Saloni Garg

Senior Software Engineer

Saloni Garg is a Senior Machine Learning Architect based in Mountain View, CA, specializing in building GPU-accelerated ML systems, scalable LLM infrastructure, and production-grade AI-powered applications. With deep experience in high-performance inference, Saloni has designed multi-node GPU-serving pipelines for low-latency LLMs and developed observability platforms that monitor every stage of vector-based retrieval workflows—from ingestion to generation. Saloni is the author of an upcoming book on Retrieval-Augmented Generation and holds a patent for an AI-based surveillance system. Her research has been published in IEEE and Springer, and her work has earned her accolades like the Red Hat International Women in Open Source Award and Google’s Venkat Panchapakesan Scholarship.

Alkin Tezuysal

Director of Services at Altinity

Alkin Tezuysal has extensive experience in open-source relational databases, working in various sectors for large corporations. With over three decades of industry experience, he has acquired skills for managing large projects from the ground up to production. For the past decade, he's been focused on e-commerce, SaaS, and MySQL technologies. Alkin has managed and architected database topologies for high-volume sites. He has several years of experience in 24X7 support, operational tasks, and improving database systems for major companies. He has led global operations teams on Tier 1/2/3 support for MySQL customers. He holds the Director of Services position at Altinity Inc. He's appointed 100 top open-source database influencers worldwide. He's also co-authored the MySQL Cookbook 4th Edition. He has co-authored a book called Database Design and Modeling with MySQL and PostgreSQL. - Most Influential in Database Community 2022 - The Redgate 100 - Author of MySQL Cookbook, 4th Edition 2022 - O'Reilly Media, Inc. - MySQL Rockstar 2023 - Oracle (MySQL Community) - Oracle ACE Pro 2025 - Oracle ACE Program - Author of Database Design and Modeling with PostgreSQL and MySQL 2024

Bob van Luijt

Co-Founder and CEO of Weaviate

Co-Founder and CEO of Weaviate. I 😍 all things related to 💻 software, 🧠 machine learning, 📊digital business, 👐 open-source, 🧢 fashion, and 🎵 music.

Chi Fujii

Software Engineer at FerretDB

Chi has over a decade of experience building backend systems, primarily using Go in recent years. She is committed to open-source and focuses on improving the contributor experience. She has diverse experience from living and working across the globe, including New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Portugal and others. She currently resides in Japan.

Evgeniya Sukhodolskaya

Developer Advocate at Qdrant

Developer advocate at Qdrant, based in Munich.

Gunjan Juyal

Staff Software Engineer at Google

14 years of experience in Data Engineering, Distributed Systems, and Agile and Lean methods for creating innovative products. Built teams, infra and culture at startups – among first 10 employees at Zeta, now a unicorn. Managed scale and tech transformations in large enterprises.

Maxim Salnikov

Digital and App Innovation Business Lead at Microsoft

As the leader of Microsoft’s Digital & Application Innovation business in 10 Western European countries, Maxim focuses on AI-driven application modernization and developer productivity. His work spans sales enablement, Azure go-to-market strategies, program orchestration, and product advocacy, all contributing to the business’s strong growth and profitability. Beyond his corporate role, Maxim is a recognized leader in the developer community. He has organized major technical conferences, including ngVikings, Mobile Era, and PWA Summit, and frequently delivers keynote and technical talks. Believing in the “Protégé Effect”—that the best way to learn is to teach—he actively shares knowledge through speaking engagements (200+ events across 26 countries), blogging (225,000+ post views), and mentoring experts in technical publishing. Maxim is also a key contributor to industry standards, serving on the Green Software Foundation’s Community Working Group to promote sustainable software practices and participating in W3C working groups shaping web application development. His expertise spans: Leadership in cloud, generative AI, and developer tools Developer engagement, product marketing, and go-to-market strategies Community building and developer advocacy with measurable business impact Full-stack web development, LLM-powered applications, and prompt engineering Public speaking, workshops, blogging, and technical demonstrations Organizing large-scale technical events (both virtual and in-person) Open-source contributions and personal OSS library maintenance Maxim’s passion lies in enabling developers, fostering innovation, and shaping the future of software.

Peter Zaitsev

Founder at Percona, Coroot and 10+ startups

Peter Zaitsev is an entrepreneur and co-founder of Percona. As one of the foremost experts on Open Source strategy and databases optimization, Peter leveraged both his technical vision and entrepreneurial skills to grow Percona from a two-person shop to one of the most respected open source companies in the business. Now Peter continues as a Board Member & Advisor in a range of open source startups. Peter is a co-author of High Performance MySQL: Optimization, Backups, and Replication, one of the most popular books on MySQL performance.

Sergey Nikolaev

CEO at Manticore Software

Sergey Nikolaev is the CEO of Manticore, leading his team in building Manticore Search, one of the fastest and most user-friendly databases for search. As both an Ivinco Partner and Chief Technology Officer, Sergey oversees both the Development and Operations teams, working closely with clients to deliver tailored solutions. With over 13 years of experience in the IT and software industry—and more than 9 years with Ivinco and Percona—he has developed a deep understanding of the unique technological needs of businesses and the importance of precise, effective recommendations. At Ivinco, Sergey and his team specialize in audits, software recommendations, and the development of custom software and IT systems designed to meet the specific needs of their clients. His passion for databases and performance benchmarks led him to create and lead DB Benchmarks—a framework and platform dedicated to providing fair and transparent open-source database benchmarks. With a strong focus on database performance, search technologies, and software optimization, Sergey continues to drive innovation in the industry.

Zain Hasan

Together.ai

AI builder & teacher | Lecturer | AI/ML @ Together AI | ℕΨ Engineering @ UofT | AI Papers & resources | ex-Vector DBs, Data Scientist, Health Tech |

Shivay Lamba

Senior Developer Experience Engineering at Couchbase

GSoC Mentor | Web Dev | Machine Learning | Open Source | Databases | Vector Search | Couchbase