Pittsburgh TechFest 2026

Pittsburgh TechFest 2026

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8:00am EDT

TechFest Parking LOT 2 (overflow LOT 1) UPMC Events Center, UPMC Gate, Parking Lot 2

8:30am EDT

Registration @ UPMC Gate Lobby UPMC Gate Lobby

9:00am EDT

Welcome + Keynote Starring Ralph CreweRalph Crewe, Co-Founder and Chief Communications Officer, Perforated AI. Writer and Producer at Practical Engineering (alongside host Grady Hillhouse), Host of Nerd Nite, Pittsburgh Main Event Space: Peoples CourtRalph Crewe

10:00am EDT

Acquisition as a Career Path: What Happens When a Software Developer Buys a Trades Business West ConcourseSteven Orvis AI and Small Businesses South ConcourseWilliam V. Fullerton AI Talent is Hiding in Plain Sight. Is it You? Conference Room 4Frank Schlatterer Leveraging Academic Partnership for Competitive Advantage in Current Technology Space Conference Room 5Sasha Balobeshkina Tim Rules for Surviving Tech: They're not what you think they are. Former Spirit StoreTim Casey AI-First Engineering in Practice: Moving Beyond Code Generation to Systemic Product Delivery Hall of ColonialsAdam Wynne The Next Song Starts in 14 Seconds: Embracing Chaos in Live Software Conference Room 1Tom Medvitz Community Is the Moat Now Conference Room 3YJ Lin Cybersecurity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence Conference Room 2Brad Messner, PhD • Michal Cieslak, PhD Reliable DevOps with Nix and NixOS People's GateMatt McHenry Stop Just Writing Code: How AI Makes You a Better Product Engineer Harshman RotundaPhil Webster

11:00am EDT

Security Risks of NFC Harshman RotundaDavid Berdik Code Tourists vs Owners Former Spirit StoreLyle Seaman Future-Proofing Isn't About Technology. It's About People. West ConcourseTia Christopher Let Me Show You How The World Ends: Using Domain Storytelling to Survive Infrastructure Doomsday Conference Room 5Tyler Auerbeck Rising Agent Orchestration Patterns for AI Coding South ConcourseNathan Brake Strategist, Systems Builder, Customer Whisperer: The Product Leader in the AI Era Conference Room 4Rupali Sharma Agentic SDLC in Action using Project Squad and the GitHub Copilot CLI People's GateJorge Balderas AI on the Front: How Autonomous Vehicles Will Shape the Conflicts of Tomorrow Hall of ColonialsJeremy Meola Human-AI Collaboration for a More Resilient Power Grid Conference Room 1Woody Shixiang Zhu Human-Centered Design in the Age of AV: Designing Technology That Feels Human Conference Room 3Greg Cunneyworth Rebuilding the Foundation: Change Management for Digital Transformation with AI-Powered Analytics Conference Room 2Sourav Bhattacharyya

12:00pm EDT

Lunch- Find Your Flock

1:00pm EDT

From Developer Support to Product Marketing: Finding the Role Between Technology and Storytelling West ConcourseMackenzie Albitz Replacing Third-Party Search with AI Agents: A Marketplace Case Study Harshman RotundaJoe Petrich The Leadership Skills Technology Cannot Replace South ConcourseDr. Ann Gatty The Repricing: What AI Does to the Economics of a Business — and the Careers Built Inside It Conference Room 5Ryan Frederick Venom in the Pipeline: Why Bad External Data Is Poisoning Your AI Conference Room 4Andy Hannah AI Agents and the Return of the Spreadsheet Former Spirit StoreChris Bannon Beneath the Surface of the Docker Ocean People's GateMatt McHenry Beyond Connectivity: Building an Industry 4.0 Platform Ready for Industrial AI Hall of ColonialsKeith Acker • Pete Bruns How to Be an AI Champion: Turning the person who got handed AI into the person who gets the credit. Conference Room 1Doogie Levine • Dan Simklins Small But Mighty: How a Pittsburgh Company Is Using Technology To Fight Sex Trafficking Internationally Conference Room 2William "Rocky" Oberti The Bittersweet Lesson: Deliberate Implicit Structure and Tabular Data Conference Room 3Sylesh Suresh

2:00pm EDT

Live Test Session: ML Engineers: Put Perforated to the Test Conference Room 5Ralph Crewe • Mark Westerlund Unconference-Led by Colin Dean, Code & Supply Main Event Space: Peoples CourtColin Dean

3:00pm EDT

TechFest Happy Hour + 1 drink ticket and apps! Eat-N-Park VIP