Infotec 2019

At Kiewit, innovation happens every day, in our offices and on construction job sites. This breakout session will provide a brief overview of how our corporate culture drives continuous improvement and provide attendees practical methods they can use to ideate and work with a team to develop and realize practical solutions to problems.
The session will have three sections:
- A brief overview of Kiewit corporate culture and why innovation is important (5 minutes)
- The Ball Game activity, a competitive team exercise that demonstrates method analysis (30 minutes)
- An overview and demonstration of Brain Writing, an alternative to brain storming, which is a proven method to quickly generate and categorize ideas (10 minutes)
I'd be happy to provide additional documentation on the Ball Game and Brain Writing, which we facilitate here at the Kiewit Innovation Center in Kiewit University.

 Introduction to decentralized application development, blockchain development tools, and real-world use-cases. This talk gives a high-level overview of blockchain technologies and cryptocurrency and provides developers with the tools to start developing on blockchain.

Will explore the disruption that is coming across industries due to the rapid advances that are being made in machine learning, artificial intelligence, robotics, and predictive machines.  This is based on my 40 years experience in computing and process automation while working with these systems, and extensive reading and study of the area.

In addition to touching on the need for more folks in the discipline and how to prepare yourself for the a more active role in the area I will discuss some of the areas and indistries that are about to be disrupted by the technology and how to prepare both yourself and your company..

More information on my background and a link to last years presentation can be found at:
https://whatsaythedata.com/

AI as a Cloud based Service, will be the main emphasis of this session.  The major cloud vendors (AWS, Azure and GCP) are providing variety of tools, frameworks, and infrastructure for building AI models and applications using rudimentary building blocks at one end of the spectrum to providing AI as a service at the other end.  You will learn the various cloud based AI services available which you could leverage without the complexities of ML, Data Science and deep learning algorithms.  I will familiarize you with the available AI Services so you could then easily identify possible use cases in your domain and potentially implement a AI solution fairly quickly. 
 
This session is NOT intended to teach the foundational and mathematical concepts of ML and AI. No programming or model building will be discussed.

Predictive Analytics eliminates wasted time and headaches by transforming how compute and storage is managed and supported. Through cloud-based predictive analytics and machine learning, this technology predicts and resolves 86% of problems before your business is impacted and ensures up to 99.9999% of guaranteed availability. And, as it analyzes and correlates millions of sensors every second, all users benefit as their systems get smarter and more reliable. Predictive Analytics watches over your infrastructure 24/7 so you don’t have to spend your days, nights, and weekends dealing with compute and storage issues anymore.

Learning about indicated trends, preparing for the future will be critical for businesses and organizations. This session will consider what resources are available for mitigating these threats and how to prepare for them.

EC2 or RDS? RAC or Single Instance? What Instance Size and what Storage Tier? Deploying an Oracle Database on AWS can lead to a confusing quagmire of questions for the DBA new to Amazon Web Services public cloud.

During this presentation, we will discuss the specific architectural limitations and opportunities unique to running an Oracle Database in AWS, with a particular focus on architectural choices that will impact scalability, maintainability, high availability, and performance. We will share our experiences working with clients to migrate their Oracle workloads to the cloud. Examples of successful use case architectures in the AWS public cloud will be explored ranging from the smallest low-cost RDS workloads to the largest RAC on EC2 installations.

You’ll leave with a better understanding of the decisions a DBA has to make when architecting an Oracle Database workloads in the AWS cloiud and a list of questions you should be asking when considering moving your Oracle applications and databases to the AWS cloud. and a checklist of frequent "gotchas" to avoid.

Spending resources to obtain patent protection on innovation is not necessarily the right business decision for every company. In fact, for some companies, patenting can initially be a business detriment and/or an inefficient use of capital. Yet, this is not to say the patent universe is not one of (if not the) greatest learning tool on the planet for sparking white space innovation and driving disruption in an industry.

To demonstrate the disruption white space analysis can have on an industry, this presentation recounts a situation where the presenter used white space analysis to develop a technology centered around a unique solution to a real world problem, secured around 20 patents, and ultimately sold the technology to Garmin Industries. Learnings captured from an in-depth review of the state of the art and the identification of a white space gap led to the identification and refinement of technology primed for a less sophisticated industry. This presentation explores the development of the technology to fill the white space gap, and how that technology became valuable to one of the largest technology companies in the world.

Managing risk is critical to your company's reputation. With tighter Privacy regulations and more breaches happening everyday, managing risk in a smart way is future to being secure.
Third party data breaches, social media data leaks, phishing campaigns, all add up to where personal data is most vulnerable.
What is the key to staying secure - better tool or better people ?

There are many tools available today that can be used to augment your DevOps practices. With Azure DevOps you can pick and choose which tools work best for your existing processes. In this talk, we'll take a look at the tools provided with Azure DevOps such as Azure Boards, Azure Pipelines, Azure Repos, Azure Test Plans, and Azure Artifacts. We will also look at how these tools can integrate with each other to provide value to your software development and delivery workflows. Whether you are delivering software on-premises or in the cloud, building open source or commercial solutions, using .NET, Java, Swift or any other language, you should see what Azure DevOps has to offer.

When building a new office, new restaurant, new public space, etc. the architects and builders are legally required to be complaint with the American with Disabilities Act. In the same line of thinking, successful lawsuits have been filed against both large and small companies arguing that their websites are "places of public accommodation" and thus liable for ADA compliance.  Come discover what is happening in the technical world of ADA compliance, what are some top ADA compliance issues on the web to look out for and how to solve them. 

 By applying lean and agile principles to talent management processes, leaders can limit the resources required to motivate performance and accelerate change. ThriVinci will share best practices for creating a north star, crafting and managing talent-centric processes, and establishing a flexible team accepting of change. After reviewing the foundations of lean, specifically, emphasizing value-added activities, attendees will review structured interview techniques to conduct a customer-focused needs assessment along with tools to diagram and understand process flow to enable identification of bottlenecks that need addressed. After learning how to better assess the current state, ADKAR change management techniques will be highlighted to help leaders build a culture of continuous improvement. Next, ThriVinci will share case studies of organizations utilizing Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) as a framework for ensuring performance outcomes align with organizational goals. Yet most importantly, as management by objectives are often hindered by role ambiguity and the employees’ inability to recognize organizational goals, ThriVinci will end with highlighting people-oriented talent management practices that support lean workflow management processes as talent is the most valuable resource. 

Cybersecurity trends are multifaceted. From a skills gap perspective, there are currently 313,735 vacancies in the United States in both the public and private sectors. Some sources indicate a shortage of 2.5 million cybersecurity employees globally. From a consumer perspective, IoT (Internet of Things) devices will be the greatest concern in the future. Manufacturers want to make money and sell products. Often, security is not taken into consideration as the product is being designed, leaving software and hardware vulnerable to attack. Google is working on a new protocol for IoT. More daunting is the critical infrastructure for the Nation. Attackers have tried to compromise utility providers to gain access to our power grid and other utilities. Compromise of public utilities could be catastrophic if it leads to a major outage.

'The Modern Data and Analytics Platform' -- that mythical creature that eats raw data and spits out gold. Everyone wants one, and everywhere you look, companies are making significant investments in time and money to try and get their hands on one.

Yet even with their buzzword status, the reality is that most BI, Data Analytics, and Data Science initiatives are still considered failures by the organizations that sponsor them. Why is this? The requirement for significant organizational change, rare and in-demand technical skillsets, and a shockingly complex and rapidly shifting technical landscape are certainly contributing factors, but what can we DO about it?

You've seen this scenario before: a lack of business and technical alignment causes a cascade of expensive technical pivots, missed deadlines, stressed developers, development backtracking, and further breakdowns in communication. Add to this the intangible nature of data and the magnitude of business expense for data initiatives, and this cycle can quickly spiral out of control.

Is there a better strategy for data strategy? I believe there is. In this talk, I draw on experience gained and lessons learned while designing and implementing a wide variety of data platforms to present a philosophy and actionable strategies that business leaders and technologists can use to make their next data initiative an extraordinary success.

"I don't have to be faster than the bear, I only have to be faster than you" is a common saying used to denote the idea that you don't have to be the best/fastest and instead just have to be better than others. This presentation is based around the same idea for security. You don't have to be the best, just better than the other 99% of systems out there to dramatically reduce your risk of being hacked. This talk is based around how to help a Small/Medium Business reduce their risk of being hacked. The goal is to help a company figure out ways to improve their security without dramatically impacting their budgets or processes.

Understand parallel skill sets that potential employees might have that aren't exactly what you have in the job description, and

Understand the cultural makeup of a data science team, how that may vary from your current culture, and how to combat this to attract the talent you want and need.

Many organizations have strict compliance controls such as HiTrust, SOC 2, and PCI to help ensure software development teams meet all requirements before they can go to production. Traditionally these compliance controls require manual approvals and processes that can delay deployments for days, weeks, or even months.
In the session, I will explain techniques for understanding the existing controls and how to achieve the same compliance through automation while allowing compliance groups to be able to review and audit each step of the process. We will explore how compliance can be incorporated into the software delivery process addressing typical controls such as separation of duties, secure code, and infrastructure compliance.

The strategy of how Business Intelligence (BI) is used within organizations has changed significantly over recent years. As companies move along their journeys to mature their BI practices, the hurdles of business scalability and responsiveness have become critical impediments to enabling a data-driven culture. With Microsoft Power BI, companies have the capabilities to enable everyone in the organization to analyze their data, ask the questions that will help them run their business better, and act based on the insights they find.
Join us to hear our real-world experience and our perspective as to why Microsoft Power BI is the best approach for data analytics capabilities. Microsoft Power BI capabilities allow business users to connect to hundreds of data sources, clean and transform data prior to analysis, leverage natural language features to more easily query data, create real-time dashboards, and publish reports and visualizations to a broader audience across a range of devices.

Topics include:
· Understand the business value of Microsoft Power BI
· Examples of real-world solutions leveraging Microsoft Power BI
· Demo the capabilities of Microsoft Power BI

Developers, do you have innovative ideas that go unheard? Product Owners, does it feel like the solutions you deliver lack ingenuity? We have agile stories, empowered teams, and the latest in technology and yet we all know we could be doing better, we just don’t know how to unleash the fury. A surefire approach you are afraid to try is ShipIt Days.

ShipIt Days are an approach and a mindset to allow your team the opportunity to capitalize on innovation and their natural desire to do good things. Inspired by Google’s 20% time, 3M’s 15% time, and Atlassian’s ShipIt Days, we have been putting a new spin on this “free time” concept for years to deliver innovative, motivated and sustainable results.

In this crash course, we will cover the What, How and Why of ShipIt Days. Our goal is to arm you with the tools and enthusiasm to fight for these activities on your teams. From communicating the idea to practical applications we offer you our real world experiences and the approaches we have successfully used on our projects.

If you’re a developer, project manager or product owner this talk is for you.

Securely operating in the cloud through a business-accepted operating model is easier than you think. Cut through the chaos, standardize requirements, and leverage relationships to streamline security & the cloud.

In a cloud-first era, enterprises are continually enhancing technology to keep up with customer demands. With new, faster and more functional technology comes expanded information security & risk management complexities. In order to bring order to chaos, it’s critical to understand how to secure a multi-cloud model, build a repeatable operation model & leverage efficiencies. Learn how to fine tune your security initiatives to effectively cover your most important assets. Put your existing security processes & solutions to work protecting your data from multi-cloud environments and digital initiatives to container and application development platforms.

Organizations have also realized they need to realign their IT skillsets to take advantage of the cloud & automation shift. Learn first-hand how enterprises are taking an active role to adjust their security services to meet regulatory, customer and business demands, as well as leveraging calculated risk to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the security program.
Learning objectives:
· Understand the gaps between public cloud base packages and what’s required to maintain the same level of security and granularity as on premise infrastructure
· Implement, maintain or enhance your cloud security operating model
· Describe common business drivers & expectations of cloud services.
· Better understand how to tune existing initiatives, plug gaps, and improve security program efficacy

After a Tech degree and a Masters in Econ, when first presented with the challenge to run a Machine Learning team, I was stopped in my tracks. I was on board with statistical models and predictive analytics, but how could machines learn? What was the “black box” between data inputs and outputs that, especially today, is causing so much sensation, anxiety and optimism? This is no longer a mystery for us and hopefully, what we learned in many months, I can shorten for you in a single presentation. In this session we will discuss the key ingredients for a successful Machine Learning start:
• What do we mean when we say “Machine Learning”?
• What you need to get ML going in your organization and the executive support for such initiative?
• How do you obtain the right talent or, if you are the talent, how do you transition in a Machine Learning role?
• When all is said and done, how do you deploy your Machine Learning efforts?
There is a real human and financial impact behind all the hype of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. If we position ourselves and our society accordingly, the age of AI will make a bigger positive impact than any other economic revolution in the past. Let’s help you begin this journey.

The largest challenge in successfully executing IT transformations is not in technology, but in getting people to use it. OCM ensures that the value and benefits from new technology is fully achieved by enabling people to proactively adopt to them. At an era where technology can be deployed quicker than people are able or willing to change, OCM would ensure that adoption to new technology amongst all stakeholders is a detailed and smooth process.
The session would focus upon how to utilize OCM to successfully get impacted stakeholders to adopt to new technology and also boost productivity as a result.