Ilkka Mäkitalo
CPO, Co-founder at Jyväskylä Big Band
Greater Jyvaskyla Area Finland
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolIlkka Mäkitalo is a seasoned entrepreneur and product leader with 16 years of experience building digital facilitation and organizational change platforms as co-founder and current CPO of Howspace. He blends hands-on technical chops—contributions to core open-source projects like Node.js and the RXTX serial-port library—with strategic product and partnership leadership across consulting, learning, and facilitation ecosystems. His background in systemic leadership, digital media and education informs a people-centered approach to product design that enables dialogic, transparent ways of working. Ilkka also runs early-stage investments and leads a long-running cultural project as conductor of the Jyväskylä Big Band, reflecting a mix of technical rigor, organizational theory and creative practice. Notably, his open-source fixes addressed subtle cross-platform and memory-leak issues in widely used runtimes, underscoring a penchant for stabilizing critical infrastructure.
16 years of coding experience
29 years of employment as a software developer
M.Ed. Education, M.Ed. Education at University of LaplandSystemic Multiversity: Systemic Organizational Consultation, Systemic Multiversity: Systemic Organizational Consultation at Systemic MultiversityMSc. Systemic Leadership and organisational studies, MSc. Systemic Leadership and organisational studies at KCC Foundation, University of BedfordshireDigital Media Information Technology, Digital Media Information Technology at University of JyväskyläLife Long Learner Graduate School Doctoral studies Education, Life Long Learner Graduate School Doctoral studies Education at Network of Finnish UniversitiesLapin musiikkiopisto
English
Github Skills (17)
debugging10
debug10
javascript10
multiplatform10
testing10
cross-platform10
c1110
url-parsing10
java10
c1710
javas10
nodejs10
serial-communication10
linux9
http9
Programming languages (12)
Github contributions (5)
nodejs/node
Apr 2015 - Dec 2016
Node.js JavaScript runtime ✨🐢🚀✨
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:54 PRs, 37 pushes, 479 comments in 1 year 8 months
Contributions summary:Ilkka contributed to the Node.js core library by fixing several bugs related to URL parsing and formatting. These fixes addressed issues like incorrect handling of special characters in URLs, inconsistent port values in `url.resolveObject`, and preserving authentication in `url.resolve`. Additionally, the user resolved a memory leak within the HTTPS agent by modifying `_http_agent.js` and adding a test case to ensure proper socket management. The user also updated a test file related to cluster worker initialization for better reliability.
windowsnode-jsjavascriptlinuxruntime
rxtx/rxtx
Sep 2009 - Sep 2009
rxtx - a Java cross platform wrapper library for the serial port
Role in this project:Backend Developer
Backend DeveloperContributions:11 commits in 2 days
Contributions summary:Ilkka contributed to the `rxtx/rxtx` repository, a Java cross-platform wrapper for the serial port. Their work included adding support for Xcode 3.x project files and cleaning up code. The user also fixed build issues on Linux systems, implemented return value checking for file I/O calls, and extended timing debug fixes to include Windows builds. These changes indicate a focus on improving cross-platform compatibility, code quality, and debugging capabilities of the project.
serial-portsserialserialportrs232serialization
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