Chris Davenport

Roadblock Title:

Ledgers made of lightning: Reinventing tradition to forge the future of finance

Time:

Wednesday - 2:00 PM (Windows)

Abstract:

The demand for instantaneous financial data necessitates a fundamental shift in how we architect accounting systems. In this session, we will talk through the technical challenges confronted in building a modern financial core, how these relate to existing technology, as well as how the solutions can be found within the history of the industry. History is a tool that can inform decision-making, empowering better choices, understanding why those decisions were made, and what their impacts were on the systems we use daily. These parallels between financial problems and technical problems then allow us to apply our technical skillsets more effectively to resolve the difficulties inherent to the domain without contorting the technology. This allows us to take a look at how to revisit ledger and subledger accounting, “end of day”, and settlement with a new perspective for how we can approach these in a real-time world.

Bio:

Chris Davenport is a Principal Software Engineer at Jack Henry, where he blends cutting edge technical solutions with strong banking fundamentals. He’s passionate about leading engineering teams to empower financial institutions to modernize their systems. His creativity, enthusiasm, and outspoken nature foster strong collaboration between teams, quick escalation when challenges emerge, and a community focused on learning over perfection.

Outside of work, Chris is an active contributor to the open-source community where he creates and maintains purely functional streaming libraries for Http clients and servers.Chris lives in the Pacific Northwest where he spends his free time chasing his boisterous toddler, reading the latest fantasy novel, and hiking with his wife and son.