9th Annual Enterprise Computing Community Conference: Day 2
In June, I attended the 9th annual Enterprise Computing Community (ECC) conference hosted by Marist College with collaboration and support from academic and industry partners and sponsors. This year’s conference was June 11 to 13, 2017. I gave an overview of the conference in a previous post and I covered in detail the sessions from day 1. In this post, I focus primarily on the content of the last day of the conference.
Morning Sessions
The day began with hot breakfast in the great hall overlooking the Hudson River from the second floor of the Student Center. CA Technologies sponsored the meal.
9 a.m., keynote speaker Ramesh Gopinath, vice president of Blockchain Solutions, IBM – Presentation: How Blockchain is Transforming Industries by Reimagining Business Interactions
Ramesh Gopinath took us on a fast-paced tour through his experiences as a leader in blockchain solutions from IBM. At first, he helped build that strategy to meet the marketplace need through professional services, then began a period where many customers engaged in lightweight explorations of blockchain. After this early period, somewhat suddenly, the projects became more substantive and serious. Today, customers are doing a lot more that just exploring blockchain, they are seeking to integrate this distributed shared-ledger technology to improve their business processes in a fundamental way.
10:20 to 10:50 a.m., there were four current sessions from which to choose. Links to the presentations from the first and second days where you will find “download presentation” links.
1. Chi Liu, Beijing Institute of Technology: Enterprise Computing Curriculum Combine with Joint Projects
2. Joseph Gulla, IT Consultant: Making Sense of the API Economy
I was fortunate to be accepted as a speaker at this year’s conference. For more than a year, I have been
working part time in the API economy for a software company and have been reading and thinking deeply
about the world of APIs. Fortunate for me, my assignments have been the kind that build diverse experiences
like writing papers on REST versus SOAP and contract first versus contract last, competitive analysis of API
management products, research on microservices, defining service offerings and marketing materials. Drawing from these experiences, I presented materials that had the goal of helping the attendees make sense of the API economy. In addition to a presentation, I handed out a 10-page paper that summarized
my experiences.
3. Kirsten Brunner McDonald, Yasmine El Garhi, Cheryl Loughlin, Meghan McGrath, Theresa Hans, IBM:
Unleash the Beast! Designers on Empathy and Brainstorming at IBM Poughkeepsie
4. Robert Cannistra, Marist College: Can We Really Defeat Denial of Service Attacks?
11 to 11:30 a.m., there were three current sessions from which to choose.
1. Paul Newton, IBM: Teaching z to Non-Believers—Tips From People Who’ve Done It
2. Jay Lefkowitz, Robert Grosberg, Touro College Graduate School of Technology: Enterprise Systems Education at Touro College
3. Casimer DeCusatis, Marist College: NSF SecureCloud, Year 2: Autonomic Security Using OODA Loops
11:40 a.m. to 12:10 p.m., there were four current sessions from which to choose.
1. Steve Guendert, Brocade Communications: Blockchain and SDN
2. Sadik Erisen, Tamar Tokman, Arnav Lohe, Tristan Draper, Ross Kernez, Bergen Community College: Grace AI and Search Engine
3. Aparicio Carranza, John Rosario, Jaime Santos, Jose Herrera, CUNY-New York City College of Technology: Penetration Testing Using Virtual and Physical Networks
4. Cameron Seay, North Carolina A&T State University: Project Lead IT: Leadership, Empowerment, Apprenticeship and Diversity in Information Technology
Seay explained Lead IT, a program in leadership, empowerment, apprenticeship and diversity in information technology. This effort at NC A&T is a U.S. Department of Labor-funded initiative to expand the apprenticeship model. It is a $7.5 million, five-year project to increase opportunities in the IT space. It is a community-based project focused on underrepresented populations, women, veterans and people with disabilities. There are seven faculty members from A&T Faculty driving the program supported with partners including IBM (apprenticeship sponsorship), SHARE (marketing), AACsc (apprenticeship SME), VetsInTech (veterans), MCEC (recruiting and outreach), Mentor Services (system support/content development) and Bits n Pieces (K-12 outreach).
12:10 to 1 p.m., Sponsored lunch in the great hall overlooking the Hudson River. DuPont Fabros Technology sponsored the lunch.
Afternoon Sessions
1 to 2 p.m., keynote speaker Carol Reeves, associate vice provost of entrepreneurship, University
of Arkansas—Presentation on Entrepreneurship
Carol Reeves gave an amazing keynote talk called “What’s Your Problem? How Thinking Like an Entrepreneur
Leads to Innovation.” If you are interested in entrepreneurship, you must read through this presentation.
Reeves spoke about the importance of interdisciplinary teams, mentoring from entrepreneurs and former
students, hard work and the importance of not trying to pursue solutions searching for problems. The main
focus of the presentation was a useful and systematic exploration of the topic. I especially appreciated the
detailed focus on solving a problem versus creating a solution, then looking for a problem that it solves.
2 to 2:20 p.m., dessert and coffee break on the third floor of the Student Center 3rd Floor. NewEra Software sponsored the break.
2:20 to 3:10 p.m., Student Panel, moderator: Alan Labouseur, Marist College, with Aislinn Handley, Central New Mexico Community College; and Tim Broadaway, University of Arkansas
After more than 40 years of working in IT, I still go back to the beginning of my career and think about the challenges I had in figuring out how to do my job and wondering what I might do next in my career. I was mindful I should move around every few years to get a wide variety of experiences before I settled down with one company. Experiencing the student panels at this conference, and speaking with the interns and new hires at the conference, I was encouraged at their level of maturity and focus. Education has certainly been doing a good job preparing young people for their early jobs in IT. Also, many have had internship opportunities, which have balanced out their education.
3:10 p.m. closing remarks from Roger Norton, dean, Marist College
Norton closed out the conference after the student panel. I am already thinking about next year and how I can get more involved in the ECC Community. Interested? Here is the link to the membership page. As the membership page indicates, there is no charge to join the community and participation can be as active as you determine, but your active participation is encouraged in the yearly ECC Conference held in June at Marist.