# 📓 January 23, 2026 — Tallinn, Estonia

📓 January 23, 2026 — Tallinn, Estonia

Zetes Gala · Estonia Opera House · Valge saal

Yesterday — brains, PKI and good signals

Met Bart Symons, Director of Zetes Confidens Trust Services.
Very sharp mind. One of those people who think three layers deeper than the slide deck.

Bart suggested looking at a Hungarian company called I4P — a small but ambitious HSM manufacturer.
They are interested in working with Zetes on vendor-independent PKI guidelines, which sounds genuinely valuable.

That said, Bart is a bit hesitant due to political risks and instability in the region, so for now the pragmatic choice is to continue with Thales.

Good news: my application to the PKI Consortium (PKIC) has been approved 🎉
We received the official welcome email — feels like the right community to be in.

Another interesting angle: Bart is genuinely curious about introducing more DevOps culture inside Zetes.
This is a place where I can clearly contribute — especially around observability, logging and ELK stack practices.

Today — Gala mode ON 🎭

Tonight we’re heading to the Zetes Gala at the Estonia Opera House, Valge saal.

I’ll be sitting together with:

NameSurnameOrganization
SteveBarbieuxZetes
CeisiPeikNortal AS
EvertVanparysZetes
AntonSokolovZetes

Who’s who at the table

  • Ceisi Peik — Software Developer at Nortal.
    Her bachelor thesis is actually very close to my heart:
    “Configuration of Log Management System using Tallinn University of Technology as an example”
    👉 https://digikogu.taltech.ee/et/Item/695b815a-35fd-490e-8138-c29264941ac4

    Her supervisor was Ago Luberg — my friend, head of the Vanemarendajaks training program, and husband of Kristi,
    who years ago suggested that I join the Vali IT! program.
    Estonia is small. IT Estonia is very small 🙂

  • Steve Barbieux — Deputy Director of P-ID Software Factory at Zetes.
    Definitely want to talk with him about DevOps, development practices and engineering culture.

  • Evert Vanparys — IT Infrastructure Architect at Zetes.
    I’m particularly curious about how they approach Infrastructure as Code, platform design and long-term maintainability.

Learning, tinkering and random discoveries

  • Continuing advanced Git topics as part of the Vanemarendajaks course.
    Discovered Pijul and jj — patch-based alternatives to Git.
    My brain says “interesting”, my muscle memory says “git pull”.

  • Quickly added Swagger to our sample application and deployed it across several free online stacks:

    • Vercel → Render → Prisma
    • Cloudflare Pages → Fly.io → Supabase

  • Realized I already have three Linux Foundation certificates, which led me to discover OpenXPKI (an LF member).
    It’s written in Perl.
    Powerful? Yes.
    Trendy? Let’s just say… debatable.

  • Thinking about Dagster.
    Dagster University offers structured courses with certificates — looks tempting.
    Question remains: curiosity project or strategic skill?

Full guest list — future LinkedIn homework 📇

Show full list (75 people)

Round tables

Table 1

  • Liis Valk — Police and Border Guard Board
  • Doris Põld — ITL Estonia
  • Ats Albre — Nortal
  • Riho Kurg — Zetes
  • Anna Mõtlik — Ministry of Justice and Digital Affairs
  • Ronny Depoortere — Zetes

Table 2

  • Eliisa Sau — PBGB
  • Karoline Põder — Police and Border Guard Board
  • Jerome Coulon — Zetes
  • Margit Aus — RIA
  • Bart Crols — Zetes
  • Ingrid Toonekurg — e-Governance Academy

Table 3

  • Kristel Rünnimeri — Ministry of Justice and Digital Affairs
  • Kerstin Kirsel — Police
  • Michael Abudiore — Zetes
  • Jaan Murumets — RIA
  • Daniil Gussev — B.EST Solutions Estonia
  • Keili Oras — SMIT

Table 4

  • Kalevi Tammistu — Nortal
  • Kalev Pihl — SK ID Solutions
  • Bart Symons — Zetes
  • Anaëlle Moncarey — Zetes
  • Helen Raamat — RIA (Owner of Gov SSO)
  • Mario Maasik — Nortal

Table 5

  • Sergio Soares — Zetes
  • Juri Reitsakas — OIXIO IT
  • Evi Arais — SMIT
  • Triinu Tamm — OIXIO IT
  • Ingrid Bassola — Zetes
  • Raido Aarop — Proud Engineers

Table 6

  • Eline Meesseman — Zetes
  • Helen Naarits — MFA Estonia
  • Elen Kraavik — Ministry of Interior
  • Marika Popp — ESTDEV
  • Jana Krimpe — B.EST Solutions Estonia
  • Vahur Jõesalu — OIXIO IT AS
  • Anne-Ly Ader — MFA Estonia

Table 7

  • Bart Rasschaert — Zetes
  • Tõnis Reimo — RIA
  • Thomas Van Tongerloo — Zetes
  • Rando Vöörmann — OIXIO
  • Marko Kaja — OIXIO IT
  • Tarvi Martens — TM Device OÜ

Rectangular tables

Table 8

  • Viljar Vaht — OIXIO IT AS
  • Jegor Rešetnjak — Zetes
  • Kristjan Kanarbik — OIXIO IT
  • Rando Soomets — OIXIO IT AS

Table 9

  • Sylvain Constancio — Zetes
  • Maiga Võsu — MFA Estonia
  • Jana Laane — Ministry of Interior
  • Maksim Ovtsinnikov — Digital Nation

Table 10

  • Tarmo Linnamägi — Zetes
  • Ivo Suursoo — OIXIO
  • Kert Evert — Greenergy Datacenters
  • Kedi Välba — Aktors

Table 11

  • Tarvi Tihhanov — Zetes
  • Olavi Sikk — Nortal
  • Andrei Kargin — RIA
  • Gerli Roos — MFA Estonia

Table 12

  • Vasileios Botsis — Zetes
  • Kristel Laurson — Police and Border Guard Board
  • Joao Rei — eID easy
  • Paavo-Peeter Ainla — OIXIO IT AS

Sofas

Sofa 13

  • Maroua El Rhazi — Zetes
  • Mathilde Alves Nunes — Zetes
  • Siret Schutting — 314
  • Sandra Franchitti — Zetes

Sofa 14

  • Steve Barbieux — Zetes
  • Ceisi Peik — Nortal AS
  • Evert Vanparys — Zetes
  • Anton Sokolov — Zetes

Sofa 15

  • Daniel Ocampo — Zetes
  • Piret Hirv — e-Governance Academy
  • Quentin Englebert — Zetes
  • Tiina Luts — Nortal AS

🧠 Итог — 3 строки

  1. PKIC membership approved, Bart Symons навёл на I4P и vendor-independent PKI, а Swagger задеплоен на три стека за вечер.
  2. Zetes Gala в Эстонской опере — networking level: «Эстония маленькая, IT-Эстония ещё меньше».
  3. OpenXPKI на Perl напомнил: powerful и trendy — не синонимы. Dagster пока в зоне «curiosity or strategy?».

TOPICS.md — index of themes across the diary. Here: PKI Consortium, Bart Symons, vendor-independent PKI, Zetes, Vanemarendajaks (Ago Luberg) → continued in 2026-01-27 (PKI × Dagster), 2026-01-29 (EJBCA, trust), 2026-02-01 (Bart Simons, PKI consortium PoC), 2026-02-02 (Aletheia, verifiable AI).

Tags / Metadata

#PKI #TrustServices #DevOps #DevSecOps #Git #Learning #HSM #eID #Zetes #Networking