Jiri Soukup studied both electrical engineering and mathematics, and has a PhD degree in technical cybernetics. He spent his career programming and designing algorithms for applications ranging from control of a mining enterprise to connecting millions of transistors on a VLSI chip. He was the manager of the Bell Labs M.H. team that developed the LTX2 layout system –the software which was instrumental for the design of the first 32-bit microprocessor on a single chip and became the workhorse of the chip production in Bell Labs for about a decade. Later, Jiri became one of the founders of Cadence Design Systems, a VLSI CAD company in San Jose, CA. He is now the President of Code Farms Inc., a Canadian company providing methodology and tools for better software design. He is also a sea captain, beekeeper, and a licensed trapper.
Petr Macháček is an experienced C/C++/C#/Java programmer with a master degree from the Czech Technical University, Prague. After working for various companies on information systems and image processing, Petr started his own company in 2012, specializing in image processing and medical applications. In this context, he uses persistent intrusive data structures for high-performance and application-specific data management. Besides all this, he is also a beekeeper, half-marathon runner, and amateur photographer.