Woto Team

Ian Collins
CEO

Ian is a technology-focused business development professional with sales, marketing and general management experience in start-ups, small businesses and large corporates, with expertise in developing new propositions (esp. scalable internet based solutions),  taking them to market, establishing early sales and building channels / strategic partnerships.

He began his career at the BBC where he trained as an engineer. He moved into production and editing for a brief spell; ran a private recording business and then became involved with designing and managing TV and Radio studio installations. He held positions  as a Technical Director for a start-up technology business and Sales Manager for an AIM listed instrumentation business.

In the mid 80’s Ian co-founded Neural Technologies, a software solutions business selling business intelligence solutions to blue chip organisations such as RAC, Thomas Cook, BP, Mars and GSK. Having built the business Ian sold his shareholding and in  the mid 90’s bought a hi-tech electronics manufacturing business supplying computer disc drive and telecoms components to blue chip players in Japan, China and US. He also invested in a security business selling access control and intruder alarm systems  internationally and after 3 years sold the business to the Chloride group.

Since that time he has held Board level appointments in a number of technology based start-ups including two ventures within BT. Ian was also appointed COO of a £50m group-wide Information Management (IM) practice supplying a mix of IM software and consultancy  to public and private sector organisations.

For the last three years Ian has spent his time building the IE Holdings Group of businesses which include IE Partnerships, a technology focused business consultancy; Screama (now rebranded Email-Smart) a new type of SaaS marketing solution which uses  everyday Outlook email; Sibilo, a custom software development business based in Istanbul, the DataSmart proposition (application development platform upon which Woto is developed) and of course Woto.

Ian holds a number of directorships and is an active member of the IOD. If he had more spare time he would become a better golfer, start a jazz band and visit France more often.

Ekin Caglar
CTO

Ekin began his career as co-founder of one of the first web design organisations in Turkey, Cyberbug. He was presented as the ‘ideal webmaster’ by the country’s leading newspaper following  the media frenzy around one of Cyberbug’s projects.

Ekin then worked on several large-scale commercial IT projects as a consultant before joining the European Union-funded eTrainer project at the Centre for Research in Information Management (CRIM) where he developed and provided e-Commerce training to  SMEs in Manchester and later on to UMIST and University of Surrey students.

With 3 of his co-workers at CRIM, Ekin then founded his second venture, a software development business called Sibilo. Within its 11 years of existence, Sibilo has sold compliance solutions to multinational corporations and UK public authorities, as well as e-commerce solutions to SMEs. It has also developed a unique software development model (SSDM)  that allows software and database to be created automatically from models and diagrams.

Today Sibilo is a Microsoft Certified Partner and an early adopter of Microsoft’s Azure Cloud platform. It is also certified to ISO 9001:2000 and is a member of the UK Web Design Association.

Ekin has a BSc (Hons) degree in Computing Science from UMIST. He has a wide range of expertise, from programming to networking,  and specialises on Internet applications and Databases.

Ekin is also a professional composer and producer. He is a member of the Institute of Directors (IOD) and the Performing Right Society      (PRS).

Yusuf Comez
Chief Software Architect

Yusuf started his early career as a developer three years before graduating in Computer Science & Engineering from Yıldız Technical University – one of Turkey’s top technology Universities.

After graduating, he worked for a new business - called Elikasu, on large development projects for blue chips such as Toyota and CocaCola. Following this Yusuf established his own business – Codera, offering custom software development for a wide range  of industries.

About three years ago, Ekin and Yusuf met and agreed to set up Sibilo Turkey: Codera was effectively absorbed into the new business. Today Sibilo TR is a 75% owned subsidiary of Sibilo UK.

Throughout his 7 year career, Yusuf has been instrumental in designing new and innovative approaches (system architectures), pushing the boundaries of technology and exploring conceptually new ways of doing things. For the last two years he has been  running the DataSmart development program.

Yusuf’s programming skills and knowledge are extensive and include Java, JSP, Struts, Spring, C#, ASP.NET, MVC3, NHibernate, OOP, SOA, UML and SaaS Applications.

In his youth, Yusuf had a budding career as an amateur player in stage productions and today he is an avid theatregoer.

Oguz Erkan
Product Manager

Oguz is an award winning software developer. 

Between 2002 and 2008, he took on another challenge and went into bookmaking. He quickly rised through the ranks in Bwin before becoming the Head Bookmaker in Stravinci srl.

In 2008, he combined his two skills and started leading the development of Europe's leading fixed odds sports betting software, BetApp, and managed the product for the following 5 years.

Oguz is known for designing and managing complex technical roadmaps that involve multiple stakeholders and multi-disciplinary teams across various locations, as well as breaking things before anybody else notices.

When he is not designing the next killer feature for Woto, Oguz could be found long-distance cycling across Italy.

Abdülkadir Barlık
Team Leader

Kadir is our all-things-Microsoft-guru. 

He has worked as a senior trainer in Microsoft technologies in Turkey’s largest technology training institutions, Bilge Adam and Edutime, creating and delivering courses on .Net Framework,  C#, MS Sql Server, Asp.Net, Linq, Web Services, Ado.Net, OOP, XML, Java, Oracle, JQuery, Html, CSS, Javascript, and various other web-related technologies.

He maintains one of country's most pominent blogs on software development. 

Kadir has also worked on the development of numerous commercial web projects throughout his career and holds the following qualifications:

In his spare time Kadir seeks Microsoft certifications to add to his collection.

Onur Kaya
Senior Developer

Onur joined our team from FNSS Defense Systems, right after completing a project in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia) where he was the IT Supervisor resonsible for managing all departmental  activities.

Prior to that, Onur worked as a software trainer at Bilge Adam where (following in Kadir's footsteps) he was certified for the following:

Onur has also worked as a developer at Designs 4 Designs and Everything Creative.

Onur enjoys trekking, world cinema and and he is interested in everything about mathematics. 

Yusuf Aktürk
Software Developer

After graduating from Eastern Mediterranean University where he got his BsC in Information Technologies, Yusuf worked on Istanbul University's Student Information System project  before joining Sibilo in 2011.

At Sibilo, he got to work on multi-million dollar software projects such as online gaming and ERP using the SSDM methodology and various Microsoft technologies.

Yusuf is on his way to becoming an expert on .Net MVC  (Razor engine) and JQuery applications. He is responsible for a lot of the customer-facing features of Woto, such as widgets.

Yusuf enjoys watching and playing football both in real life and on Play Station. He is also a keen follower of the Popular Science magazine.

Nazım, for his wonderful designs