.

Thomas Endres is an IT consultant working for TNG Technology Consulting in Munich. Besides his normal work for the customer he is creating various prototypes like a see-through Augmented Reality device or a telepresence robotics system with the company's hardware hacking team. In his spare time, he is working on gesture control applications, i.e. for controlling quadrocopters with bare hands. But he is also involved in other open source projects written in Java, C# and all kinds of JavaScript languages. Apart from this, he is working as a lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences in Landshut. Thomas studied IT at the TU Munich and is passionate about software development and all the other aspects of technology. As an Intel Software Innovator and Black Belt, he is promoting new technologies like gesture control, AR/VR and robotics around the world. He has recently received a JavaOne Rockstar award.

This talk gives an overview of cognition-enabled robot control, a computational model for controlling autonomous service robots to achieve home chore task intelligence. For the realization of task intelligence, this computational model puts forth three core principles, which essentially involve the combination of reactive behaviour specifications represented as semantically interpretable plans with inference mechanisms that enable flexible decision making. The representation of behaviour specifications as plans enables the robot to not only execute the behaviour specifications but also to reason about them and alter them during execution. I provide a description of a complete system for cognition-enabled robot control that implements the three core principles, demonstrating the feasibility of our approach.

Michael Beetz is a professor for Computer Science at the Faculty for Mathematics & Informatics of the University Bremen and head of the Institute for Artificial Intelligence (IAI). IAI investigates AI-based control methods for robotic agents, with a focus on human-scale everyday manipulation tasks. With his openEASE, a web-based knowledge service providing robot and human activity data, Michael Beetz aims at improving interoperability in robotics and lowering the barriers for robot programming. Due to this the IAI group provides most of its results as open-source software, primarily in the ROS software library. Michael Beetz received his diploma degree in Computer Science with distinction from the University of Kaiserslautern. His MSc, MPhil, and PhD degrees were awarded by Yale University in 1993, 1994, and 1996 and his Venia Legendi from the University of Bonn in 2000. Michael Beetz is currently the Coordinator of the collaborative research center EASE – Every-day Activity Science and Engineering and was a member of the steering committee of the European network of excellence in AI planning (PLANET) and coordinating the research area “robot planning''. He is associate editor of the AI Journal. His research interests include plan-based control of robotic agents, knowledge processing and representation for robots, integrated robot learning, and cognitive perception.

How Machines Learn to Code - Machine Learning on the Basis of Source Code

Samuel Hopstock and Thomas EndresTNG

Machine learning on Source Code is a new area of research in the field of artificial intelligence, which, unlike classical problems such as image segmentation, does not yet have established standard techniques. This technology offers a variety of possible applications, for example in the area of static code analysis or in the automatic selection of relevant test cases. In the talk, the colleagues of TNG Technology Consulting will present different methods for transferring classic machine learning approaches to this new field of expertise. For instance there exist standard methods for processing images, that make machine learning algorithms pay attention to their two-dimensionality. However, there are currently no common techniques for encoding the semantic structure of source code. Therefore, we had to find new ways to mathematically represent the code of projects and we will present our ideas to you in the first part of the presentation. Then you will learn about approaches for automatic as well as manual training data generation. Another part of the presentation includes an overview of different models and machine learning frameworks that seem suitable for this context. The last section deals with the possibilities of using such models for the analysis of code.

Samuel Hopstock is in the 4th semester of his Computer Science Bachelor's studies at the Technical University of Munich and is a working student for TNG Technology Consulting GmbH in Unterföhring. At TNG he is currently involved in the development of software in the field of machine learning with Python and Java. He is interested in any new technological developments, especially around Android.

Thomas Endres is an IT consultant working for TNG Technology Consulting in Munich. Besides his normal work for the customer he is creating various prototypes like a see-through Augmented Reality device or a telepresence robotics system with the company's hardware hacking team. In his spare time, he is working on gesture control applications, i.e. for controlling quadrocopters with bare hands. But he is also involved in other open source projects written in Java, C# and all kinds of JavaScript languages. Apart from this, he is working as a lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences in Landshut. Thomas studied IT at the TU Munich and is passionate about software development and all the other aspects of technology. As an Intel Software Innovator and Black Belt, he is promoting new technologies like gesture control, AR/VR and robotics around the world. He has recently received a JavaOne Rockstar award.

Big Data

Apache Nifi – 21st Century Open Source Data Flows

Frank Thiele, TNG

Apache Nifi is one of the Apache Foundation's current open source projects with the goal to simplify application stacks of large companies using a highly versatile mediation system and to enhance performance in many ways. One can think of Apache Nifi as a data flow management platform. While the classic use case is ETL (Extract, Transform & Load), Apache Nifi can do much more. As such it offers a huge range of functions such as complex event processing, zero-master clustering, and connectivity to Apache Kafka, HDFS, MongoDB, Couchbase, HTTP, and of course also FTP. Especially by supporting historization of events and visualizations thereof (Provenance, Lineage), Apache Nifi offers more than most competitors. After an introduction to Apache Nifi and underlying concepts, performance and extensibility with own processors will be illustrated by using a case study from the field of telecommunications. 

Frank Thiele is Senior Consultant at TNG Technology Consulting. He has previously studied Computer Science and Telecommunications at the University of Telecommunications in Leipzig. Parallel to his consulting activities, he completed a master degree at the University of Hagen. Current focus of his work is the architecture and development of a big data streaming application for an insurance company.

Big Think Day

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress (in English)

Prof. Dr. Steven PinkerHarvard University

If you read the news today, you might come to the conclusion that the human race is doomed, that democracy is on the decline, that authoritarianism and tribalism are on the rise. But is the world really falling apart? In this bold keynote, Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data. Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. But in 2018, have we become complacent? Have we taken the Enlightenment’s breakthroughs and ideals for granted? The Enlightenment stands against many of the darker currents in the air, which demagogues are all too willing to exploit, resulting in attacks on liberal democracy and global cooperation. In a timely and hopeful keynote, Steven Pinker, one of the world’s most influential public intellectuals, makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.

A provocative speaker, much in demand, Steven Pinker is a cognitive scientist who has been named by TIME as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. His keynotes have helped millions demystify the science behind human language, thought, and action. Pinker is a Harvard professor, a TED speaker, and a bestselling author, twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Highly respected in the scientific community, his work and opinions are extensively covered in the mainstream media, and have won a wide general audience. A native of Montreal, Steven Pinker is Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. Previously, he taught at Stanford and at MIT. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has won a number of teaching prizes, and his research on visual cognition and the psychology of language has received numerous awards, including the Troland Award from the National Academy of Sciences.

Cryptofuture

Blockchain - An Idea Changes the World

Christoph Stock, Partner, TNG

When the paper "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" was published in October 2008 under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, the effects were hardly foreseeable. Ten years later, the topic of blockchains is on everyone's lips, especially in the form of Bitcoin. For this reason, this talk will deal with the functioning of blockchains, using Bitcoin as an example, and how, for the first time, independent of centralized trust instances, they will enable reliable transactions on the Internet. The central aspects include the cryptographic and mathematical basics, transactions, decentralized networks, as well as the authoritative "mining" based on the concept of the "proof of work". Finally, concrete applications of the blockchain are presented, i.a. in the areas of filehosting, publishing and copyright, social media, as well as insurance.

Christoph Stock is one of the founders and managers at TNG. He holds a diploma in physics from Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich.

Fintech

Tamper-Proofing Enterprise Databases Using Public Blockchains in Practice

Martin KreidenweisTNG

Classic blockchain technology provides certain security guarantees without implying trust on a third party. Nevertheless, all data is public. Still internal company data should remain secret and only accessible to legitimate interested parties. Private blockchains cannot fulfill many of their promises. A clever combination of classic enterprise databases with public blockchains can be used in an unprecedented way to protect data against manipulation. This talk gives a more detailed insight into the possibilities of modern public blockchains such as "Smart Contracts" and shows how these can be applied beneficially and cost effective in companies.

Martin Kreidenweis is a senior consultant at TNG Technology Consulting and has been working privately and professionally with Blockchain since 2013. He holds a bachelor degree in computer science and information technology and a master degree in software engineering. As a full-stack developer, he gained experience in the telecommunications, e-commerce, travel and finance sectors. He is currently leading a blockchain innovation project.

Future Technology

Laurent Jaffart is currently working in the Sales and Marketing organization of Airbus Defence and Space taking care of the future programmes with a focus on Space Systems. Laurent leads a trans-national team based in France, Germany and in the UK. The aim of his organization is to bring innovation on the market, being financial innovation, business model innovation or product innovation. Past assignments have taken him and his family across Europe and the USA. He started his career with EADS - in 2001 with a position in the post-merger integration team following the creation of the group after the tri-national merger of Aerospatiale-Matra, DaimlerAerospace (DASA) and CASA. He previously held a position with American Express EMEA Headquarter Project Office working on the introduction of the Euro. In 2002, he lead the EuroFighter Mission planner and Briefer programme to then take over in 2004 the MIDS LVT Programme - (Multifunctional Information Distribution System Low Volume Terminal Radio Frequency where he managed the industrialization of the programme into a serial production. From 2006 to 2008, he took a business development management position for the Defence Electronics business unit of the company, entering in the strategy arena of the company. From there, in 2008, he was assigned at the strategy department of the Defence and Security (ex- Cassidian) division headquarter to supervise and coordinate divisional strategic roadmaps, Merger and Acquisition cases and the initial cooperation with the former Astrium division of the group. In parallel, he led the programme management office for the transformation of the division establishing a matrix organization of countries and programmes. In 2011, he was promoted as Vice President of strategy integration leading the strategic planning process for the former Cassidian Division. Following a year at the National Defence University in Washington DC at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces (now Eisenhower School), he joined the Astrium division as the Vice President Head of Astrium Satellite Strategy in 2013. Since 2015 and while becoming Vice President Head of Future Programmes in the sales and marketing organization, he led the OneWeb bid for a constellation of 900 telecommunication satellites and the creation of the Joint Venture - Airbus OneWeb Satellites - to design and manufacture constellation satellites amongst other opportunities and most recently was appointed as Airbus Board Member for EarthNow a new venture delivering true real-time video of the Earth that is persistent through a large constellation and enhanced by machine intelligence. Laurent Jaffart holds a Masters in National Resources Strategy from the National Defense University (2013), two Masters in Business Administration (MBA) from the former ESC Reims (Reims Management School - France) and Dublin City University (2002) and a Bachelor of Sciences (Hons) in European Business and Technology from the University of Brighton in the UK (2000).

Hardware Hacking: Art

Today, we can fabricate anything. Digital fabrication now functions at both the micro and macro scales, combining multiple materials, and using different materialization processes. Complexity and customization are no longer impediments in design. While we can fabricate anything, design arguably appears confined by our tools of design: we can only design what we can directly represent. If one looks at 3D-printed artifacts, there is oftentimes a discrepancy between the wonder of technology, and the conventionalism of design. What is needed is a new type of design instrument. We need tools for search and exploration, rather than simply control and execution. These new tools should simultaneously be open and systematic, striking a balance between causality and chaos. They require a design language without the need for words and labels, as they should create the previously unseen. These tools must ultimately redefine the process of design: the designer will work in an iterative feedback loop with the machine, moderating processes, and incorporating feedback, surprises and proposals. Knowledge and experience are acquired through search, demanding heuristics that work in the absence of categorization. As of yet, we have countless tools to increase our efficiency and precision. Why not also create tools that serve as our muse, that inspire us and help us to be creative? Tools to draw the undrawable, and to imagine the unimaginable.

Michael Hansmeyer is an architect and programmer who explores the use of computation to generate and fabricate architectural forms. Recent projects include the production of lace Gazebo at the Gwangju Design Biennale, the design and fabrication of full-scale 3D printed grotto for Centre Pompidou, and the installation of a hall of columns at Grand Palais in Paris. Recently, Michael taught architecture as visiting professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and at Southeast University in Nanjing. He previously worked for Herzog & de Meuron architects as well as in the consulting and financial industries at McKinsey & Company and J.P. Morgan respectively. Michael holds a Master of Architecture from the Columbia University and an MBA from INSEAD.

Hardware Hacking: Quantum Computing

Quantum computers and quantum simulators are computational devices the constituents of which are single atoms, ions, or other physical systems following quantum mechanical laws. The observation that a radically different physical theory compared to classical mechanics is at work might suggest different computational capabilities arising from such an architecture. In fact, such devices could solve some problems that are intractable on conventional supercomputers. Partially stimulated by a new impetus by research effort of US IT companies and the Flagship effort of the European Union, the idea of quantum computing and simulation - anyway only a bit more than two decades old - has gained much momentum recently. While quantum computers are so far still anticipated devices, quantum simulators exist to an extent. This talk will provide a brief introduction to the field of quantum technologies with respect to notions of quantum communication and in particular of quantum computation and simulation. I will argue in what way existing quantum simulators may already be seen as machines that (in a mild sense) outperform supercomputers.

Jens Eisert works at the Dahlem Center for Complex Quantum Systems on the interface of quantum information science and the study of complex quantum systems. He is interested in what novel modes of information processing are possible when single quantum systems - such as atoms, ions or photons - are used as carriers of information. Applications range from quantum simulation of complex quantum systems and notions of computing beyond the capabilities of supercomputers to the secure communication of data. He has worked at Imperial College London as a lecturer, and at the University of Potsdam and the Freie Universität Berlin as a professor. For his work, he has been awarded the prestigious EURYI award and an ERC grant.

Although the quantum computer is only expected in about 10-15 years, it is vital to take it into account already today. Actually, it is already too late to protect the confidentiality of information for several decades! Today, the only solution that is already commercially available is quantum cryptography. This technology may sound futuristic, but is actually already in use in some niche markets since about 10 years. Somehow, the theory of electromagnetism was discovered in the 19th century and was the basis for all information processing in the 20th century. Likewise, quantum theory was discovered in the 20th century and is likely to form the basis for the 21st century information processing.

Prof. Nicolas Gisin was born in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1952. His interests cover a wide range of topics, from the foundations of quantum physics and philosophy, to applications in quantum communications. He authored a popular book on Quantum Chance and Non-locality and is a co-founder of the company IDQ.

Hardware Hacking: Robotics and AR/VR

State of the Art in Autonomous Driving (in English)

Alexandre Haag, CTO, Autonomous Intelligent Driving

Autonomous Driving Technology has the potential to fundamentally change mobility and how cities are built. However, this is a huge technical challenge, probably harder than putting a man on the moon! We believe that for overcoming this challenge it will be crucial to perfectly integrate insights from the software and the automotive industry. In this talk, we’ll review the state of the art in autonomous driving, some remaining key technical decisions (e.g. Lidar or no Lidar) and various paths to deployment at scale.

Alexandre Haag serves as CTO at Autonomous Intelligent Driving, a wholly owned subsidiary of AUDI AG. Before his current position, he was a key lead in the Tesla Autopilot team and held various positions in the robotics industry, ranging from software developer to director and co-founder. Over the years, Alex has developed a strong experience in transforming innovative ideas into marketable products. He has a passion for software intelligence applied to physical systems and good, simple Engineering.​ Alex holds a BS from Ecole Polytechnique, Paris and an MS from MIT.

ParrotAttacks VR - Programming Virtual Reality Games with Unity 3D

Christoph Bergemann and Thomas EndresTNG

Programming games has become much simpler in recent years due to the advent and easy access to professional gaming engines like Unity 3D, Unreal and Cry Engine. With these engines you also get access to a wide variety of code libraries, easy to use 3D models and more assets. This makes it possible to concentrate on the game concept itself instead of losing your focus in the details of 3D programming. Within this talk we will create an examplary simple Virtual Reality game in Unity 3D. The speakers will provide details about basic aspects of 3D software development like cameras, sky boxes, die illumination of the scene and the 3D objects as well as their components. Then they will give a short introduction into the program flow and the development of the gaming logic using a simple example. In addition to that, we will also bring up some issues concerning usability and maintainability.

Christoph Bergemann is a consultant at TNG Technology Consulting GmbH. After studying mathematics at LMU Munich, he worked as a research associate at the German Aerospace Center on remote sensing of the atmosphere. He is a member of the TNG Hardware Hacking Team working on the development of various prototypes.

Thomas Endres is an IT consultant working for TNG Technology Consulting in Munich. Besides his normal work for the customer he is creating various prototypes like a see-through Augmented Reality device or a telepresence robotics system with the company's hardware hacking team. In his spare time, he is working on gesture control applications, i.e. for controlling quadrocopters with bare hands. But he is also involved in other open source projects written in Java, C# and all kinds of JavaScript languages. Apart from this, he is working as a lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences in Landshut. Thomas studied IT at the TU Munich and is passionate about software development and all the other aspects of technology. As an Intel Software Innovator and Black Belt, he is promoting new technologies like gesture control, AR/VR and robotics around the world. He has recently received a JavaOne Rockstar award.

ROS2 – The Robot Operating System Version 2

Eric Weikl and Dr. Martin IdelTNG

The Robotic Operating System is a platform for the development of autonomous systems. Due to the flexible architecture and the consistent open source policy, ROS acquired a large supporter community right from the start. The platform, which was originally designed for robots, is now used for many application scenarios in industry and research, including autonomous driving. The new version 2 fixes many weaknesses of the first version. In this talk we give a brief introduction to the concepts behind ROS and its tools. Using examples, we demonstrate how the use of ROS can facilitate the integration of software and sensors.

Eric Weikl is an associate partner at TNG, where he has been putting his passion for software development and architecture into practice for more than 15 years. He prefers working at the interface of the platonic ideal of programming and the dirty IT everyday life, most recently in the context of simulations for autonomous driving systems with ROS.

Dr. Martin Idel has been a Software Consultant at TNG since 2016. He develops the open source visualization software RViz for ROS2. Before that, Martin studied physics and mathematics at the RWTH Aachen and theoretical and mathematical physics at the LMU and the TU Munich. Afterwards he dealt extensively with topics in the field of quantum information theory and received his doctorate from the TU Munich.

Inside the Air Mobility Revolution (in English)

Matthias Meiner, Co-Founder and Head of the Autonomous Flight Control, Lilium Aviation

Rapidly increasing urbanization and our daily growing need for mobility are pushing our transportation systems and the global ecosystem more and more towards the limit. Clean and affordable on-demand air transport offers a way out by making use of the third dimension. For the first time in history, the overdue promise of flying taxis above our cities is about to become a reality. At the top of this revolution, Munich-based Lilium are working on the world’s first Electric Transition Jet. In his talk Co-Founder and Head of Autonomous Flight Control Matthias Meiner speaks about the future of a world where everyone can fly anywhere, anytime, and the challenges to be mastered along the way.

Matthias was born in 1987 in Stuttgart and moved to Munich to study robotics at the Technical University of Munich. After graduation he started a PhD, which he quit in favor of founding Lilium, where he serves as Head of Autonomous Flight Control. Matthias is also an alumnus of the German National Academic Foundation. He has always been fascinated by control engineering and aviation, which is reflected in his research at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) during his studies. In 2004, he won Europe’s biggest youth science and technology competition “Jugend Forscht”. In 2017, Matthias was chosen as one of the European 30 under 30 leading innovators by Forbes magazine for his achievements with Lilium.

New Frontiers of Robotic Applications, the Art of Manipulation (in English)

Simon Haddadin, CEO and Co-founder, FRANKA EMIKA

Robotics will substantially and sustainably impact our world, becoming one of the future central societal topics. Nowadays, however, it is only accessible to a limited number of people. High costs, complex programming and operation, as well as basic technological restrictions, which – among others – lead to absolute separation of robots and humans by safety fences, all represent impassable hurdles. Introduction of groundbreaking technology in robotics is now enabling a new generation of lightweight robots that will be able to conduct tasks that could never be tackled before.

Simon Haddadin is the CEO and co-founder of FRANKA EMIKA. He earned his doctorate in safe physical human-robot interaction, had been a member of the renowned DLR research group "Human-Centered-Robotics" and has published several journal and conference papers. His technological expertise lies in "safe robots", intuitive interaction and virtual programming, as well as robotic service & health applications.

IT Security and Data Security

Encrypted Email: How Hard Could It Be? (in English)

Dr. Andy Yen, Founder and CEO, Proton Technologies AG: ProtonMail

Over the past 3 years, ProtonMail has grown into the world’s largest encrypted email service, with over 4 million users. In this keynote I will discuss the benefits and challenges of working in the open and federated email space, the technical and usability hurdles surrounding encrypted email, and the importance of security-first development in the age of data breaches.

Andy has over 8 years of experience in distributed computing for demanding particle physics applications. Andy was a researcher at CERN from 2009 to 2015, where ProtonMail's founding team met. He has a PhD in Physics from Harvard and a degree in Economics from Caltech.

Privacy-Preserving Data Analysis & Security by Design

Dr. Daniel Krajewski, TNG

Statistical analyses of personal data have many applications: from medical research and traffic planning to the optimization of advertising strategies. Data protection regulations and rights are the major obstacles to such business applications. Consequently, in practice, businesses often try to persuade the affected individuals to renounce their rights in a more or less voluntary and usually very far-reaching way, e.g. imposing the acquiescence of dubious clauses in order to access online services. The legal hurdles to this approach have been intensified, effective as of May 25th of 2018, as part of the new EU General Data Protection Regulation. In this talk, I will illustrate that this matter is far beyond being unsolvable: technical automatization solutions with “Security by Design” allow us to perform statistical analyses of personal data without violating individuals’ privacy. An appropriate set of classic IT security mechanisms, modern cryptography procedures, and strict formal definitions of anonymity enables value-adding personal data analysis and guaranteeing at the same time a high degree of confidentiality, even in the case of a corrupted system operator.

Daniel Kraschewski studied computer science at the University of Karlsruhe until the end of 2006 and continued working there at the Institute for Cryptography and Security until he finished his PhD in 2013. Afterwards, he spent one year as a postdoctoral researcher at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. During his academic career, he was able to answer several open questions in the field of "Secure Multi-Party Computation", in addition to showing an outstanding engagement in teaching. Since the beginning of 2015, he has been working for TNG as a software developer and data privacy expert in a big data project for anonymous personal data analysis.

The Internet has been successful beyond even the most optimistic expectations. It permeates and intertwines with almost all aspects of our society and economy. The success of the Internet has created a dependency on communication as many of the processes underpinning the foundations of modern society would grind to a halt should communication become unavailable. However, much to our dismay, the current state of safety and availability of the Internet is far from commensurate given its importance. Although we cannot conclusively determine what the impact of a 1-day, or 1-week outage of Internet connectivity on our society would be, anecdotal evidence indicates that even short outages have a profound negative impact on society, businesses, and government. Unfortunately, the Internet has not been designed for high availability in the face of malicious actions by adversaries. Recent patches to improve Internet security and availability have been constrained by the current Internet architecture, business models, and legal aspects. Moreover, there are fundamental design decisions of the current Internet that inherently complicate secure operation. Given the diverse nature of constituents in today's Internet, another important challenge is how to scale authentication of entities (e.g., AS ownership for routing, name servers for DNS, or domains for TLS) to a global environment. Currently prevalent PKI models (monopoly and oligopoly) do not scale globally because mutually distrusting entities cannot agree on a single trust root, and because everyday users cannot evaluate the trustworthiness of each of the many root CAs in their browsers. To address these issues, we propose SCION, a next-generation Internet architecture that is secure, available, and offers privacy by design; that provides incentives for a transition to the new architecture; and that considers economic and policy issues at the design stage. Within roughly 100 person years, we have implemented SCION and deployed it in the production networks of two ISPs.

Dr. Raphael M. Reischuk is researcher and consultant at Zühlke Engineering. He is a member of several international program committees for information security; he is a frequent and passionate speaker at international conferences and appears regularly on topics of network, web and cyber security. Raphael Reischuk is the author of numerous scientific publications in various fields of IT security and cryptography, for which he has received several (international) awards. After studying computer science with a focus on information security, Raphael Reischuk received his PhD in web and cloud security at CISPA and Cornell University and graduated with distinction. At ETH Zurich, he has done research and teaching on secure Internet architectures and co-developed SCION.

Journalism of the Future

The Technology behind the Paradise Papers

Elisabeth Gamperl and Felix EbertSüddeutsche Zeitung

Once again, several million documents about tax havens and letterbox companies were leaked to the Süddeutsche Zeitung. The Paradise Papers document how criminal behavior is covered up and money from dubious sources is hidden. As with the Panama Papers, the SZ shared the data and again a global team of reporters worked to filter out the best stories. Working with such a wealth of data needs to be well organized and requires special measures to be taken. In this talk, Felix Ebert and Elisabeth Gamperl talk about the tools and technologies used to prepare, search, and visualize the data. In addition, they give an outlook on how to research in large amounts of data at the Süddeutsche Zeitung in future.

Elisabeth Gamperl is an editor at the Süddeutsche Zeitung and responsible for digital storytelling. She is a member of the Paradise Papers Research Team and was part of the Panama Papers Digital Team. She completed a two-year traineeship with the SZ and spent two months with the Data Team of the British newspaper The Guardian in London. Before that, she worked for one year as an editor at the Neue Zürcher Zeitung Österreich (NZZ.at) - the former digital branch with the so-called "payment barrier" of the Swiss NZZ-Mediengruppe and the investigative and data journalism platform Dossier in Vienna.

Felix Ebert works as a developer for the Süddeutsche Zeitung in the development department. Regarding the Paradise Papers, he provided technical support to the Investigative Research Team and created a visualization of the worldwide network in the data. Previously, he lived and worked in Neckarsulm near Heilbronn. There, he led the developer group "Code for Heilbronn" and implemented numerous journalistic projects, among others for the Heilbronner Stimme, which drew attention with its data-journalistic projects far beyond the region.

Management

Leveraging Tech Companies - The Investor’s View

Christian Roth, Managing Partner, LEA Partners GmbH

This talk should give you some notes on the investor’s/VC’s view of tech companies. After a brief overview of the market situation, we will particularly discuss the relationship between investors and technical organizations/CTOs. In addition, we go through some expectations and requirements in the different phases (early stage vs. later stage). In the end you should have a better understanding of the investor‘s mindset and his way of thinking. Of course, there will also be enough time for questions.

Christian is an entrepreneur and VC-investor from Karlsruhe, Germany. LEA Partners is an entrepreneurial-minded multi-stage private equity firm investing in growth technology and software companies that are driving transformative change in their industries. Founded in 2002, LEA has advised on the investment of over 300 million EUR in more than 40 companies. Operating out of Karlsruhe, one of Europe's largest IT clusters, its mission is to fund and support visionary founders and executives by leveraging them with practical, hands-on growth expertise to achieve market leadership. Christian joined LEA Partners in 2016. Prior to joining LEA, Christian founded BEONTRA, a B2B Enterprise SaaS company focusing on supporting airports in optimizing their operations efficiency and retail activities. He developed the company into the leader for airport planning & optimization software, serving 60+ global leading airport operators. Christian exited BEONTRA to Lockheed Martin in 2014.

Bridging Technological Disruption 24/7 Operations

Dr. Eckart Pech, Member of the Board, Allianz Technology SE

Most organizations underestimate the value of a mature "Run" organization which must be the foundation to successfully embrace innovation and to make the right choices. Any new project consideration should anticipate the "Run" impacts and will only be successful if the basics are under control.

Dr. Eckart Pech is a Board member of Allianz Technology SE. He is responsible for Global Platforms, MetaFinanz, the AZ Technology CIO, Workplace Management and Robotics. Prior to joining Allianz Group, Eckart has accumulated over 20 years of international experience in the global management and technology environment in Senior Leadership Roles in various global Fortune 500 companies worldwide including a six year tenure in the United States. Eckart holds a degree in Business Adminstration and Chinese from the Universities of Bayreuth and the Shanghai International Studies University. He completed his Phd. in Munich.

Change Management for Established Standard Software Instruments

Martin Bellin, Founder and CEO, and Dr. Wolfgang Kalthoff, Member of the Management Board and CTO, BELLIN Treasury International GmbH

Martin Bellin is the founder and CEO of BELLIN. Founded in 1998 as a one-man company, he has shaped BELLIN into a key framer and the innovation driver of the fintech and finance industry. After studying business administration at the University of Mannheim, Martin Bellin worked for several years in the treasury of renowned companies. From his experience as a treasurer, he developed the vision of creating a technical solution for corporates that ensures the transparency and availability of group-wide financial data and facilitates global collaboration among the units. As none was available at that time, he built a Treasury Management System (TMS), from which the entire BELLIN range of offers emerged. His sense for the customers’ needs and his enthusiasm for perfection have repeatedly led to pioneering achievements and innovations. Martin Bellin has been awarded Entrepreneur of the Year several times.

Wolfgang Kalthoff is a member of the management board and CTO of BELLIN, being responsible for the product lifecycle - from product management and development to service & support. After completing his PhD in physics, Wolfgang Kalthoff began his career at SAP and initially dedicated himself to the development of software, software architecture, and project management. Later he moved to management and led international teams, i.a. he spent two years developing a local development department in Bangalore, India. Parallel to his professional activity, he completed the Executive MBA in Mannheim, then founded and managed a payment company. Since October 2017, he has been setting up the development teams at BELLIN international, promoting the technical rebuilding of the BELLIN platform and pushing ahead with new innovative products.

BELLIN is the world's leading technology provider in corporate banking and treasury. We offer solutions for the entire financial industry that meet the needs of a wide range of clients - from large international corporations to small and medium-sized enterprises and up to banks. The treasury software tm5 forms the core of our product range, with which we place the relationship between enterprises and banks in the center: We offer full supply, from payment traffic to foreign exchange to cash and risk management. BELLIN is internationally positioned and represented on four continents. Our pioneering technologies combine the spirit of a dynamic fintech company with the tradition of German craftsmanship and engineering. 500 customers and over 50,000 users worldwide trust BELLIN.

Methods

Less than Twelve Parsecs - Building the LEGO Millennium Falcon in Record Time with Scaled Scrum (in English)

Dr. Daniel PapeTNG

Don't grow up, it's a trap! On April 14th, 2018, seven teams consisting of a total of 27 people set out to build the LEGO Millennium Falcon (set number 75192) within a mind-blowing time of 2 hours and 10 minutes. In a massively parallelized setup, the teams provided the sub-assemblies that were then used to assemble the model. In this talk, we will dive into the methodology used to organize such an ambitious project. Furthermore, we will investigate what we learned from our first attempt, which resulted in a 2-hour 47-minute record, and how we managed to improve our time by roughly half an hour. Additionally, we will show interesting parts of our livestream video that highlight key parts of our preparation and methodology.

Daniel studied Chemistry in Cologne and received his PhD in Theoretical Chemistry in the Fall Term 2013/14. During his PhD studies he focused on the development of simulation software in C++. Prior to his position at TNG he worked as a freelancing lecturer for Natural Sciences and Mathematics at the Technical University Fresenius in Cologne and similar Institutions. As a Software Consultant at TNG Daniel worked as a Full-Stack Java-Programmer in several Projects for Online-Retailers and Telecommunication Companies. Currently he leads a Team focusing on self-driving Cars for a leading German Automotive Company. In his spare time Daniel is interested in systems programming with Rust, IoT, Robotics and most importantly in creating LEGO-wonders supervised by his two daughters.

Don't Cry Over Spilt Milk - How to Systematically Fight Technical Deficits

Dr. Gernot Starke (innoQ Fellow), co-founder of arc42.org and founder of aim42.org

As developers and architects, we spend most of our time further developing existing systems (i.e., “maintenance”). Therein, we are often annoyed by the many deficits of these systems: Even supposedly simple things become unspeakably difficult when dealing with _legacy systems_, the _time-to-market_ gets worse and worse, and the departments build up more and more feature delivery pressure. In this talk, I will show you ways to systematically escape this trap that is caused by technical and general deficits: Get to know long-term improvement approaches, with which you can solve even the most muddled situations. For that purpose, we first go on a methodological breadth-first search for problems in order to clearly identify our technical, organizational and communicative deficits. Subsequently, I will introduce you to a few strategic improvement approaches, such as:

* Reduction: migration towards self-contained systems ("change-by-split" and "change-by-extraction")

* stronger focus on the subject matter: a step-by-step introduction of domain-driven design into legacy systems ("restructure-to-domain")

* Enhancement of cohesion within systems ("improve modularization")

* Homogenization – solve similar problems in systems with similar ways ("improve consistency")

* Clean-Up of data: Modularization and homogenization in inventory data ("database refactoring")

I distinguish these strategic (i.e., long term) approaches from the known tactical improvements, such as refactoring, and illustrate them with the help of (anonymized) practical examples.

Gernot Starke (INNOQ Fellow), coach and consultant for methodical software architecture, co-founder of arc42.org, founder of aim42.org. Gernot has been involved in the design and implementation of medium and large systems for organizations in a variety of industries, primarily finance, insurance, automotive, logistics, and telecommunications. He has also written numerous books on software architecture and patterns and regularly publishes articles. He currently lives with his family in Cologne.

Out of the Local Optimization Trap: Communicatively Shaping Architectural Changes

Stefan Gräsel, IT Architect, Telefónica Germany OHG, and Jonathan PichtTNG

Why is architecture necessary? When automating business processes, it is necessary to look at them holistically, align them to the company's long-term strategy and shape the future. The architecture department specifies framework conditions for the development and uses a broad toolbox of communication, documentation and planning methods. When creating solutions, different approaches come together constructively to achieve the best result for the company.

Stefan Gräsel studied business administration and economics at the VWA Munich and has been working for Telefónica Deutschland in various roles since 1999, promoting change processes. In addition to his many years of experience in service, product and project management, he applies his well-founded knowledge of the business processes within the company in order to achieve the best result. With his talent to structure and systematize topics and to break new ground, he always moves his projects forward. New services such as the technical implementation of the Telefónica "Napster Music Pack" and the introduction of a "mobile wallet" based on NFC technology are among his greatest successes.

Jonathan Picht studied mathematics in Karlsruhe, Freiburg and Eugene, Oregon. Since 2011, he is devoted to software development in all its facets at TNG Technology Consulting. In his new architect role he regularly faces the challenge of communicating complex technical matters and their implications to different kinds of stakeholders.

In addition to strength, endurance and technique, above all the mind decides about victory and defeat. Consistent work on the right mindset has now become a matter of course, so that it pays off for anyone, who wants to get their “horsepower” focused on the road in everyday work without being left behind, to think outside the box. In this talk, know-how, concrete methods, and tips are conveyed to illustrate how to reach high performance, without risking physical and mental health. Without esotericism and incense sticks, well-founded techniques for task and mind management as well as visualization and focusing are at the core of this talk. The better people understand how they function, the better they can build a mindset where career success and private satisfaction are not opposed but in balance.

Dr. Kai Engbert is a psychologist, psychotherapist and sports psychologist. Since 2005, he has been working as a freelance trainer and coach with a focus on mental performance and health issues. He coaches performance-oriented people in elite sports and companies and was able to give support to athletes and coaches as a member of the German Olympic Team for the last five Olympic Games. Dr. Engbert is the author of numerous scientific papers and the practice book: “Mentales Training im Leistungssport - ein Übungsbuch für den Schüler und Jugendbereich” (Mental training in competitive sports - an exercise book for the student and youth sector).

Dr. Jens Vorsatz has his roots in competitive sports and participated in the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona in the canoe slalom. After a diploma in mathematics and a PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Computer Science in the field of "3D Modeling", he decided to start a career in the business world. As a consultant at McKinsey, he was able to learn how important it is to focus on energy and separate the important from the unimportant. He has refined the methods learned there over the years and adapted them to his needs and to different situations. He currently works as a director at adidas and, until the end of 2017, he led the IT Test Management Division. This year he assumed the leadership of the Community & Partner Management Team in the "Platform Engineering and Architecture" environment.

R&D Performant Implementation

Stefan Seuferling, Head of R&D, Dräger

"Time to Market", innovation management and agility are terms that are wide spread today in almost all technology companies. The results are usually more modest than the expectations and it is not uncommon that they remain buzzwords of Powerpoint presentations. We started working on these areas about a year ago and are already seeing significant (and measurable) successes. Stefan Seuferling will give an overview of the activities at Dräger and some impulses.

  • Setting the right goals / strategic goals as guardrails
  • Overall concept and overview of the change roadmap
  • Accompanying initiatives & what really mattered to Dräger
  • Tracking and motivation
  • Right people on the bus (role models, competence management)
  • Introduction of agile leadership
  • Next level

Dipl. Betriebswirt (FH) Stefan Seuferling started his career in auditing. In 2003, he moved to the industry, where since 2011 he has been working in the R & D field of the medical technology and pharmaceutical industry. In addition to the successful development and introduction of new medical devices, his focus was on the identification of new technologies and networking with industrial partners and research institutions. Currently he leads the development department at Dräger Global.

Rule of Thumb - The Statistics of Estimation in Software Development

Dr. Steffen Rath, TNG

In many (software development) projects, cost estimations - often in abstract points - are used as a basis for decision-making. However, it is rarely examined how reliable this basis really is. How high is the risk that the effort will be significantly higher or lower than estimated? Does an estimation of three points today mean the same as one half a year ago? And is the scale used even appropriate for the achievable accuracy? Based on data from estimates and actual costs gathered within two years in a major TNG project, I investigated these questions with statistical methods and derived recommendations for dealing with cost estimations.

Dr. Steffen Rath studied as scholar of the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes Physics at the University of Mainz and the Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris, where he afterwards finished a PhD supported by a scholarship from DAAD. During this time and in his subsequent function as research assistant at the Technical University of Munich, quantum statistics played a major role. Since 2013 he works as an IT-Consultant at TNG Technology Consulting in Munich. In addition to his regular project work, he now applies knowledge of statistical relationships on the data collected for managing these projects. 

Neural Networks

Neural Networks in the Mainstream (in English)

Mathias Burger, TNG

Neural networks outperform humans! At least in certain domains. Let's talk about when to apply neural networks and situations where other tools might be better suited. Recent advancements in hardware, software and neural network architecture enable us to create amazing products ranging from computer vision to medicine. Let's have a look at interesting prototypes from current research and the ideas behind them!

Mathias Burger is a Senior Software Consultant at TNG Technology Consulting GmbH and focuses on proof of concept solutions using machine learning. He is very passionate about technological advancements and interested in the latest research, especially in the field of computer vision. When not coding, he likes to go cycling or reading fantasy or sci-fi books.

Programming Languages

gopass - An Awesome Password Manager for Teams (in English)

Dominik Schulz, Head of Infrastructure, JustWatch, and Dr. Martin HöflingTNG

DevOps teams share a very common challenge: Sharing passwords. While not encouraged, sharing passwords still is a common problem we needed to solve in the era of cloud- and service provider integrations. When crossed of cloud based and closed-source products for security and trust reasons, we decided to implement our own password manager using a git and gpg based storage format. We’ll show what gopass is, why it exists and how it might help you to solve some real world use cases. We further explain how gopass can be integrated in your workflow and why Go is such an awesome language.

Dominik is the Head of Infrastructure at justwatch.com, where he leads a small Site Reliability Engineering team orchestrating a state of the art microservice architecture. Before that he was responsible for the infrastructure of ProSiebenSat.1 MyVideo. He received his MSc in computer science from the Technical University Darmstadt.

Martin is a Principal Consultant at TNG Technology Consulting and focuses on cloud technology and architecture of distributed systems. Currently, he is involved in the development and operation of a large-scale web application using Salt, Terraform, Kubernetes and AWS.

Bundling JavaScript: The Good, the Dead and the Ugly Code (in English)

Dr. Lukas TaegertTNG

Having small bundles of code is critical when you want your websites to load fast. So why not start by removing all these useless utility functions your dependencies sneaked into your code base that you neither use nor care about? With JavaScript's native module system, weeding out unused imports is usually referred to as "tree-shaking". But as it turns out, significant dead code elimination in a dynamic language like JavaScript is no easy task. To give you a glimpse of how this is actually done, I will show you how we reworked Rollup's tree-shaking algorithm to be able to track nested functions, return values, and object shapes, and how clean code principles helped us get there. And as a bonus, we will see how Rollup is now able to perform no-duplication code-splitting to utilise on-demand loading for optional code blocks using the host system's loading mechanism as the only runtime necessary.

After finishing his PhD studying the mathematical properties of black holes at the University of Bayreuth, Lukas decided to go for less substance from then on and follow his passion of becoming a software developer. He is a now a full stack senior developer at TNG with a strong JavaScript focus, a passion he also likes to share in talks and workshops. When after a talk at the Munich Node User group on the JavaScript bundler RollupJS, he decided to prepare some pull requests to substantially improve its "tree-shaking" dead-code-elimination algorithm, things started to move in unexpected directions. Today he is one of the core maintainers and driving forces behind the continued development of this open source tool that is used by famous libraries such as Facebook's React or Google's Angular to optimise their code.

Software Systems and Tools

Distributed Build Systems (in English)

Dr. Neil Mitchell, Senior Product Architect, Digital Asset

Build systems are awesome - but unappreciated. A decade ago I started writing Shake, a Haskell library for implementing build systems, an alternative to Make, but with much more powerful and accurate dependencies. In this talk we trace the origins of Shake, from a small module to build a PhD thesis, to a production quality build system, figuring out the key ideas along the way. By exploring these ideas we see how build systems relate to each other, realise that Excel is really just a build system, and see how Bazel/Buck keep shared caches in the cloud.

Neil Mitchell is a Haskell programmer who lives in Cambridge with his family. Neil has a PhD in Computer Science from York University, working on making functional programs shorter, faster and safer. Since then he's worked with F# at Credit Suisse and Haskell/F#/C++ at Standard Chartered and Barclays, taking the lessons of functional programming and applying them in finance. Neil is a strong believer in the functional approach, finding the combination of conciseness, static-typing and testability to offer significant advantages. He is currently developing a number of open source Haskell projects, all of which can be found on Github or Hackage.

OpenADx – Xcelerate your Autonomous Driving Development (in English)

Dr. Lars Geyer-Blaumeiser, Senior Expert Open Source Services, Bosch Software Innovations

Autonomous driving solutions introduce a new complexity into the development of embedded systems in a car. This complexity rises with each level of control and autonomy. New tool categories have to be added like machine learning, but also existing technologies, like simulation, are stretched to their current limits. The toolchain for such challenges is complex and the integration of all the tools coming from different domains cost a lot of effort for each market participant without a real competitive advantage towards the solution. Therefore, the Bosch Autonomous Driving division, together with many partners, is currently building up the OpenADx ecosystem including OEMs, tier 1 suppliers, tool vendors, research organizations but also companies from related industries like the IT industry. The goal of this endeavor is to stop wasting money on the introduction of a proprietary toolchain in each of the companies and to share the development costs. Besides the benefit of sharing the costs, the expected result is a better integration of the toolchain within the organizations, but especially also at the interface between cooperating organizations. For tool vendors and research organizations, the advantage of the approach is in the existence of an integration backbone, which allows the provider to easily integrate new technologies or tools into a working environment that runs in a multitude of customer organizations, instead of providing proprietary solutions for single customers. This does not mean to replace existing tools. There are many tools and technologies, be they commercial or open source that solve perfectly their job and should do so in the future. The initiative targets at an optimal support of the development workflows along with the integration of the relevant tools as well as filling in gaps identified and not solved by existing tooling. This integration glue will be provided as open source software under the umbrella of the Eclipse Foundation. The current state of the initiative is that there is a substantial amount of interested partners which work together to concentrate on clearly scoped topics that are of general interest. E.g., some partners are working on a demonstrator that combines several tools in the area of simulation using DDS as a communication technology. A second topic identified is the management and ingest of massive amounts of data. Here the current challenge are the creation of importer for standard data formats and building up a corresponding infrastructure. A core technology identified is ROS, especially ROS2. As part of OpenADx, Bosch supports the porting of functionality like RVIZ and Rosbag from ROS1 to ROS2. OpenADx is an industry approach to collaborate in non-competitive areas to set up toolchains with less effort to accelerate the development of Autonomous Driving solutions.

Dr. Lars Geyer-Blaumeiser: Since August 2017 I am active in the area of open source services, we answer all questions around open source, starting with open source strategy and management, up to the development of functionalities in open source projects. Previously, I was involved in the development of eclipse-based products in other Bosch units in various roles. I did my doctorate at the TU Kaiserslautern in the area of product lines.

Assert your Java Architecture with ArchUnit

Peter Gafert, TNG

A proper architecture is essential for any major successful software product. However, the documentation, implementation and dissemination of knowledge is an ongoing challenge that seems to grow exponentially with the number of developers involved. How do we prevent our designed architecture from becoming a messy concept at the documentation cemetery? How do we create a common understanding of all involved developers? And how do we prevent the actual and the target architecture from completely diverging and ending in the famous Big Ball of Mud? In the first part, this talk deals with these questions in an abstract manner. In the second part I introduce the Java Open Source Library ArchUnit, which automates many features of code and code structures as simple unit tests and ensures them over the long term. From typical automated checks, such as "Package com.foo can not access package com.bar", to complex rules, such as "Classes annotated with @ClientEndpoint and located in the package my.app.client.v1, can only use methods whose return values are serializable” ArchUnit offers a great deal of flexibility and can be adapted and expanded in many ways to meet your own needs. Many hands-on coding examples that shed light on these possibilities will be given.

Peter Gafert is Senior Consultant at TNG Technology Consulting GmbH and deals with agile software architecture in everyday project life. In particular, how architecture in large projects can be spread across many teams, documented and possible automatically ensured. To facilitate this work, he has launched the open source library ArchUnit and is now continuing to develop it. 

Sports and Art

0.18% or 0.43 points. After a thrilling competition this was the gap that granted our next guests' dream of winning an Olympic Gold Medal. While they were six points behind first place after the first part, the short program, they achieved a new world record in freestyle figure skating, which will be remembered for a long time to come. Our next speakers are figure skaters Aljona Savchenko and Bruno Massot, together with their coach Alexander König. This trio has been working together since the end of 2014 and seems to be unstoppable ever since. While they “only” scored a bronze medal at the World Cup 2016, they achieved a silver medal the following year and a gold medal at the World Cup after their gold medal at the Olympic Games. They did this with a world record score in the overall standings, as well as another world record for freestyle figure skating. In the following hour, we will get an insight into their time together in Oberstdorf as well as the ups and downs they experienced on that journey over the last four years.