Keynote: How algorithms shape the world

Kevin understands algorithms as nature — our world is subject to algorithmic optimization, not just on Wall Street, but in our homes, our architecture, and in our cities. Math is shaping our environments, what he calls the 'physics of culture'.

As an entrepreneur, Kevin has successfully navigated and integrated the areas of gaming, new media, technology, and design. As Co-founder of Area/Code in 2005, Kevin was a pioneer in rethinking game design and development around new technologies (like GPS) and new platforms (like Facebook). Area/Code worked to develop next-generation game experiences not only for major consumer product groups like Nokia, Nike and Puma but for media giants such as MTV, Discovery Channel, CBS and Disney. Their Facebook game Parking Wars, commissioned byA&E Television to promote its show of the same name, served over 1 billion pages in 2008. The company was acquired by Zynga in 2011, becoming Zynga New York.

Kevin is currently advising and investing in several new startups including locative games, education analytics, luxury retailing, algorithmic sports analysis, visual search, and online video advertising. Kevin's thinking and ventures have been featured in major business publications such as the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Wired, Businessweek and Fast Company. Recent feature profiles include everything from Dwell to the New Scientist, the Design Observer, and the Calcalist in Israel. Slavin and his partner at Area/Code were named to Creativity Magazine's Creativity 50.

Leadership and Today's CIO

While many CIOs have had a great deal of experience on how to run a technology organization, many of them struggle with the “human dynamics” required to transform an organization. CIOs must be business leaders who can leverage technology to drive organizational change.

IT must help drive new revenue streams, reengineer how business is done in a global marketplace, and leverage technology to help develop brand and market presence.

Join Larry Bonfante, CIO of the United States Tennis Association and author of “Lessons in IT Transformation: Technology Expert to Business Leader”, as he focuses on the critical components of IT leadership that aren’t taught in business school and don’t always come naturally to CIOs.

The Future for Information Security: A Discussion

Now more than ever, CIOs are trying to look ahead of the curve so that their information security protections and practices are improving as threats become stronger and larger in number. Moderating this interactive discussion session will be Dennis Dickstein, Chief Privacy and Information Security Officer of UBS Wealth Management, who will attempt to peer into the future by drawing from the participants' experiences and digging deeper through the questions that should be on everyone's mind, including:

• Identity theft, internal fraud, external fraud, social engineering, malware, viruses, hacking…

o What is the real threat: technology or people?
o What should be used to fight the threat: technology or people?

• New tools for protecting and authenticating – useful or not?

o Password complexity
o Fraud detection services
o Hard tokens
o Soft tokens / out-of-band techniques

• Is it really all about the data?

The Consumerization Concern: A discussion group

Whether mobility, BYOD, cloud services or consumerization, we are talking about a change in culture that advocates for individual empowerment, flexibility, and choice over standards, prudence and controls. This cultural movement toward freedoms is all happening while regulation and legislation increasingly demands corporations assume greater responsibility, liability and accept egregious financial penalties for breach, ineffective stewardship of privacy, data loss and non compliance.

The cost of threat mitigating technologies, complexity of operation, staff and specialty knowledge, and the scope of devices, infrastructure, applications and data we are required to protect to comply with new regulations, security competency standards, and to resist new threats is far beyond the resources most of us have to command. Still the pressures of cyber attack grow in frequency, sophistication and severity and we all face the realization that our attackers have the advantage.

Cyber terrorism is now a viable tool of war and our infrastructure and business environment a qualified target. Our ability to balance or reconcile the emerging business motif of innovation, "passion", and trendiness with our ability to respond to an environment of terror and disruption is critical not only to our business, but our communities and national security interests. Let's share our thoughts.
 

360° Cloud: Failing to plan is planning to fail

Companies of all sizes are venturing into the cloud to address a variety of business needs.  With any major technology shift, the primary challenges are around how to adopt and transform the existing landscape while building a secure, trusted and audit-ready solution.

Many companies today have built complex infrastructures and in-house IT departments. They would like to reap the benefits of cloud technologies, but do not know where to begin. Further, companies are at various stages of maturity and adoption of the cloud. Cloud adoption has many transformative effects beyond pure technology.  Many don’t understand all the organizational and cultural issues associated with migrating to cloud services.

Finally, while many companies are rushing to the cloud, they concerned about data security, privacy and validating that they are meeting all predefined compliance obligations. Lack of understanding of how to systematically evaluate cloud provider security and governance makes some companies delay their cloud migration initiatives.  

During this presentation you will learn:

• How companies have developed strategies for adopting and consuming the appropriate cloud services, and how moving to cloud services transforms companies along many different dimensions: different cost structures, changing workforce requirements, etc.  
• How companies are validating that cloud solutions meet or exceed the privacy and security of their in-house systems.  
 

Embracing Social, GenY and the Future: A discussion group

Building, Tracking, and Measuring Success of an Information Security Program: A Discussion Group

Join peers as you discuss key concepts and strategies for building and implementing an information security risk management program. The discussion will help both IT and Information Security professionals to effectively identify, quantify and manage security threats.

• Discuss the different aspects of successfully implementing an Information Security program, form conceptualization to execution including people, tools, and process.
• Provide an overview of the importance of the integration of Information Security into the system development life cycle (SDLC), an effective risk management mitigation process, and best practices for an on-going risk evaluation and assessment and the factors that will lead to a successful implementation of an Information Security program.
• Discuss the need for developing a collecting, analyzing and reporting meaningful metrics that will help Information Security professionals tracking, measuring and presenting the overall security posture, trends, gaps and resource requirements/needs.
 

Big Data: A discussion Group

Everyone is talking about the power of Big Data, but much like when the Cloud first emerged, there is still a lot to evaluate to determine if it makes sense on an individual organisational level. The discussion is aimed at sharing thoughts and questions about the potential of, and opportunities within, Big Data.

• What is big data?
• How do I know if I have a big data problem?
• What can I get out of big data?
• Where do I start?
• What is a data scientist?

IT Service Success: A discussion group

The future of the CIO Role in the enterprise: A discussion group

The role of both the IT department and the CIO these days seems to be about change: change in how IT contributes to the company, change in how the company views the CIO, change in culture, transformations of the enterprise, change in opportunities available to us, are changes in regulations holding us back?, and change in skills CIOs need to be successful today. As the leaders of the industry today, how do we stay the course with so much evolving around us? What is the role of CIO in this context? What will the CIO of one, five and 10 years from now look like? Will there even be one? How do we evolve from provider to partner?

This discussion group is aimed at sharing ideas of how the IT department (and by default, the CIO) will evolve, and how to best ensure it enables business success now and in the future.

One-to-One Personal Leadership Coaching