Join us at SOFTCON 2026, the biggest software industry conference in the Philippines! Happening on October 26-28, SOFTCON brings together tech leaders, industry experts, and software professionals for 3 days of learning and networking.
Shaping the Future of Philippine Software
Innovating for All.

This talk presents a Spec-Driven Development approach in which system use cases are the central artifact. A system use case describes observable system behavior and acts as a stable contract for the application. Code is derived from these use cases instead of treating the code itself as the source of truth.
An AI agent is used as a supporting tool to generate and update code and tests from system use cases. The agent operates within a harness of skills, MCP servers, and guidelines. Through concrete examples, the session demonstrates how backend logic, database access, and UI behavior can evolve together while staying consistent with the use cases.
Finally, the session shares concrete workflows and lessons learned from real-world enterprise projects, including limitations and trade-offs of using AI in this way.


Discussion includes how to design agentic workflows, define meaningful evaluation metrics, and measure performance beyond simple accuracy. Topics include task completion, reasoning quality, tool selection, LLM-as-a-Judge, automated evaluation pipelines, human evaluation, regression testing, and production monitoring.


This session isn't about whether AI will replace testers. That debate is boring. This is about what happens after AI takes over the routine work and whether you're building the skills that actually matter now.
Through real implementations (and a few experiments that failed badly), we'll look at where AI genuinely helps in quality engineering, where it quietly goes wrong, and why the humans who understand both will be the ones running the show.
Because AI doesn't think. It predicts. And there's a massive difference, especially when your production environment is on fire.

In this session, we will learn how to implement the AG‑UI protocol to easily connect UI apps with pre‑built agents. No matter what framework you used to build your agents, AG‑UI will handle the work for you!

This session explores how teams can move from secure coding to secure software delivery by embedding security into design, development, testing, deployment, and continuous improvement. Participants will learn practical approaches to secure-by-design thinking, automated security checks, dependency management, secrets protection, AI-generated code risks, and building a culture where security becomes part of everyday engineering decisions.

In this session, discover Spec-Driven Development (SDD)—a pragmatic methodology that shifts your role from writing raw syntax to engineering structured intent, using machine-readable specifications to force AI agents to respect your architectural guardrails.

This session introduces Fabric Data Transformer (FDT), a modern data transformation solution designed to streamline data preparation within the Microsoft Fabric ecosystem. FDT empowers organizations to simplify complex data transformation processes through intuitive, scalable, and efficient workflows, enabling faster delivery of analytics, reporting, and AI initiatives.
Participants will gain insights into the common challenges of data transformation, the role of Microsoft Fabric in modern data architectures, and how FDT helps bridge the gap between raw data and business value. The session will also showcase practical use cases, best practices, and real-world scenarios demonstrating how organizations can accelerate their data journey while reducing complexity, cost, and time-to-insight.
Whether you are a business leader, data professional, IT manager, or technology enthusiast, this talk will provide a practical understanding of how modern data transformation platforms can serve as a foundation for successful AI and data-driven decision-making.
By the end of the session, participants will be able to:
Understand the challenges of modern data preparation and transformation.
Appreciate the role of Microsoft Fabric in a unified data platform strategy.
Identify opportunities to improve data quality and analytics readiness.
Learn how Fabric Data Transformer simplifies data transformation workflows.
Explore practical applications of transformed data for reporting, business intelligence, and AI initiatives.


Beyond the project details, this session will share how our initiatives secured a government‑funded grant, showcasing a successful blueprint for collaboration between academia and industry—including both traditional software firms and game development studios—to push the boundaries of what’s possible in the local tech ecosystem.

This session presents empirical results from building the same production-grade QA intelligence system across all three frameworks, then connecting them through Google’s Agent-to-Agent (A2A) protocol. The system accepts a software feature specification and autonomously produces a risk register, a prioritized test strategy scored by a proprietary VRTQ framework, and executable Playwright test scaffolds. Every implementation is benchmarked across six dimensions: developer experience, architectural expressiveness, tool integration, observability, token efficiency, and failure behavior.
The talk then demonstrates cross-framework interoperability via A2A, wiring all three into a single pipeline. Attendees leave with a practical decision framework, benchmark data, and a working blueprint for building framework-agnostic agentic systems.

We’ll break down the “Holy Trinity” of contract pain points—Review, Tracking, and Management—and show how LegalTech can move beyond generic AI applications to solutions that truly matter. Unlike the classic startup mistake of building first and hoping for adoption, in LegalTech the demand is clear: when developers build what domain experts ask for, the market follows.
With over 75,000 active lawyers and 578,000 SEC‑registered corporations in the Philippines alone, the opportunity is massive. This talk challenges developers to push past surface‑level automation and create tools that transform legal practice into something faster, smarter, and genuinely impactful.
Modern applications often assume reliable internet access and cloud infrastructure. This talk follows the speaker's ongoing exploration of local-first system architectures for disconnected and resource-constrained environments. This session will share experiments, design decisions, and lessons from exploring offline‑first, edge processing, and hardware‑aware systems.

Product engineers still code, but they think in terms of outcomes, users, and business value. The ones who thrive won’t be those who wrote the most functions, but those who understood the why behind every feature they shipped.
This session explores how AI is reshaping the identity of engineers, why product‑driven thinking is becoming essential, and how developers can evolve from function writers to outcome shapers in the age of intelligent automation.

This session outlines the technical requirements for building resilient, high throughput scraping pipelines capable of operating undetected overtime.
Technical Breakdown
- Architect Execution Pipelines: Evaluate Headless versus Headed Chrome with Xvfb, direct API endpoint requests, and extension-based scrapers. Implement stealth automation using frameworks like Playwright, Patchright, and curl_cffi.
- Browser Searching: Use locally hosted services like duckduckgo search and SearXNG to save on Google Search or Serper credits
- Bypass Automated Verification: Deploy audio processing pipelines using ffmpeg, Faster Whisper, and Google STT alongside visual models like CLIP to programmatically solve verification challenges.
- Extract High-Value Data: Leverage Optical Character Recognition (OCR) engines like PyMuPDF, Tesseract, and RapidOCR strictly for data extraction from documents and images.
- Manage Digital Identities: Configure residential proxy rotation, spoof granular browser fingerprints to execute session trust-building strategies.
- Orchestrate and Scale Behavior: Transition your architecture from a single worker to multi-threaded concurrency, and ultimately scale across multi-VM deployments.
🏆 The Challenge
Data scraping often operates in a legally grey area. Explore this space practically by putting your new skills to the test on a special practice target website designed for you to tackle in your free time at the end of the session. Compete to see who can navigate the architecture, bypass the defenses, and retrieve the most complete information in the fastest time.

This talk reframes that anxiety as a horizon—not a destination to reach, but a line to steer by—and argues that QA’s most durable skill was never the green checkmark, but adaptability. We’ll explore how uncertainty can be reframed as flexibility, and flexibility as navigation—so you leave not with a fixed map, but with a way to keep moving toward what’s next, even when the ground won’t hold still.
AI & The Next Frontier
Simon is an expert in AI‑Driven Software Development, Java, and Software Architecture, and the creator of the AI Unified Process (unifiedprocess.ai). With over 30 years of experience as a software architect, developer, and consultant, he helps teams adopt AI‑driven development practices through Spec‑Driven Development and the AI Unified Process.
His work focuses on enabling organizations to build maintainable, scalable, and long‑living business applications by placing specifications at the center of development and leveraging AI as a structured accelerator.
Recognized for his contributions to the global developer community, Simon is a Java Champion, Vaadin Champion, and Oracle ACE Pro.
Nithin is the founder of Synapse QA, a community space for test automation professionals and software quality advocates.
He has over a decade of experience in the IT field, with a strong focus on building high-performing teams and ensuring Quality Engineering excellence in projects.
In addition to his role as Head of QA at Lodgify, Nithin conducts test automation workshops and empowers professionals to share their insights through Synapse QA, fostering collaboration and innovation in the testing community.
Seiji is a senior developer based in the Netherlands, a Microsoft MVP, an Auth0 Ambassador, and one of the community leaders of Angular PH.
He is actively involved in organizing tech meetups, mentoring developers, and sharing knowledge through tutorials on his website, seijivillafranca.com. As a speaker at various local and international conferences, he focuses on JavaScript development and Microsoft technologies.
Seiji is also a published author in the field of full-stack web development, further demonstrating his passion for community building and technical excellence.
With over 23 years in the IT industry and 13 years in information security, Benjie has held key leadership roles including Deputy CISO and DPO of Voyager (Maya) and Chief Information Security Officer of MakatiSoft Inc (SWAPOOLABS,INC). He is the Founder and Head of Consulting at Sophie’s IT Services (SITESPhil) and holds multiple global InfoSec certifications such as ISACA’S CISM, ISC2’S CISSP, EC-COUNCIL’S LPT, COMPTIA’S CASP, MILE2’S CSWAE, ETC.
Passionate about building a more IT- and InfoSec-aware Philippines, he also founded Hackin’ Ka Na Lang (HKNL), a free event dedicated to sharing knowledge and strengthening the local tech community.
Allan Mangune is a seasoned professional with over two decades of expertise in secure software development and digital transformation. Holding a Master of Science in Computer Information Systems and being a Certified Public Accountant, he uniquely blends financial acumen with deep technical knowledge.
Since entering the software development field in 2000, Allan has emphasized secure coding practices, further solidified by his Certified Ethical Hacker v5 certification. He has guided numerous clients through their digital transformation journeys, ensuring robust security measures.
As a Certified ScrumMaster and Prince2 Agile Foundation holder, Allan has provided Agile Project Management training to well-known companies for over ten years. His contributions to the ASP.NET community were recognized with a ten-year Microsoft MVP award, reflecting his leadership and expertise in Microsoft technologies.
As a former Microsoft Certified Trainer, he has empowered corporate clients with comprehensive IT skills. His certifications include Azure Fundamentals, Azure Security Fundamentals, MCSE, MCDBA, and MCAD.
Allan’s passion extends to his hobby of assembling unmanned aerial vehicles, merging his love for technology with hands-on creativity. His career is characterized by a dedication to secure coding practices, digital transformation, and professional development, making him a valuable asset in any tech-driven initiative.
Calen is the Founder and Chief Scientist of O&B, and serves as a Board Member of the PSIA where he acts as Capability Director. He is also a member of the CHED Technical Committee for Computer Science, helping shape the direction of computer science education in the Philippines.
He is the co-founder of the Filipino Java Users Group, a founding board member of PICAB, and the co-founder and Director of Edusuite, an edtech company driving innovation in education management systems.
Notably, he was the first to teach Agile and Test-Driven Development in the Philippines, and currently serves as a Senior Professional Lecturer at De La Salle University, where he continues to mentor and inspire the next generation of software engineers.
Mesut has over 15 years of experience in Industrial Automation, IoT platforms, SaaS/PaaS and Cloud Services, the Defense Industry, Autonomous Mobile Robots, and Embedded and Software Applications.
In addition to his proficiency in CMMI and experience with Scrum and PMP, he has taken on various roles—such as Quality Owner, Hiring Manager, and Chapter Lead—in multinational projects.
He has expertise in test automation and integration with CI/CD platforms to support continuous testing. Furthermore, he has been facilitating test processes and developing test strategies and lifecycles for various projects.
He is a frequent international speaker, a recipient of best presentation awards, and a member of various program committees.
With over 27 years of experience in technology, Mr. Eugene Paden has consistently delivered transformative business solutions aligned with strategic goals, helping drive performance and revenue growth. He is known for his work in research, solution architecture, product development, and delivery, with a strong passion for building high-performing teams and driving employee growth.
Eugene brings deep technical expertise in cloud services, OTT media, systems and network administration, database management, data analytics, object-oriented programming, and agile methodologies. He has led major digital transformation initiatives for global enterprises such as ABS-CBN, Zee Media Corporation (USA), Microsoft, and Colgate-Palmolive.
Hybrid conference and expo
Oct. 26-27: Online | Oct. 28: Online + SMX Aura
Get the early bird rates!
Software professionals (software engineers, developers/programmers, data engineers, DevOps engineers, QAs, UX/UI designers), data scientists, AI specialists, project managers, security/infrastructure professionals, product managers, directors, CXOs, IT faculty and students, and more.
You can register and pay online through our checkout page (we accept bank deposit/fund transfer, PayPal, and Visa/MasterCard). Or you can register offline by submitting our registration form.
We offer several ticket options, including Stream (online for 3 days), D3 Live (F2F on Day 3 only), and Full XP (online for 2 days and F2F on Day 3).
Yes! We offer discounted tickets for PSIA member companies, members of the academe (deans, faculty, and students), and government agencies. We also give an additional 10% group discount. Just apply the relevant coupon code/s upon checkout or coordinate offline with our registration team.
Absolutely! SOFTCON 2026 offers virtual tables, speed networking, and one-on-one chats online as well as F2F networking opportunities on Day 3.