Technical.ly Developers Conference

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Technical.ly

Technical.ly's 11th annual Developers conference for developers and engineers to learn about the latest trends in software and tech.

HealthVerity

<p><em><strong>The Technical.ly Developers Conference is SOLD OUT. There will be no day-of registration for this event.</strong></em></p><p>Technical.ly's 11th annual Developers Conference as part of Philly Tech Week presented by Comcast is happening on Wednesday, May 10 at HealthVerity offices in Center City Philadelphia. Read Technical.ly's announcement <a href="https://technical.ly/professional-development/developers-conference-may-10-ptw23/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">here</a>.</p><p>Join fellow technologists for an afternoon of group discussions on software trends &amp; best practices from industry leaders across the mid-Atlantic. We'll close the afternoon with the return of Technical.ly's SUPER MEETUP, a networking happy hour where tech meetups host one big party alongside hiring companies and tech professionals with light bites &amp; drinks.</p><p>We will continue to update the agenda as talks, speakers + sponsors are finalized!</p><p>Event sponsors:</p><ul><li>Comcast</li><li>Berkadia</li><li>Crossbeam</li><li>CubeSmart</li><li>HealthVerity</li><li>International SOS</li><li>Most Diverse Tech Hub (City of PHL Commerce Department)</li><li>Wawa</li></ul><p>Meetups participating in our Super Meetup:</p><ul><li><a href="https://www.meetup.com/phillypug/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">P﻿hillyPUG</a></li><li><a href="https://www.meetup.com/phillyjug/events/292603452/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">P﻿hillyJUG</a></li><li><a href="https://www.meetup.com/nodejs-philly/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">N﻿ode.js Philly</a></li><li><a href="https://www.meetup.com/postgres-philly/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">P﻿hillyPostgres</a></li><li><a href="https://phillyjs.com/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">P﻿hiladelphia JavaScipt Club</a></li><li><a href="https://www.meetup.com/Philly-Lambda/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">P﻿hillyLambda</a></li><li><a href="https://phillyjs.com/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"></a>Philly JavaScript Developers Group</li><li>P﻿ANMA (A Reunion!)</li><li><a href="https://www.techbash.com/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">T﻿echBash</a></li></ul><h1>S﻿peakers </h1><p></p>

<h2>TJ Famodu, Director of Engineering at Fearless</h2><h3><em>"﻿Navigating technical leadership at a consultancy"</em></h3><p>TJ Famodu is a dedicated software engineer, agilist and leader with a passion for building highly productive and positive teams. With over 9 years of experience in driving business outcomes, delivering software, TJ implements Agile methodologies and collaborates with partners and customers in various industries.She has a demonstrated ability in leading team transformations with a focus on Product, Lean-Agile adoption and DevOps. </p><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/tjfamodu/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">TJ Famodu's LinkedIn</a></p>

<h2>Patrick O'Brien, VP of Engineering at HealthVerity</h2><h3><em>"﻿Navigating Engineering Growth" </em></h3><p>Patrick leads the engineering development team at HealthVerity, where he's been since August of 2015. Prior to HealthVerity, he was Engineering Director at Monetate.</p>

<h2>Nico Westerdale, Managing Partner at Accelerator CTO</h2><h3><em>"﻿Velocity, How to Go Fast and Not Break Things"</em></h3><p>Startups are Nico's passion. He provides Technical and Product leadership, team building and hands-on management. He helps fill the void that non-technical founders have, and that engineers cannot fill.</p><p>Having worked in a multitude of startups and held leadership roles in larger organizations, Nico's lived the growth trajectory many times. He works as a fractional CTO, spending a fraction of his time with many startups and making sure that the direction is set, and the right choices are made. He also works with Product and Engineering teams making sure that the right product is built in the right way.</p><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/iconico/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">N﻿ico Westerdale's LinkedIn</a></p>

<h2>Timothy Allen, Principal Engineer at Wharton Research Data Services</h2><h3><em>"﻿Miracles in Anarchy"</em></h3><p>We work in ecosystems that are often anarchies. What can our communities learn from some of the most successful anarchies in human history, addiction recovery programs? There may be more parallels than you think!</p><p>Join Tim on a journey where we pan the camera around to the third-person perspective, and laugh at ourselves a bit. It’ll be therapeutic: laughter is the best cure for impostor syndrome!</p><p>Tim joined Wharton Research Data Services in 2008, after working for local companies and starting a few of his own. Having started programming at age six, he is currently an organizer of the Philadelphia Python Users Group, Code for Recovery, and a member of the Python Software Foundation and Django Software Foundation. </p><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/flipperpa/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">T﻿imothy Allen's LinkedIn</a></p>

<h2>T﻿ariq Hook, Lead Innovator &amp; Co-Founder at Code Differently </h2><h3><em>"﻿Creating an AI-Powered Chatbot with Python and OpenAI's GPT API"</em></h3><p>Tariq Hook is a co-founder of Code Differently, a leading diversity, equity and inclusion technology education and workforce solutions company. Tariq serves as the Director of Innovation, Technology and Training responsible for designing and delivering innovative strategies to address educational and training equity. Through his work, Tariq is instrumental in strengthening the economic outlook of underserved and under-represented populations.</p><p>In addition, Tariq is an Adjunct Professor at Delaware State University. Tariq supports numerous startups as an advisor through Bronze Valley Ventures C-Suite on demand. He acts as a strategic advisor of Computer Science education planning to many individuals leading nonprofits and schools. For the past 5 years, Tariq has served as a member of the Artisan Bank Board of Directors and the Community Investment Committee. </p><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/tariq-hook-76161625/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">T﻿ariq Hook's Linked In </a></p>

<h2>Rebecca Stark, Staff Engineer at Crossbeam</h2><h3><em>"﻿Building a Career as an IC" </em></h3><p>Rebecca is a Staff Engineer at Crossbeam, where she has been a engineering leader for the last 3.5 years. Her interests span the gamut from the more technical - functional programming and scaling systems - to end user experience, partnering with product and design, and developing junior engineers. Before Crossbeam, she was a Senior Engineer at Comcast working primarily on an open source DNS management tool. Outside of work, most of her time is spent out on her local walking trails, and more recently, developing her junior maybe-future-engineer, Oliver, who was born last November.</p>

<h2>Gary Mumford, Chief Technology Officer at Berkadia</h2><h3><em>"﻿Creating Software Ecosystems with Distributed Microservices" </em></h3><p>Gary Mumford is Chief Technology Officer for Berkadia Commercial Mortgage. In this role, Mr. Mumford is responsible for creating and driving technology and data vision, strategy, and execution across Berkadia.</p><p>Prior to Berkadia, Mr. Mumford worked in Enterprise Software as Business Area Executive and Vice President of Engineering for Rocket Software, Senior Software Developer and Team Lead for Microsoft, spanning a 23-year career in technology, building and managing over 200 software and services products internationally.</p>

<h2>Patrick Neborg, Vice President of Data Architecture at Berkadia</h2><h3><em>"﻿Creating Software Ecosystems with Distributed Microservices" </em></h3><p>Patrick has over 20 years of experience in designing distributed solutions based on microservices and event-driven data stream architectures using decoupled pub/sub patterns. Patrick is skilled in various technology stacks such as Docker, Kubernetes, NodeJS, AWS, Azure Services, C#, SQL/MySQL/Postgres, T-SQL/LINQ, Salesforce, MVC, VB.NET and WCF. Patrick also promotes Agile processes and orchestrates solutions using Azure DevOps and CI/CD. He has worked in industries like Commercial Real Estate, Financial Services, Insurance and Non-Profit Management. Patrick holds a Master’s degree in Software Engineering from Penn State and has presented at conferences such as DPCN, NWCT and Pluralsight Live. In his free time, he volunteers as a coach, referee and technical resource for a local youth soccer program.</p><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-neborg/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">P﻿atrick Neborg's LinkedIn</a></p>

<h2>Tim Quirino, Head of Brand at Threads.com</h2><h3><em>"﻿Designing for AI in a digital product"</em></h3><p>Involved in Brand, 3D, Motion, Video Production, Character &amp; Product Design at Threads. Previously 7+ years of product design at Meta, responsible for the original design of donations, music, and video products on Facebook. Former Co-founder of Geekadelphia and the Philadelphia Geek Awards. </p>

<h2>Ashley Griffin, Engineering Manager at HealthVerity</h2><h3><em>"﻿Overcoming Imposter Syndrome"</em></h3><p>I'm a Philadelphia native and earned my B.A. in Computer Science from Haverford College and recently earned my M.S. in Computer Science from Georgia Tech. Last year I joined HealthVerity as an Engineering Manager. Prior to HealthVerity, I was an Application Engineering Manager at Vanguard where I supported the retail contact center technologies. In my prior role, I had dual responsibilities of a software engineer and manager. As a software engineer, I worked on AWS microservices to help modernize the retail contact center while also managing a team of software engineers. Outside of work I enjoy traveling and spending time with my dog Zoey.</p><p><a href="https://linkedin.com/in/ashley-griffin-91608343" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">A﻿shley Griffin's LinkedIn</a></p>

<h2>Andrew Gamino-Cheong, CTO &amp; Co-founder at Trustible</h2><h3><em>"How to prepare for AI regulations"</em></h3><p>Andrew Gamino-Cheong has spent his career working at the intersection of policy and AI. Prior to founding Trustible, Andrew was a machine learning engineering tech lead at FiscalNote, a DC based policy information services company, where he built AI systems to help organizations better understand and map regulatory risks, applying AI to the policy landscape. Now, at Trustible, he's flipped the script and is working to apply policy to the AI landscape. Trustible is building a platform to help organizations define, implement, and report on their AI governance platform and help them comply with emerging AI regulations, and build customer trust. Andrew has a Bachelors degree from Georgetown University, where he double majored in Computer Science and Government, and a Masters in Computer Science from the University of Maryland College Park.</p><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-gamino-cheong-035a3722/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">A﻿ndrew Gamino-Cheong's LinkedIn</a></p>

<h2>Alex Brown, Backend Engineering Leader at Wawa </h2><h3><em>"﻿Building a New Kiosk at Wawa Scale"</em></h3><p>Alex has been with Wawa for over four years, helping to lead the development of the new Wawa digital  transformation cloud and backend systems. Before that, Alex came from the financial sector leading  teams to develop high-performance backend systems and APIs. </p><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahbrown/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">A﻿lex Brown's LinkedIn</a></p>

<h2>Young Hong, Sr. Director of IT Business Solutions at Wawa </h2><h3><em>"﻿Building a New Kiosk at Wawa Scale"</em></h3><p>Young leads the application development/engineering organization at Wawa. Since joining Wawa 2.5years ago, Young has been leading Wawa’s digital transformation and technical innovations that aim to provide elevated digital experiences for our customers and optimize how Wawa operates and scales its business. Prior to Wawa, he led large global teams to build and operate large, complex systems and e-commerce platforms.</p><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/youngh625/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Y﻿oung Hong's LinkedIn</a></p>

<h2>Diane Tracy, Senior Delivery Manager at Vanguard </h2><h3><em>"R﻿ebranding the Department of "NO"!"</em></h3><p>Diane Tracy is a Senior Delivery Manager in Vanguard's Security Architecture and Engineering organization. Her current work focuses on building technology for Vanguard's Global Fraud organization. She began her career at Vanguard as a part of the Technology Leadership Program, where she rotated through several teams in IT and Cyber Security. Diane spent several years as a part of Vanguard's Security Operations Center helping to monitor and protect Vanguard from cyber-attacks. Diane earned her Bachelor's degree in Security and Risk Analysis from Penn State and is pursuing her MBA at Carnegie Mellon University.</p>

<h2>Josh Kodroff, Sr Solutions Architect at  Pulumi Corp</h2><h3><em>"﻿Platform engineering: the Good, Bad and Ugly"</em></h3><p>Josh Kodroff is a Solutions Architect at Pulumi, and is located in Philadelphia, PA. He's worked in a number of roles since he started his career in 2004 across both software and infrastructure/ops. He's worked for enterprises, consultancies, and SaaS vendors with a recent emphasis on DevOps practices, infrastructure as code, cloud architecture, and distributed systems.</p><p>Outside of work, Josh enjoys playing bass, cooking, meditation, and hiking in the Wissahickon.<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshkodroff/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer"></a></p><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshkodroff/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">J﻿osh Kodroff's LinkedIn </a></p><p><a href="https://twitter.com/JoshKodroff" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Josh Kodroff's Twitter </a></p>

<h2>Ferhan Ture, Technical Fellow (Applied AI) at Comcast</h2><h3><em>"﻿How Comcast Improves the Customer Experience with AI/ML​" </em></h3><p>As a Technical Fellow at Comcast, Ferhan Ture focuses on AI, Machine Learning and its applications on automatic speech recognition (ASR) and natural language processing (NLP). He works closely with product and engineering leadership to develop a strategy for building smarter products powered by AI.</p><p>Ferhan is part of the Comcast Applied AI Research group, which is collectively responsible for building the backend systems, core algorithms and machine learning models that power various Comcast-affiliated products and services, such as X1, Flex, XClass TV, Sky Glass, Sky Q and the Xfinity Assistant.</p><p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ferhan-ture-b253668/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">F﻿erhan Ture's Linked In</a></p>

<h2>Joe DiAngelo, Senior Security Architect at Vanguard</h2><h3><em>"﻿Rebranding the Department of "NO"!"</em></h3><p>Joe DiAngelo is a Senior Security Architect in Vanguard's Security Architecture and Engineering organization.  He is currently focused on network, endpoint, and security operations architecture modernization throughout the Vanguard enterprise.  A Philadelphia native, Joe began is career at Vanguard upon graduation from Saint Joseph's University and has held multiple IT and security roles during his 22 year career.  He currently holds his Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and Certified Cloud Security Professional (CCSP) certifications.</p>

<h2>Don McDuffie,  Helpdesk and Media Specialist at </h2><h3><em>"﻿Tech Integration in the Education Landscape"</em></h3><p>In this presentation, we will discuss the uses and drawbacks of technology in schools and education and explore some of the future technologies on the horizon, including virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR).</p><p>Don McDuffie was born in Boardman NC, and has been interested in technology since he was a child. His technology journey began as a child when he began breaking and dismantling old am/fm radios at home to see how they worked around the age of 6 or 7. From there he became interested in audio tech and subsequently, computers. After serving in US Army intelligence at Aberdeen Proving Ground Maryland, and having a background in military technologies such as classified weaponry and mechanics, Don acquired his Comptia A+ and has worked in the Education Tech space for almost a decade. </p><p>@don_terell for Instagram</p>

<p><em><strong>Nitro Coffee will be there with free samples during coffee break</strong></em></p>

Agenda

Registration opens

The new Wawa Kiosks started with simple requirements. They need to work online and offline, deliver real-time changes to product/menu data (when online), be continuously available twenty-four hours a day, have monitoring, support continuous deployment, A/B testing, and that is just the MVP. How the challenges of building a Kiosk from the ground up for a fast-growing chain pushed the team to develop a robust solution that takes advantage of modern technologies to allow for a platform for innovation.

Building a New Kiosk at Wawa Scale

Threads is a modern, delightful, and powerful communications tool for digital (or distributed) teams that aims to replace Slack, Teams, GChat, for folks who need both synchronous and asynchronous communications in the same space. When we released our AI-powered capabilities (named Tailor) in March, I was tasked with designing the presentation, brand, and tone of this companion. This is the story of how we made our decisions.

Designing for AI in a digital product

Engineering velocity is usually inversely correlated to risk. Or, put plainly; the faster you go, the more you break things. In this session we will investigate how to change that inverse correlation and increase velocity without increasing risk. We'll look at three areas, Individual, Team and Strategic. Individual coding practices, informed by the latest research on how we program and how AI tools are changing the landscape. Team development lifecycles, how to structure work to create rapid impactful iterations. Strategic planning, to drive high value work forward and not waste cycles of work.

Velocity, How to go fast and not break things

Fearless’ Dir. of Engineer TJ Famodu shares how she build cross-functional teams to serve Fearless’ clients, navigates customer relationships, and handles the legacy migration that is continually coming up with established customers in the healthcare and government sectors.

Navigating Technical Leadership at a Consultancy

In this talk, we provide an overview of how we apply state-of-the-art AI towards various consumer products at Comcast. More specifically, we present several ways in which AI is improving the customer experience, including an award-winning voice assistant for your TV, an automated chatbot for customer care and sports highlights generated through media analytics.

How Comcast Improves the Customer Experience with AI/ML​

The layers of technology that are required to deliver online experiences can be staggering and feel miraculous. It is easy to become overwhelmed, feeling we should understand all of these layers, and end up wallowing in impostor syndrome. This talk will take an opportunity to poke fun at some of the more absurd moments in my own life, and celebrate the miracle that anything we do actually works at all!

Miracles in Anarchy: Adventures in Open Source Development:

In this interactive workshop, participants will learn how to create an AI-powered chatbot using Python and OpenAI's GPT API. The session will cover key concepts, including API authentication, making API requests, and handling responses. Students will follow along as they build a simple text-based chatbot that can answer questions and engage in conversation. By the end of the workshop, participants will have a functional chatbot and a strong foundation for further exploration of AI chatbot development.

Creating an AI-Powered Chatbot with Python and OpenAI's GPT API

Have you ever felt inadequate? Told yourself when accomplishing an achievement that it was just luck? Then you are someone who has probably experienced the imposter syndrome. In this talk we will discuss ways to overcome the imposter syndrome and explain importance of finding your tribe of supporters.

Overcoming Impostor Syndrome

What does it mean to be a career IC? What does growth and betterment look like? How do I know what to focus on to get me to the next level? Is a switch into management inevitable? Come hear from an engineer who has puzzled over these questions and more, and learn about quieting imposter syndrome, focusing on your unique skillset, and building a career path that works for you.

Building a Career as an IC

How Vanguard's Security Organization Enables the Developer Experiences, Protects Client Assets and Stewards a Culture of Risk Cyber security is not a one way street. Developers and security experts all need to come together to create the best outcomes for our organizations. Developers need flexibility to create innovative solutions. Security professionals need to help put guardrails in place to keep organizations secure. Learn about Vanguard's approach on how IT, business and security work together to protect trillions of dollars in client assets.

Rebranding the Department of "NO"!

The software industry is shifting from developing individual applications to creating entire ecosystems. One way to achieve this is by using distributed Microservices and event-sourced data streams. This approach allows for better management of data over time, from raw and emerging data to a curated source of truth. By combining this with a data fabric architecture, we can leverage the capabilities of machine learning to create virtuous data cycles that continuously improve data and provide actionable insights to users.

Creating Software Ecosystems with Distributed Microservices

Let's discuss if "DevOps is really dead" and where “platform engineering” fits in, why engineering organizations should be excited about it, but also the challenges and potential pitfalls. We’ll talk about how to determine whether your organization is a good fit for the practice and you’ll learn how to avoid some very expensive mistakes.

Platform engineering: the Good, Bad and Ugly

In this talk, I will go over some of the key provisions of proposed AI regulations (e.g EU AI Act), as well as voluntary frameworks (e.g NIST AI RMF). I will then discuss some of the policies and principles organizations should start putting into place now in order to prepare for the regulatory environment. The talk will end about a discussion about AI differentiation in the market and how building a 'trusted' organization can be a substantial, non-commoditized, differentiator.

How to Prepare for AI Regulations

Navigating growing engineering teams can be a challenge whether you're an early employee or a late comer. Learn lessons on being an effective engineer during rapid growth.

Navigating Engineering Growth

We'll close the afternoon with the return of Technical.ly's SUPER MEETUP, a networking happy hour where tech meetups host one big party alongside hiring companies and tech professionals with light bites & drinks.

SUPER MEETUP!: Networking Happy Hour & Hiring Company Tabling

Untitled agenda

Conference begins

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