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Friday, October 30
 

8:00am EDT

TechFest Parking LOT 2 (overflow LOT 1)
Friday October 30, 2026 8:00am - 9:00am EDT
UPMC Events Center, UPMC Gate, Parking Lot 2
Enter Robert Morris University at 6001 University Boulevard Moon Township, PA 15108. Drive straight on University Blvd. to the upper parking lot behind the UPMC Events Center. Overflow flow in Parking Lot 1.
See map below-
Friday October 30, 2026 8:00am - 9:00am EDT
UPMC Events Center, UPMC Gate, Parking Lot 2

8:30am EDT

Registration @ UPMC Gate Lobby
Friday October 30, 2026 8:30am - 9:00am EDT
UPMC Gate Lobby
Enter into the UPMC Gate, shown below, through Parking Lot 2, located 6001 University Boulevard Moon Township, PA 15108. Parking Lot 2 is located right on University Blvd. in the upper parking lot behind the UPMC Events Center.
Overflow flow in Parking Lot 1.

Friday October 30, 2026 8:30am - 9:00am EDT
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
Friday October 30, 2026 9:00am - 9:45am EDT
Main Event Space: Peoples Court

Speakers
RC

Ralph Crewe

Co-Founder and Chief Communications Officer,, PerforatedAi
Friday October 30, 2026 9:00am - 9:45am EDT
Main Event Space: Peoples Court
  Keynote

10:00am EDT

Acquisition as a Career Path: What Happens When a Software Developer Buys a Trades Business
Friday October 30, 2026 10:00am - 10:45am EDT
West Concourse
Most developers who want off the ladder think about founding a startup. There's another door: buying one. After 13 years in software I bought a fabrication shop outside Pittsburgh. This talk covers how I built a buy box and screened deals, why I chose the trades, and the ownership lessons that generalize to any acquisition — hiring, cash flow, key-person risk, and process. Plus what a developer...
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Speakers
avatar for Steven Orvis

Steven Orvis

Owner / Manager, Woodland Wood Products LLC
Steven Orvis is a recovering software developer who traded 13 years of building products for other people's companies for a custom millwork shop of his own. He owns Woodland Wood Products in Etna, PA, where he still writes code — now aimed at his own business problems.
Friday October 30, 2026 10:00am - 10:45am EDT
West Concourse
  Engage with Big Ideas, Career Progression and Managing Up

10:00am EDT

AI and Small Businesses
Friday October 30, 2026 10:00am - 10:45am EDT
South Concourse
The core idea is to discuss how AI is impacted all of us. With small businesses making up the majority of employment in the United States, we must not overlook their needs, as technology grows and adapts so rapidly. Many small businesses are currently overwhelmed and ill equipped to tackle these present challenges. It is for that reason the AI in Action Hackathon was created. Now, we can bring...
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Speakers
avatar for William V. Fullerton

William V. Fullerton

Independent Researcher, NA
Founder of the AI in Action Hackathon, BS RMU Statistics and Data Science minor Finance, Independent AI Researcher, and Pittsburgh born, raised, and educated.
Friday October 30, 2026 10:00am - 10:45am EDT
South Concourse
  Engage with Big Ideas, Keeping it Human; Workforce & Human-Centered Tech

10:00am EDT

AI Talent is Hiding in Plain Sight. Is it You?
Friday October 30, 2026 10:00am - 10:45am EDT
Conference Room 4
Somewhere in every organization, someone is using an AI tool that nobody signed off on. They're doing this because it works, and because waiting for permission wasn't an option. We'll shine a light on the idea that many individuals are keeping some of the greatest value to their organizations and their career prospects hidden out of sight, due to fear of being caught doing something they're "not...
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Speakers
avatar for Frank Schlatterer

Frank Schlatterer

Chief Executive Officer, JENLOR Integrations
As the CEO of JENLOR, I lead a premier regional managed service provider dedicated to guiding Pittsburgh businesses through today's dynamic technological landscape. I am uniquely qualified to speak with authority to your attendees about identifying less-than-obvious career and business... Read More →
Friday October 30, 2026 10:00am - 10:45am EDT
Conference Room 4
  Engage with Big Ideas, Industrial Ai and the Reinvention of Manufacturing

10:00am EDT

Leveraging Academic Partnership for Competitive Advantage in Current Technology Space
Friday October 30, 2026 10:00am - 10:45am EDT
Conference Room 5
In the highly active tech landscape of the Pittsburgh region, where startups and established companies compete for success, innovation reigns supreme. As the markets evolve with new ideas toppling former dominants, the quest for smaller, faster, and better products intensifies. In this fast-paced environment, few have the luxury of exploring available resources and solutions via Master of Software...
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Speakers
avatar for Sasha Balobeshkina

Sasha Balobeshkina

Alumni & Corporate Relations Manager, Carnegie Mellon University
I’m an experienced professional with over 12 years of cross-functional success in higher education, strategic partnerships, student-facing program leadership and alumni relations. My work bridges academia and industry—developing and nurturing  corporate relationships, managing... Read More →
Friday October 30, 2026 10:00am - 10:45am EDT
Conference Room 5
  Engage with Big Ideas, Ai + Robotics + National Security

10:00am EDT

Tim Rules for Surviving Tech: They're not what you think they are.
Friday October 30, 2026 10:00am - 10:45am EDT
Former Spirit Store
Over my long career, I've made it a point to collect short phrases that I call: Tim's Rules.   These rules are designed to convey an idea with enough "room" for individuals to assimilate the message into their own operational framework.  The genesis of this idea struck me as I was listening to Kenny Rogers sing "The Gambler."  The lyric, "you have to know when to hold 'em and know...
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Speakers
avatar for Tim Casey

Tim Casey

Tech Manager, DVSport
CIO for innovative and progressive behavioral health organization for 25 years.  2010 PGH Tech Council CIO-of-the-Year.  Took up wood carving for two years when I thought I might retire.  Currently, Tech Manager, for DVSport, innovative sports replay software firm. Unorthodox perspectives... Read More →
Friday October 30, 2026 10:00am - 10:45am EDT
Former Spirit Store
  Engage with Big Ideas, Career Progression and Managing Up

10:00am EDT

AI-First Engineering in Practice: Moving Beyond Code Generation to Systemic Product Delivery
Friday October 30, 2026 10:00am - 10:45am EDT
Hall of Colonials
Most engineering teams approach AI opportunistically, treating it merely as a faster way to write code. However, software development represents only 20% of the software value stream, and localized optimization frequently introduces systemic chaos downstream during testing, review, and deployment.1This hands-on session builds directly upon real-world production methodology to demonstrate how...
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Speakers
avatar for Adam Wynne

Adam Wynne

Founder & Principal Engineer, Wynne Technologies
After 20 years building leading-edge SaaS products for industry and government organizations, including Bosch, Azena, Armada Supply Chain Solutions, and the US Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Adam is now applying that expertise to climate challenges.His... Read More →
Friday October 30, 2026 10:00am - 10:45am EDT
Hall of Colonials
  Live Demo and Discussion, Infrastructure & Edge Computing

10:00am EDT

The Next Song Starts in 14 Seconds: Embracing Chaos in Live Software
Friday October 30, 2026 10:00am - 10:45am EDT
Conference Room 1
I run Lead Singer Wanted, a Pittsburgh-based live band karaoke act: the audience picks the songs, gets on stage, and sings lead while a real band plays behind them. I also wrote the software that runs the show, including QR-code signups, the singer queue, synchronized lyrics, the sheet music on the musicians' iPads, and the video wall. Oh yeah, and a Guitar Hero controller drives the whole...
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Speakers
avatar for Tom Medvitz

Tom Medvitz

Principal Instructor, Executive AI Programs, Galvanize
Tom Medvitz is a software engineer and instructor who teaches AI adoption to enterprise and government clients. Before that, he spent 8 years at Tech Elevator, where hundreds of career-changers made their way into the tech industry through his classroom. Outside of work he has run... Read More →
Friday October 30, 2026 10:00am - 10:45am EDT
Conference Room 1
  Live Demo and Discussion, Keeping It Human

10:00am EDT

Community Is the Moat Now
Friday October 30, 2026 10:00am - 10:45am EDT
Conference Room 3
In the age of AI, your product is a commodity. Your community isn't.When anyone can ship a working product by talking to an AI, product stops being a defensible advantage. Features get cloned in a weekend. What can't be cloned is a room full of people who trust you, use the thing, and tell each other about it. Distribution was always the hard part. AI just made it the only hard part. This...
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Speakers
avatar for YJ Lin

YJ Lin

Managing Partner, CMX Ventures
YJ Lin is a seasoned startup ecosystem leader who scaled Dell for Startups from zero to $100 million in annual revenue by building over a hundred strategic partnerships with economic development and startup communities in North America. His data-driven and community approach to developing... Read More →
Friday October 30, 2026 10:00am - 10:45am EDT
Conference Room 3
  Present Problem – Solution – Impact, Keeping it Human; Workforce & Human-Centered Tech

10:00am EDT

Cybersecurity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Friday October 30, 2026 10:00am - 10:45am EDT
Conference Room 2
Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming the most productive, and potentially overprivileged, member of your workforce. Employees are feeding sensitive information into AI tools, organizations are connecting coworkers to corporate data, and autonomous agents are gaining the ability to read, write, execute, and make decisions. Meanwhile, attackers are using the same technology to accelerate...
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Speakers
avatar for Brad Messner, PhD

Brad Messner, PhD

Teaching Assistant Professor of Information Systema & Technology Management, University of Pittsburgh
Brad Messner, PhD is a cybersecurity and artificial intelligence expert, professor at the University of Pittsburgh, and nationally recognized speaker. With more than 25 years of industry experience spanning software development, automation, cybersecurity, and information systems... Read More →
avatar for Michal Cieslak, PhD

Michal Cieslak, PhD

Teaching Assistant Professor of Information Systema & Technology Management, University of Pittsburgh
Experienced in all things Data Analytics and Data Science. Global work exposure across Asia, Australia, Europe, Middle East and the US. University professor and a Machine Learning patent holder. Researcher at the intersection of data analytics, cloud computing & cybersecurity. Outside... Read More →
Friday October 30, 2026 10:00am - 10:45am EDT
Conference Room 2
  Present Problem – Solution – Impact, Ai + Robotics + National Security

10:00am EDT

Reliable DevOps with Nix and NixOS
Friday October 30, 2026 10:00am - 10:45am EDT
People's Gate
Imagine a development environment built on a package repository more than twice the size of Ubuntu's or Fedora's.  One that can be brought up on a new machine simply by cd'ing into your worktree.  Using a single tool with built-in support for the package ecosystems of dozens of programming languages.Imagine a CI/CD pipeline that uses this same tool to provide caching of build artifacts...
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Speakers
avatar for Matt McHenry

Matt McHenry

Principal Software Engineer, Carnegie Learning, Inc.
Matt is an experienced Java developer who enjoys exploring functional programming, biking, soccer, and swing dancing.
Friday October 30, 2026 10:00am - 10:45am EDT
People's Gate
  Present Problem – Solution – Impact, Developer Tools for Immediate use

10:00am EDT

Stop Just Writing Code: How AI Makes You a Better Product Engineer
Friday October 30, 2026 10:00am - 10:45am EDT
Harshman Rotunda
Software engineering can no longer mean operating in "ticket-taker" mode—passively implementing specs in isolation. As the traditional Venn diagram of code, product, and design increasingly converges, engineers who can comfortably navigate that overlap become exponentially more impactful teammates.AI isn’t just an autocomplete tool; it is the ultimate lever to help you take on those broader...
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Speakers
PW

Phil Webster

Senior Software Engineer, WP Engine
Phil Webster is a Senior Software Engineer at WP Engine, where he maintains high-scale plugins like WP Migrate and Better Search Replace for over a million active users. In addition to contributing to WordPress core, he’s a huge advocate for digital accessibility and is currently... Read More →
Friday October 30, 2026 10:00am - 10:45am EDT
Harshman Rotunda
  Present Problem – Solution – Impact, Career Progression and Managing Up

11:00am EDT

Security Risks of NFC
Friday October 30, 2026 11:00am - 11:45am EDT
Harshman Rotunda
Near-Field Communication (NFC) technology is everywhere: your credit card, hotel room keys, smart phones, and your office badge, but not all NFC is created equal. Some NFC protocols have security vulnerabilities that have been known about for years and are trivial to exploit. The worst part? They are still widely used. This talk will explore two protocols with known vulnerabilities, demonstrate...
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Speakers
avatar for David Berdik

David Berdik

Software Engineer, SoftWriters
I am a software engineer currently working for SoftWriters (a part of Roper). We specialize in writing software for Long Term Care Pharmacies. These pharmacies service large facilities such as hospitals and nursing homes. Prior to joining SoftWriters, I worked for Amazon and General... Read More →
Friday October 30, 2026 11:00am - 11:45am EDT
Harshman Rotunda
  Demo + Challenge + Tech Workshop, Infrastructure & Edge Computing

11:00am EDT

Code Tourists vs Owners
Friday October 30, 2026 11:00am - 11:45am EDT
Former Spirit Store
I have long held a firm belief in the power of long-term code ownership and deep knowledge.  A recent nearly-catastrophic security bug initially underlined my belief in ownership and the risk of code tourists.  But a bit of reflection forced me to consider whether universal tourism might be the wave of the future.  If so, what will that mean for how we build? Growing up in a tourist...
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Speakers
avatar for Lyle Seaman

Lyle Seaman

VPE, Carnegie Learning
Currently on my third (fifth?) major technology revolution.  I've been a systems programmer, Unix hacker, performance nerd and forward-deployed engineer throughout Europe with a brief stint in investment banking IT. Built and managed an authn/authz system, founded an SRE team, and... Read More →
Friday October 30, 2026 11:00am - 11:45am EDT
Former Spirit Store
  Engage with Big Ideas, Career Progression and Managing Up

11:00am EDT

Future-Proofing Isn't About Technology. It's About People.
Friday October 30, 2026 11:00am - 11:45am EDT
West Concourse
Every few months we're told another breakthrough will transform the workplace. New models arrive. We develop new "best practices." Today's "must-have" tool may already have a newer competitor before implementation is complete. So how do we get off the hamster wheel and build organizations with staying power?The organizations that thrive won't be the ones chasing every new platform. They'll be the...
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Speakers
avatar for Tia Christopher

Tia Christopher

Founder, CEO, The Orange Peel Collaborative
Tia Christopher is the Founder and CEO of The Orange Peel Collaborative, a people-centered AI strategy and workplace transformation firm helping organizations adopt emerging technologies with confidence, clarity, and trust. As a U.S. Navy veteran, her career has spanned military service... Read More →
Friday October 30, 2026 11:00am - 11:45am EDT
West Concourse
  Engage with Big Ideas, Keeping It Human

11:00am EDT

Let Me Show You How The World Ends: Using Domain Storytelling to Survive Infrastructure Doomsday
Friday October 30, 2026 11:00am - 11:45am EDT
Conference Room 5
If your infrastructure disappeared tomorrow, would you understand how to rebuild it? Not just what needed to be restored or what configuration might need to be reapplied, but what depends on what, which teams need to be engaged, and that one command, run by that one person, that one time, that somehow became the thing standing between you and recovery.The truth is, creating infrastructure is often...
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Speakers
avatar for Tyler Auerbeck

Tyler Auerbeck

Staff Software Engineer, Stack AV
Tyler is a Staff Software Engineer at Stack AV focusing on bringing resilience and reliability to self-driving infrastructure. In his free time, he focuses on mangling software to work together in new and often times unexpected ways.
Friday October 30, 2026 11:00am - 11:45am EDT
Conference Room 5
  Engage with Big Ideas, Infrastructure & Edge Computing

11:00am EDT

Rising Agent Orchestration Patterns for AI Coding
Friday October 30, 2026 11:00am - 11:45am EDT
South Concourse
Most of us who write software are spending our time trying to understand how to best leverage the power of AI Coding models to improve our efficiency. In this talk I'll discuss why you should care about agent orchestration, and some successful patterns that we've seen being used.
Speakers
avatar for Nathan Brake

Nathan Brake

Senior Machine Learning Engineer, mozilla.ai
Nathan Brake is an ML Engineer at Mozilla.ai, working to build open-source tools that helps improve access, transparency, and reliability of AI systems.
Friday October 30, 2026 11:00am - 11:45am EDT
South Concourse
  Engage with Big Ideas, Developer Tools for Immediate use

11:00am EDT

Strategist, Systems Builder, Customer Whisperer: The Product Leader in the AI Era
Friday October 30, 2026 11:00am - 11:45am EDT
Conference Room 4
The product leader's job doesn't get harder because of scale; it gets harder because the job changes. And now AI has quietly rewritten the job description and forgotten to tell anyone.When anyone can generate a 20-page strategy doc in five minutes, knowledge stops being the moat — beautiful, fluffy documents nobody reads, and a creeping anxiety that "anybody can do this job now." The tool...
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Speakers
avatar for Rupali Sharma

Rupali Sharma

Principal Product Lead, k-ID
Rupali Sharma is a product and platform leader with more than 15 years of experience shaping large-scale gaming ecosystems, platform infrastructure, and trust & safety systems used by millions worldwide. Across leadership roles at Electronic Arts, Take-Two Interactive, and now k-ID... Read More →
Friday October 30, 2026 11:00am - 11:45am EDT
Conference Room 4
  Engage with Big Ideas, Keeping it Human; Workforce & Human-Centered Tech

11:00am EDT

Agentic SDLC in Action using Project Squad and the GitHub Copilot CLI
Friday October 30, 2026 11:00am - 11:45am EDT
People's Gate
Assembling a team of AI agents shouldn't mean hand-crafting each one from scratch or stitching together agents and skills from popular repos. With Project Squad and the GitHub Copilot CLI, you simply describe your project, requirements and tech stack and Squad casts the right team for the job.In this live, hands-on session, you'll watch agentic SDLC in action as Squad casts and orchestrates a team...
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Speakers
avatar for Jorge Balderas

Jorge Balderas

Principal Solution Engineer, Microsoft
Jorge Balderas is a Software Solution Engineer focused on AI and Application Innovation projects. Jorge has extensive experience helping customers migrate their application workloads into the cloud. Jorge is skilled in Azure, GitHub, GitHub Copilot, Java, .NET, Quarkus and Spring... Read More →
Friday October 30, 2026 11:00am - 11:45am EDT
People's Gate
  Live Demo and Discussion, Developer Tools for Immediate use

11:00am EDT

AI on the Front: How Autonomous Vehicles Will Shape the Conflicts of Tomorrow
Friday October 30, 2026 11:00am - 11:45am EDT
Hall of Colonials
As unmanned ground, air, and maritime vehicles make their way onto the battlefield, how can these vehicles be used to support logistics, evacuate wounded soldiers, and identify and act upon threats? What technologies enable autonomous vehicles to navigate GPS-denied areas and complete missions in communications-degraded environments? What is the role of the warfighter and the war planner in this...
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Speakers
JM
Friday October 30, 2026 11:00am - 11:45am EDT
Hall of Colonials
  Present Problem – Solution – Impact, The Next Wave of Autonomous Tech

11:00am EDT

Human-AI Collaboration for a More Resilient Power Grid
Friday October 30, 2026 11:00am - 11:45am EDT
Conference Room 1
As extreme weather, wildfire risks, aging infrastructure, and growing electricity demand place new pressure on the power grid, utilities and communities need better tools for resilient decision-making. In this talk, I will discuss how human-AI collaboration can support grid infrastructure planning and operations by combining data-driven prediction, uncertainty quantification, and optimization with...
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Speakers
avatar for Woody Shixiang Zhu

Woody Shixiang Zhu

Assistant Professor, Carnegie Mellon University
Shixiang “Woody” Zhu is an Assistant Professor at Heinz College, Carnegie Mellon University. His research develops data-driven methods for reliable decision-making in complex sociotechnical systems, with a focus on uncertainty quantification, optimization, machine learning, and... Read More →
Friday October 30, 2026 11:00am - 11:45am EDT
Conference Room 1
  Present Problem – Solution – Impact, Infrastructure & Edge Computing

11:00am EDT

Human-Centered Design in the Age of AV: Designing Technology That Feels Human
Friday October 30, 2026 11:00am - 11:45am EDT
Conference Room 3
As AV systems become more advanced, the human experience can easily get lost in the technology. This session introduces DONATE—Discover, Observe, Navigate, Align, Test, and Elevate—a practical human-centered design framework created specifically for AV experiences, including interactive touchscreens, software, and integrated environments.Through real-world examples, attendees will learn how to...
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Speakers
avatar for Greg Cunneyworth

Greg Cunneyworth

Managing Partner, Co-founder, Makeway
Greg Cunneyworth is the co-founder and managing partner of Makeway (makeway.is), a digital experience agency he launched in 2010. Makeway helps established organizations uncover opportunities and create meaningful digital experiences through custom websites, interactive touchscreens... Read More →
Friday October 30, 2026 11:00am - 11:45am EDT
Conference Room 3
  Present Problem – Solution – Impact, Workforce & Human Centered Tech

11:00am EDT

Rebuilding the Foundation: Change Management for Digital Transformation with AI-Powered Analytics
Friday October 30, 2026 11:00am - 11:45am EDT
Conference Room 2
Legacy systems don't just slow analytics—they limit what an organization can ask of its data. This session examines an end-to-end digital transformation journey at a century-old industrial distributor, involving the retirement of aging, siloed technologies and the transition to a modern data platform designed for scale.But the harder challenge was not the technology—it was the people. Every...
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Speakers
avatar for Sourav Bhattacharyya

Sourav Bhattacharyya

Manager of IT – Data Insights and Business Analytics, Wesco
Sourav Bhattacharyya is an enterprise technology and data leader with 18 years of experience spanning data engineering, analytics, and AI across logistics, healthcare, insurance, and banking. He currently serves as Manager of IT – Data Insights and Business Analytics at Wesco Distribution... Read More →
Friday October 30, 2026 11:00am - 11:45am EDT
Conference Room 2
  Present Problem – Solution – Impact, The Next Wave of Autonomous Tech

12:00pm EDT

Lunch- Find Your Flock
Friday October 30, 2026 12:00pm - 12:45pm EDT
Find the room and tables that best fit your role! 1. Software Developers & EngineersFor: Software Developers, Software Engineers, Full-Stack Developers, Application Developers, DevOps EngineersGrab your lunch and sit with the people who speak your language-code, systems, releases, bugs, and everything in between. Compare tech stacks, career paths, AI tools, and the challenges of building...
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Friday October 30, 2026 12:00pm - 12:45pm EDT
  Networking

1:00pm EDT

From Developer Support to Product Marketing: Finding the Role Between Technology and Storytelling
Friday October 30, 2026 1:00pm - 1:45pm EDT
West Concourse
Careers in technology do not always follow a straight path. In this session, Mackenzie Albitz shares how a computer science background and early career in technical engineering led to an unexpected move into product marketing. Her journey highlights how technical skills can remain valuable even when your job title, responsibilities, or career direction change.Along the way, Mackenzie will share...
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Speakers
avatar for Mackenzie Albitz

Mackenzie Albitz

Product Marketing Manager, MESCIUS USA Inc.
Mackenzie Albitz is a Product Marketing Manager at MESCIUS with a background in computer science and technical engineering. After starting her career as a Technical Engagement Engineer, she transitioned into technical product marketing, where she now focuses on translating complex... Read More →
Friday October 30, 2026 1:00pm - 1:45pm EDT
West Concourse
  Engage with Big Ideas, Career Progression and Managing Up

1:00pm EDT

Replacing Third-Party Search with AI Agents: A Marketplace Case Study
Friday October 30, 2026 1:00pm - 1:45pm EDT
Harshman Rotunda
Every growing company buys its way out of hard problems. You're small, the roadmap is long, and a small SaaS contract buys you a year of engineering time. That's the right call, until it isn't.This talk is a field report on one of those inflection points. Courtyard is a marketplace for physical collectibles, and for years our search was powered by a third-party vendor. It worked, until...
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Speakers
JP

Joe Petrich

SVP of Engineering, Courtyard
I am the SVP of Engineering at Courtyard, where we are making trading collectibles fast, fun and frictionless. Previously, I was a Software Engineer in Site Reliability Engineering at Google, and before that I was on the Google Pay partner engineering team, working with financial... Read More →
Friday October 30, 2026 1:00pm - 1:45pm EDT
Harshman Rotunda
  Engage with Big Ideas, Developer Tools for Immediate use

1:00pm EDT

The Leadership Skills Technology Cannot Replace
Friday October 30, 2026 1:00pm - 1:45pm EDT
South Concourse
As technology and artificial intelligence reshape the workplace, leaders must become more intentional about the human capabilities technology cannot replace. This presentation explores how discernment, empathy, trust, adaptability, and sound judgment influence the way people respond to change and work together. Participants will consider which leadership skills matter most in a technology-driven...
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Speakers
avatar for Dr. Ann Gatty

Dr. Ann Gatty

Founder and President, Strategic People Solutions
Dr. Ann Gatty is a leadership strategist, executive coach, author, and President of Strategic People Solutions. For more than 30 years, she has partnered with leaders and organizations to strengthen leadership effectiveness, navigate change, resolve workplace challenges, and build... Read More →
Friday October 30, 2026 1:00pm - 1:45pm EDT
South Concourse
  Engage with Big Ideas, Career Progression and Managing Up

1:00pm EDT

The Repricing: What AI Does to the Economics of a Business — and the Careers Built Inside It
Friday October 30, 2026 1:00pm - 1:45pm EDT
Conference Room 5
Analysis, drafting, modeling, coordination — the work businesses are built out of — just got radically cheaper. That single change reprices two things at once, and most organizations are only doing the math on one of them. On the business side, the operating model assumed capacity costs headcount. That assumption is now wrong, and cost structure, org design, and margin all move with it. On the...
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Speakers
avatar for Ryan Frederick

Ryan Frederick

Principal, Transform Labs
Ryan Frederick is an AI advisor, investor, and national speaker who spoke at more than 50 conferences and events across the country in 2025. As Principal at Transform Labs, he helps organizations turn AI into an operating capability rather than a pile of disconnected tools; through... Read More →
Friday October 30, 2026 1:00pm - 1:45pm EDT
Conference Room 5
  Engage with Big Ideas, Workforce & Human Centered Tech

1:00pm EDT

Venom in the Pipeline: Why Bad External Data Is Poisoning Your AI
Friday October 30, 2026 1:00pm - 1:45pm EDT
Conference Room 4
It only takes ½ of a “drop” of venom from an Inland Taipan snake to kill a five-ton elephant. It doesn't take a flood of venom to be lethal. It takes one bite, from one source, at the wrong moment.External data works the same way. A single bad source flowing into an AI system can trigger the same kind of damage: hallucinations, bias, and decisions built on a foundation no one should trust....
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Speakers
avatar for Andy Hannah

Andy Hannah

CEO, Blue Street Data
Andy Hannah, CEO of Blue Street Data (BSD), is creating an efficient marketplace for external data, a critical ingredient of AI models.   He’s an Adjunct Professor of Analytics at the University of Pittsburgh and Chairs Pitt’s Advisory Board for its Hub for AI Leadership.  Prior... Read More →
Friday October 30, 2026 1:00pm - 1:45pm EDT
Conference Room 4
  Engage with Big Ideas, Ai + Robotics + National Security

1:00pm EDT

AI Agents and the Return of the Spreadsheet
Friday October 30, 2026 1:00pm - 1:45pm EDT
Former Spirit Store
For years, enterprise software tried to replace spreadsheets with dashboards, BI platforms, and purpose-built applications. But spreadsheets never really went away. They remained the place where people modeled scenarios, explored data, built forecasts, and made decisions.AI agents are changing that relationship. Instead of replacing the spreadsheet, AI can now automate the tedious work that made...
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Speakers
avatar for Chris Bannon

Chris Bannon

Product Manager, MESCIUS USA, Inc.
Chris Bannon is a corny dad, lighthearted guy, and dedicated programmer who takes his work seriously—but never himself. As the Product Manager of SpreadJS at MESCIUS, Chris brings years of hands-on experience, starting as Lead Web Developer at ComponentOne in 2007, where he rebuilt... Read More →
Friday October 30, 2026 1:00pm - 1:45pm EDT
Former Spirit Store
  Live Demo and Discussion, Developer Tools for Immediate use

1:00pm EDT

Beneath the Surface of the Docker Ocean
Friday October 30, 2026 1:00pm - 1:45pm EDT
People's Gate
Like other metaphorical objects that float on the water, Docker has a lot hidden below its surface.  Many of us use Docker or other containerization platforms to run our applications.  But what are containers and images, and how do these two concepts come together in Docker?In this talk we'll build a simple image and start a running container from it.  Then, like the curious...
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Speakers
avatar for Matt McHenry

Matt McHenry

Principal Software Engineer, Carnegie Learning, Inc.
Matt is an experienced Java developer who enjoys exploring functional programming, biking, soccer, and swing dancing.
Friday October 30, 2026 1:00pm - 1:45pm EDT
People's Gate
  Live Demo and Discussion, Developer Tools for Immediate use

1:00pm EDT

Beyond Connectivity: Building an Industry 4.0 Platform Ready for Industrial AI
Friday October 30, 2026 1:00pm - 1:45pm EDT
Hall of Colonials
Connecting machines to the cloud is only the first step toward intelligent manufacturing. This presentation shares the technical journey of redesigning Conair's SmartServices platform to support large-scale industrial monitoring, remote machine control, and future AI-driven insights.We'll cover the end-to-end architecture—from industrial protocols and Azure IoT Edge through cloud services and...
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Speakers
KA

Keith Acker

Senior Software Engineer, The Conair Group
Software engineer at Capital One, working on high-traffic consumer credit card experiences Built and shipped the Venture X rewards pageRecognized with a TechX Award for the Venture X rewards workOwned— edge data acquisition, cloud ingestion, stream processing into a time-series... Read More →
avatar for Pete Bruns

Pete Bruns

VP of Software Engineering, OpenArc
Pete Bruns is a creative, award-winning IT executive with nearly twenty years of experience leading technology organizations across every phase of the software development life cycle. As OpenArc's Vice President of Software Engineering, he has managed a variety of teams on projects ranging... Read More →
Friday October 30, 2026 1:00pm - 1:45pm EDT
Hall of Colonials
  Live Demo and Discussion, Industrial Ai and the Reinvention of Manufacturing

1:00pm EDT

How to Be an AI Champion: Turning the person who got handed AI into the person who gets the credit.
Friday October 30, 2026 1:00pm - 1:45pm EDT
Conference Room 1
Someone at your company got handed AI and told to "go figure it out." More and more, that someone is a technologist — and the instinct is to prove it by mastering the tools. That's the fast climb up "Mount Stupid," where quiet dabbling turns into shadow AI, exposed data, and surprise costs nobody budgeted for.This talk reframes the job. The strongest AI champions aren't the most technical people...
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Speakers
avatar for Doogie Levine

Doogie Levine

VP, ATiiD
With a rich background spanning over a decade in management and executive leadership within the youth and recreation industry, Doogie brings a unique blend of experience and vision to the table. His journey has been anything but conventional, leading him down the less-trodden path... Read More →
avatar for Dan Simklins

Dan Simklins

CEO, ATiiD
Dan is a seasoned leader with a strong foundation in corporate operations, business process improvement, and technology strategy. Throughout his career, he has worked with large organizations to streamline operations, drive efficiency, and align technology investments with business... Read More →
Friday October 30, 2026 1:00pm - 1:45pm EDT
Conference Room 1
  Present Problem – Solution – Impact, Keeping it Human; Workforce & Human-Centered Tech

1:00pm EDT

Small But Mighty: How a Pittsburgh Company Is Using Technology To Fight Sex Trafficking Internationally
Friday October 30, 2026 1:00pm - 1:45pm EDT
Conference Room 2
Sex trafficking is a complex international problem. One of the biggest challenges for public safety is this type of crime goes underreported. To protect and serve victims, law enforcement must be proactive in identifying exploitation. This is where technology can make a difference. At Marinus Analytics, we build software to help investigators sift through a massive amount of data and turn it into...
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Speakers
avatar for William

William "Rocky" Oberti

Full Stack Software Engineer, Marinus Analytics
William “Rocky” Oberti is a software engineer at Marinus Analytics, a company whose mission is to advance victim-centered trauma-informed policing through purposely-built tools to identify and disrupt under-reported crimes. Rocky graduated from The University of Pittsburgh with... Read More →
Friday October 30, 2026 1:00pm - 1:45pm EDT
Conference Room 2
  Present Problem – Solution – Impact, Ai + Robotics + National Security

1:00pm EDT

The Bittersweet Lesson: Deliberate Implicit Structure and Tabular Data
Friday October 30, 2026 1:00pm - 1:45pm EDT
Conference Room 3
LLMs appear to vindicate the "bitter lesson": AI researchers succeed less by incorporating domain knowledge and more by scaling data and compute. Taken as prescription, “all you need is scale”. Indeed, practitioners in many domains have moved from traditional ML methods with domain-driven feature engineering to foundation models and other deep learning approaches.However, theoretical and...
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Speakers
avatar for Sylesh Suresh

Sylesh Suresh

Member of Technical Staff, Wood Wide AI
Sylesh is an ML engineer at Wood Wide AI with previous experience as a software engineer at Apple and Meta.
Friday October 30, 2026 1:00pm - 1:45pm EDT
Conference Room 3
  Present Problem – Solution – Impact, The Next Wave of Autonomous Tech

2:00pm EDT

Live Test Session: ML Engineers: Put Perforated to the Test
Friday October 30, 2026 2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT
Conference Room 5
Machine Learning Engineers: Put Perforated to the TestPerforated is challenging a fundamental assumption in machine learning: that improving model performance means collecting more data or building bigger models. Its technology adds new learning signals during training to help models learn more efficiently, potentially achieving stronger performance with less training data and fewer parameters. It...
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Speakers
RC

Ralph Crewe

Co-Founder and Chief Communications Officer,, PerforatedAi
MW

Mark Westerlund

Dr. Of Engineering, Perforated
Friday October 30, 2026 2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT
Conference Room 5
  Demo + Challenge + Tech Workshop, The ML Challenge: More Performance, Less Data

2:00pm EDT

Unconference-Led by Colin Dean, Code & Supply
Friday October 30, 2026 2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT
Main Event Space: Peoples Court
Unconference at TechFest 2026! Led by Colin Dean, Code & SupplyJoin us for a participant-driven experience where you set the agenda! For this session, there are no pre-planned speakers or sessions. Instead, we create the schedule together based on the topics that matter most to our community.How It WorksThe Unconference follows a simple, organic format:Morning: Arrive ready to propose topics!...
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Speakers
avatar for Colin Dean

Colin Dean

Founder, Code & Supply
Scholar. Bon vivant. Champion of the oppressed.
Friday October 30, 2026 2:00pm - 3:00pm EDT
Main Event Space: Peoples Court
  Engage with Big Ideas

3:00pm EDT

TechFest Happy Hour + 1 drink ticket and apps!
Friday October 30, 2026 3:00pm - 4:00pm EDT
Eat-N-Park VIP
End your day with a TechFest Happy Hour overlooking Peoples Court! Drink ticket and snacks included.
Friday October 30, 2026 3:00pm - 4:00pm EDT
Eat-N-Park VIP
  Networking
 

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Friday, October 30
Conference Room 1
Conference Room 2
Conference Room 3
Conference Room 4
Conference Room 5
Eat-N-Park VIP
Former Spirit Store
Hall of Colonials
Harshman Rotunda
Main Event Space: Peoples Court
People's Gate
South Concourse
UPMC Events Center, UPMC Gate, Parking Lot 2
UPMC Gate Lobby
West Concourse
  • Demo + Challenge + Tech Workshop
  • Engage with Big Ideas
  • Keynote
  • Live Demo and Discussion
  • Networking
  • Present Problem – Solution – Impact
  • Popular