You Can Be at Interop, Even When You Aren't

Travel budget tight? Staff shortage? Other business commitments? For whatever reason, you might not be able to make it to the lights of Las Vegas and the educational programs at Interop19 next week.

Well, you can be there in the virtual realm. The Interop team is offering a live stream of the keynote programs for both Wednesday and Thursday, May 22 and 23. So, you can catch the presentations by some of the top experts their IT fields while sitting in the comfort of your home or office.

Here's the lineup:

On Wednesday at 10 am (Pacific) the program kicks off with the Shaping the Future of IT: CIO Lightning Series. Three top IT executives -- Renee McKaskle (CIO, Hitachi Vantara), Beth Niblock (CIO, City of Detroit) and Judd Williams (CIO, NCAA) -- will present 5-minute lightning talks on what they think is the most critical (and positive) thing happening right now in their IT organization.

Those 5-minute talks will be followed by a 15-minute moderated discussion on what’s impacting and influencing the future of their IT organizations.

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The keynote presentation continues with the 2019 Best of Interop Awards, which recognize exhibitors that have technologically moved the IT industry forward.

Then, you can view "A Fireside Chat with Stacey Halota," Vice President, Information Security and Privacy for Graham Holdings Company. Stacey will discuss how to make “privacy by design” a reality and IT asset management less painful. She will relate the challenges of managing security and compliance in a broad, decentralized organization that spans several highly regulated sectors (including energy, manufacturing, media and healthcare). Also get her tricks for gaining buy-in for major data governance and metrics initiatives without getting doors slammed in her face.

Thursday's keynote program, also at 10 am (Pacific), features Brian McCarson (VP, Internet of Things Group, Director of Industrial Systems Engineering and Architecture, Intel); Kathy Kountze (Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Eversource Energy); and Michael Biltz (Managing Director, Accenture Technology Vision).

Brian McCarson presents "A Rational Approach to Interoperability," noting there are many challenges with trying to drive openness in a world of walled gardens. But, those challenges are well worth taking on. Proprietary and open systems are not mutually exclusive. There is a rational approach to interoperability that can strike a balanced approach that enables consumer choice and proprietary value. Designing with openness and partnerships in mind will derive greatest value for your enterprise and the ecosystem.

Then catch "A Fireside with Kathy Kountze." She describes her IT organization as a necessary "change agent," relentlessly driving technology and business transformation at Eversource Energy. She'll share how she entirely revamped the company's IT systems following a merger -- adopting cloud computing and SaaS applications in the process -- to elevate the customer experience. Kathy will also share her approach to life-long learning and what the community can do to make the IT workforce more diverse.

Also, Michael Biltz will present "Accenture Technology Vision: The Post-Digital Era." Organizations are progressing on their digital transformation journeys, using their digital investments to understand customers with a new depth of granularity, reach consumers through more channels and expand ecosystems with business partners. But now enterprises are at a turning point. Digital is no longer a differentiating advantage -- it’s the price of admission and table stakes for doing business. So, what’s next? Michael Biltz offers his viewpoint.