The first session in our series on Application Modernization with Serverless Technologies was presented by Amazon Web Services (AWS).  The session was led by Rory Richardson, Head of Business Development for Serverless at AWS, and she will discuss how enterprises can apply DevOps, microservices and serverless to innovate faster, at scale. Learn how Amazon got from four to over 60 million deployments per year and benefit from their key learnings from building modern apps at Amazon.com. Covering the transition from a monolithic application to event-driven serverless microservices, this session will dive into the reasons more and more Amazon customers are choosing the serverless operational model. By leveraging AWS Lambda, AWS Step Functions, AWS Fargate, SNS, SQS, and the entire serverless portfolio, customers are able to innovate faster and focus more on their core businesses.
 
Rory has been driving business development with some of the fastest growing and innovative services at AWS such as Aurora and DynamoDB. She is now head of business development for Amazon’s Serverless technologies which include Lambda, StepFunctions and API Gateway, as well as, enterprise messaging such as AmazonMQ, SNS, and SQS. These technologies enable customers to move to a microservice architecture. A serverless microservice architecture lets companies increase business agility, reduce undifferentiated heavy lifting, and optimize costs by paying only for what they use.

WHEN: April 5, 2019 from 8 AM - 10 AM

WHERE: Sphere Of Influence, 1420 Spring Hill Rd., Lobby Level, McLean, VA 22102
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In domain after domain, Deep Learning is outperforming both people and competing algorithms at practical tasks:

• ImageNet Hit@5 object recognition error rates have fallen 88% since 2011 and can now recognize objects in photos faster and better than you can
• All major speech recognition engines (Google's, Baidu's, Siri, etc.) automatically translate a speaker's voice in one language to the same voice speaking another language.
• Machines can now beat you at Atari and Go

 
These breakthroughs are visible as both product offerings (Siri, Real-time Ray-tracing on NVIDIA Turing cards, Netflix Recommendations, etc.) as well as breakthrough results on international open benchmarks. All successful deep learning product teams:

1. Identify the best-matched organizational opportunities to drive ROI with machine learning
2. Address the talent crunch for deep learning expertise
3. Warehouse sufficiently large labeled data sets for training and
4. Update their models at scale as data distributions drift over time

 
We will review all four of these considerations, understand some of the key discriminators between product success and failure, and learn how to identify opportunities best suited for the application of Deep Learning.
 
Dr. John Kaufhold, data scientist and managing partner at Deep Learning Analytics, will lead the discussion. Deep Learning Analytics was one of the four fastest growing companies by revenue in Arlington, Virginia in 2015, and again in 2016. Dr. Kaufhold also serves as Secretary of the Washington Academy of Sciences and is a regular contributor to the DC Data Community, where he moderates the DC2 Deep Learning Discussion list. Prior to founding Deep Learning Analytics, Dr. Kaufhold investigated deep learning algorithms at NIH, SAIC and at GE's Global Research Center. Dr. Kaufhold is named inventor on 10 issued patents in image analysis, and author/coauthor on 40+ publications in the fields of machine learning, image understanding and neuroscience.

WHEN: December 17, 2018  from 8 AM - 10 AM

WHERE: Sphere Of Influence, 1420 Spring Hill Rd., Lobby Level, McLean, VA 22102
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The move from an application-centric to a more data-centric and integrated systems approach is well underway. We’ve been successfully re-engineering workflows from internal user targets to include users across multiple stakeholders, multiple institutions, and disparate systems using REST based APIs for a while now. However, as the number of endpoints and integrated systems increase, the most significant limitations of REST-based APIs must be resolved:

• Discovery
• Flexibility
• Type-safety of data exchange
• Traceability
• Observability

 
There are a few emerging approaches worth considering – namely:

• GraphQL for next generation data-centric API endpoints
• gRPC for next-generation functionality-centric API endpoints
• Distributed event-oriented programming as an approach to create a more flexible and reliable systems integration strategy
• OpenTracing and OpenCensus for increased observability across complex API pathways across multiple boundaries

 
Shahid Shah, one of the most engaged CTO Roundtable member, has architected, designed and implemented several projects using these new approaches and will lead the discussion on the topic. Shahid, CEO of Netspective Communications, is a serial entrepreneur with over 28 years technology strategy and software engineering experience. He had led several complex projects in the fields of Government 2.0, Health IT, and Medical Device Integration. He has co-founded and led Netspective.com, Physia.com, InfluentialNetworks.com, HealthcareGuy.com, HITSphere.com, and simplifyMD.com within the last few years. Shahid also serves as a senior technology advisor to OMB’s Budget System Branch, the eGov Budget Formulation & Execution Line of Business (BFELoB.gov), Veterans Affairs (VA.gov), OSEHRA.org, and Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC.gov).
 
WHEN: October 12, 2018 from 8 AM - 10 AM

WHERE: Sphere Of Influence, 1420 Spring Hill Rd., Lobby Level, McLean, VA 22102

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We are collaborating with Sierra Ventures, an early stage venture firm based in the Bay Area focusing on enterprise B2B companies, to bring two of their portfolio companies, Hired and Phenom People, to lead the discussion.
 
Agenda: 
8:00 - 8:30 am: Breakfast / Meet & Greet
 
8:30 - 9 am: Phenom People, CEO, Mahe Bayireddi
Leveraging Talent Relationship Marketing & AI to Attract Top Candidates
Phenom People, a leader in Talent Relationship Marketing, has proven that to attract the best talent, phenomenal companies must build relationships with candidates through personalized digital experiences. The Phenom Talent Relationship Marketing Platform automates the process for driving awareness, interest, engagement and acquisition of talent. Mahe will discuss on why today's organizations must leverage disruptive technologies like cloud, AI, and next gen web UI and processes (ATS) to acquire the best and brightest candidates. It is imperative for HR and technology leaders to collaborate to accomplish this. Mahe also has 5 years worth of experience working with those teams to understand best practices. Phenom has had great success and is listed a Gartner Cool Vendor & #177 on the INC 5000 in 2017.
 
9 - 9:30 am: Hired, VP of Sales, Sloane Barbour
The Candidate Centric Approach to Recruiting
Hired connects the right talent with the right opportunity. Their curated marketplace allows candidates and clients to discover their perfect match more effectively and efficiently. Sloane will expand upon 4 different takeaways the company has identified over 5 years from millions of discussions with candidates:
Takeaway 1: It’s a candidate’s market. The best candidates are off the market in 10 days and there is a projected shortfall of a million applicants for computing jobs by 2020.
Takeaway 2: It’s an on-demand economy. Experiences like Netflix and Uber also apply to the way people want to find a job. The candidate experience should BE a one-on-one interaction, personalized with proof that you know who the candidate is and what he or she is looking for.
Takeaway 3: Brand Matters. Companies must build a strong employer brand and not fall into the routine of parroting buzzwords: we’re a tech leader; we work as a team; we care about our employees; etc. But unless you can transform those key points into an employee- and candidate-centric value proposition balanced with authenticity and proof – they come across as empty statements.

Takeaway 4: Candidates are paying close attention to diversity efforts. Diversity inclusion is not just a recruiting challenge, rather, it is a cultural issue that spans public brand perception, your ability to innovate, differentiation of your corporate vision and the inherent values of fairness and transparency.
 
9:30 - 10 am: Wrap up and Q&A


WHEN: August 9, 2018 from 8 AM - 10 AM

WHERE: Sphere Of Influence, 1420 Spring Hill Rd., Lobby Level, McLean, VA 22102

We have all heard the statement: "Privacy is dead; the Internet killed privacy; Get over it!". 
 
However, recently, Privacy concerns have been grabbing headlines:

• Cambridge Analytica, Facebook, and the revelations of open secrets
• Five Shades Of Readiness: Are You Ready For GDPR?

 
Is the tide turning? How do we prepare for GDPR? Is this the first sign of a different future?
 
At our next CTO Roundtable from on Friday, April 27, 2018 from 8 to 10 AM we will discuss “Responding to GDPR and preparing for what comes next!”. We have invited two presenters to lead the discussion and the agenda is as follows
 
8 AM:           Breakfast and Networking
8:20 AM:      GDPR: What You Should Know and Start Doing Now, led by Justin Justin Antonipillai, CEO, WireWheel.io
8:50 AM:      GDPR: Seeds of a Different Future?, led by Dr. Amy Zalman, Global Security Futurist and Founder, Strategic Narrative Institute
9:30AM:       Q&A
 
GDPR: What You Should Know and Start Doing Now
Justin will help you learn more about how the GDPR will affect your business, what you need to know, and major phases and activities you’ll want to prepare for compliance, all in the broader context of Enterprise Date Protection Compliance.
 
GDPR: Seeds of a Different Future?
Amy will help us evaluate if GDPR contains potential seeds of deep global changes afoot, and of the emerging contests between nation-states, corporations and citizens/ consumers for relative power over their own destinies.  With its blanket stipulation that all firms—regardless of their territorial headquarters or location—are responsible for protecting EU residents’ private data, the EU Parliament acknowledges how deeply globalization and technology have eroded the meaning of territorial boundaries accepted since the Treaty of Westphalia, and shifted sovereign power into the hands of individuals themselves.
 
Amy will propose that current  trends in technology regulation, including the GDPR, net neutrality and emerging areas such as wearables and HIPAA, reflect the early stage of paradigmatic shifts in how our world may be organized in the centuries to come.
 
Justin's Bio: Justin most recently served as Acting Under Secretary for Economic Affairs at the US Department of Commerce during the Obama Administration. From 2013 to 2017, he led the U.S. Negotiating Team with Europe on data privacy issues like GDPR, including in negotiating the EU-US Privacy Shield, which thousands of companies use to transfer data between the EU and US.  He also led similar digital trade issues in Asia, and domestic privacy issues in the US. For the prior decade, Justin was a partner in the private equity practice of Arnold & Porter LLP. In 2016, Director James Clapper recognized Justin with the National Intelligence Medallion.
 
Amy's Bio: Dr. Amy Zalman founded the Strategic Narrative Institute in 2016 to help companies and government agencies anticipate and prepare for the future. Her clients include Fortune 500 firms, associations and federal government clients. She is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Culture, Communications & Technology at Georgetown University. She previously served as the CEO and President of the World Future Society, a global membership organization for futurists, and as the Chair of Information Integration at the National War College in Washington DC. Her Ph.D. is from the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University.

WHEN: April 27, 2018  from 8 AM - 10 AM

WHERE: Sphere Of Influence, 1420 Spring Hill Rd., Lobby Level, McLean, VA 22102

Our first CTO Roundtable of 2018 is on Wednesday, January 31, 2018 from 8 to 10 AM on the “4th Wave of Disruption – the remaking of the Enterprise IT Stack”.
 
Enterprise IT is again in the middle of significant disruption. It is no longer sufficient to migrate IT workloads to AWS or Azure. We must re-architect applications to leverage the new Cloud Native Enterprise IT Stack. The CTO Roundtable has partnered with Mayfield, the premier Silicon Valley Venture Firm, to develop a compelling 3-part agenda led by knowledgeable speakers to discuss this significant evolution in Enterprise IT.
 
Enterprise IT – 4th Wave of Disruption, a VC Perspective
Gamiel Gran, Mayfield (ggran@mayfield.com)
Gamiel will discuss how the themes of Edge Computing, Cloud-First, Containers, AI & ML are remaking Enterprise IT.
 
Cloud and Container Native as game changes for Enterprise IT
Michael Ferranti, VP of Product Marketing, Portworx (michael.ferranti@portworx.com)
Two things are happening in parallel that make it radically simpler to build, deploy and run sophisticated applications. The first of course is the move to the cloud, and we all know that its impact is huge. The second is the move to Cloud Native architectures.  Cloud Native has some key attributes, loosely coupled microservices built with containers and automation at each stage (CI/CD, APIs, Config, etc.) and finally with DevOps as the driver. The Cloud Native architecture enables agility and resiliency — making it clear why we all want to get there as quickly as possible.
 
Cloud Economics and Migration or Re-Architecture, Disruption and Skills Gap
Parmeet Chaddha, SVP Operations, CloudSimple (pchaddha@cloudsimple.com)
Reaching for clouds — Enterprises are decreasing datacenter spending and adopting cloud-based services, and yet, many applications remain on-premises, and the benefits of cloud remain elusive. A smooth transformation into a Cloud Consumption model without application or operations re-architecture in Virtualization, Availability, Networking, Security, Data Protection, Operations etc. remain the key obstacles. Diving deeper the issues and obstacles increase such as, further independent, dedicated domains for security, failure, maintenance and sovereignty, audit and compliance clearance. Parmeet will also review Infrastructure innovations essential to get the best availability, resiliency and performance for applications.

WHEN: January 31, 2018  from 8 AM - 10 AM

WHERE: Sphere Of Influence, 1420 Spring Hill Rd., Lobby Level, McLean, VA 22102

There is currently a lot of excitement surrounding Blockchain. Is a hot new transformational technology or just a hammer looking for a nail beyond crypto-currency? Paul Chang, Leader for Blockchain for Distribution & Industrial Markets at IBM, will broadly discuss use cases, benefits, new consortiums being formed, adoption paths, and lessons learned from hundreds of engagements over the past several years. At the event, Paul will lead an open discussion to help us evaluate if Blockchain is a good fit for our specific business challenges.
 
Paul is responsible for the evangelism, enablement, and business development of IBM’s Blockchain offerings targeting Supply Chain, Operations, Finance, and Sales & Marketing functions.  Paul has deep expertise in the Retail, Consumer Products, Wholesale/Distribution, Automotive, and Industrial sectors and is a globally recognized expert in supply chain.
 
Paul has more than 27 years of experience the market development of new technologies such as traceability, biotech, IoT and optical networks.  Most recently, Paul has led the global initiative at IBM in the product tracking technology for pharmaceutical, food, and retail sectors.  He has also been actively involved with the US FDA's drug anti-counterfeiting and food safety initiative since 2003.  Prior to joining IBM 13 years ago, Paul worked with several venture-back startup companies developing brand new markets leveraging innovative technologies.

WHEN: December 15, 2017 from 8 AM - 10 AM

WHERE: 1751 Pinnacle Dr Ste 1600, McLean, VA 22102
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We have collaborated with Greenspring Associates and Ignition Partners to bring leading entrepreneurs backed by top-tier VC firms, primarily from the San Francisco Bay Area. Each entrepreneur will spend a few minutes introducing their technology and follow it up with a short Q&A session. Here is a list of the participating companies and the participating executive:
 
Moogsoft – Richard Whitehead, CTO
Moogsoft develops AIOps technology that helps enterprise ITOps and DevOps teams become faster, smarter and more effective. Moogsoft AIOps’ real-time machine learning algorithms reduce operational noise and allow operators to proactively detect and remediate issues that impact their customers’ experience. Investors include Wing Venture Partners and Redpoint Ventures. For more information, please visit https://www.moogsoft.com/
 
Acalvio - Ram Varadarajan, CEO
Acalvio provides Advanced Threat Defense (ATD) solutions to detect, engage and respond to malicious activity inside the perimeter. The solutions are anchored on patented innovations in Deception and Data Science. This enables a DevOps approach to ATD, enabling ease of deployment, monitoring and management. Acalvio enriches its threat intelligence by data obtained from internal and partner ecosystems, enabling customers to benefit from defense in depth, reduce false positives, and derive actionable intelligence for remediation. Investors include Ignition Partners and Accel. For more information, please visit http://www.acalvio.com/
 
Aviatrix - Steven Mih, CEO
Aviatrix develops software that enables enterprises to build secure hybrid clouds and enable networking for CloudOps for enterprise SaaS vendors. The Aviatrix Cloud Services Gateway is the first scale out and highly available VPN access solution with multi factor authentication and User Profile based access policy. Investors include Ignition Partners and CRV. For more information, please visit http://aviatrix.com/
 
Bromium – Sherban Naum, VP East & Federal
Bromium delivers the benefits of micro-virtualization and hardware based security to enterprise desktops, reducing the enterprise attack surface for all users without the need for new management tools or skillsets. The company’s solutions enable an exceptional end-user experience with its protect-first design, isolating threats before they can harm the enterprise.try™. Investors include Ignition Partners, Lightspeed, and Meritech. For more information, please visithttps://www.bromium.com/
 
Nymi – Karl Martin, Founder
Nymi develops biometric and authentication technologies and applications for consumer electronics. The Nymi Band is a wearable, multi-factor authenticator that can be used with any application, device or service to deliver Always On Authentication™. Investors include Ignition Partners. For more information, please visit https://nymi.com/
 
Tempered Networks – Jeff Hussey, CEO
Tempered Networks provides connectivity solutions for critical infrastructure, industrial control systems, and the industrial Internet of Things applications in water, energy, petroleum, manufacturing, and other industries. The company offers HIPswitch Conductor, a scalable orchestration engine that coordinates configuration, security policies, trust relationships, monitoring, and analytics between the SimpleConnect management console and distributed HIPswitches. Investors include Ignition Partners. For more information, please visit http://www.temperednetworks.com/
 
Hacker One – Marten Mickos, CEO
HackerOne is the #1 vulnerability management and bug bounty platform. Our products and services - along with our community of more than 100,000 hackers who have earned more than $14M in bounty payouts as a result of their creative, intelligent work - empower security teams to take a proactive approach to protecting their applications, networks, and customers. HackerOne's mission is to make the Internet safer for everyone and was founded by the pioneers behind bug bounty programs at Facebook, Google, and Microsoft. Investors include Benchmark Capital and New Enterprise Associates. For more information, please visit https://www.hackerone.com/
 
Aporeto – Dimitri Stiliadis, CEO
Aporeto is a cloud-native security startup that offers comprehensive security solutions for applications, containers, and microservices. The company offers Trireme, an open-source project that simplifies application segmentation for distributed applications. Investors include Wing Venture Partners. For more information, please visit https://www.aporeto.com/
 
Tigera – Ratan Tipirneni, CEO and Founder
Tigera is solving the networking and security problems inherent in deploying and enforcing policy in large private, public, and hybrid enterprise clouds. Tigera’s founders combine extensive networking and security experience with a track record of engagement with the cloud native, open source developer and user communities. Investors include Wing Venture Partners and New Enterprise Associates. For more information, please visit https://www.tigera.io/

WHEN: August 11, 2017 from 8 AM - 10 AM

WHERE: Sphere Of Influence, 1420 Spring Hill Rd., Lobby Level, McLean, VA 22102

3D printing has gone from the hobbyist’s workbench to playing a significant role in the manufacturing supply chain. With an increased role for innovation and reduced time to market, Additive Manufacturing (3D printing) may be the way that our nation recaptures its leadership role in this industry.
 
Greg Paulsen, Director of Applications Engineering at Xometry, will lead the discussion including a quick overview of the state of the art of 3D printing, examples of additive manufacturing (3D printing) applications, and challenges with the technology and its adoption. Xometry is a custom manufacturing company that specialized in advanced technology including 3D printing to shorten production cycle and reduce costs.
 
Greg’s Applications Engineering team at Xometry handles special case projects that require attention on material selection, design-for-manufacturing, or technical engineering resources. Greg also plays a vital role in vetting new technologies and materials to add to Xometry's manufacturing portfolio. Greg’s background is in product development using rapid prototyping, focusing on the various applications of industrial 3D printing and advanced manufacturing.

WHEN: July 14, 2017 from 8 AM - 10 AM

WHERE: Sphere Of Influence, 1420 Spring Hill Rd., Lobby Level, McLean, VA 22102

Establishing trust and trustworthiness among two or more computing entities has always been a challenge, but a necessary step prior to secure interaction. This challenge is further complicated in human-machine learning applications where parties to an interaction can dynamically learn and alter their behaviors. Dr. Levitt has developed techniques to establish trust in a machine learning setting. His techniques draw from methods that people use to establish trust and formalize these methods with probabilistic modeling. The resultant techniques can be used in a variety of commercial applications in autonomy such as driverless cars. Please join us for a discussion of trust and trustworthiness in machine learning applications.
 
The discussion will be led by Dr. Tod Levitt, Research Professor at George Mason University. Here is a link to his CV.
 
Dr. Levitt is an acknowledged leader in development of advanced capabilities for evidential reasoning in large-scale, high dimensional model analysis including operations applications in multi-sensor fusion, SAR, IR, and EO image understanding, ground robot vision, air to ground surveillance systems and C4ISR systems supporting multiple military intelligence, planning and command and control applications.
 
He has led the development of a diverse family of advanced information software systems built to handle real world data under complex operating conditions. These systems include a fully automated middle-Eastern armor unit detector for the U.S. Army that was evaluated to perform at expert imagery analyst levels on wide-area, low resolution Desert Storm SAR, and a system for automated diagnostic measurement from digital x-rays of the hand that was employed in clinical care at the San Francisco Veterans Administration Medical Center.

WHEN: April 21, 2017 from 8 AM - 10 AM

WHERE: Sphere Of Influence, 1420 Spring Hill Rd., Lobby Level, McLean, VA 22102