The Schedule
Welcome to CPOSC, and thank you for contributing to our local technology community. Ready to hack all the way to the future with us? Below, you'll find the schedule for our event taking place on April 26th, 2025. We searched the time continuum to get you the best talks!
PRINTABLE PDF SCHEDULE: DOWNLOAD
Morning
8:00 AM to 9:00 AM
Registration & Breakfast
Registration is available when you first walk into the Ware Center Lobby. At this time, you'll check in and receive your CPOSC t-shirt and badge. Use your badge to re-visit this schedule at any time. A delicious breakfast and plenty of coffee will be available just beyond the Registration Desk, where you can fuel up for the day.
9:00 AM to 9:20 AM
Welcome!
The Auditorium / Steinman Hall
Some brief remarks with some important announcements to make sure everyone is ready for a terrific day at CPOSC
9:30 AM to 10:20 AM
Session 1
Rage Against the Machine Learning: A Luddite's Guide to AI
The Auditorium / Steinman Hall
Speaker(s): Zach Fedor
Far from being simpletons or technophobes, the Luddites were skilled craftspeople who saw how new factory tech was destroying their communities and livelihoods. So they fought back with secret meetings, organized resistance, and hammers. This talk compares the Industrial and AI revolutions, exploring how Luddite principles and tactics might be adapted for the digital age, when the machine to break exists in the cloud not the factory floor.
Tools (and Toys) for the Terminal
Binns Room
Speaker(s): Jonathan Bowman
The command-line console is, fascinatingly, a technology both ancient and trending. Whether you are familiar with the command-line, scared of it, or some combination, you are welcome at this session. We will explore together some open-source tools for making your terminal both useful and fun.
Secrets to a Well-Designed Service
Choral Room
Speaker(s): Logan Farr
What sets apart a well-designed service from a run-of-the-mill service? How do we avoid architecture anti-patterns as software developers? In this talk, we'll cover the key ingredients of any service at all levels – development patterns, CI/CD, infrastructure, and even runtime in a production environment.
10:30 AM to 11:20 AM
Session 2
Lesson Learned - Continuing a Company After a Disaster
The Auditorium / Steinman Hall
Speaker(s): Joe Latrell
What do you do when your company implodes and takes a major step backward? We'll look at what happened, what could have been done better, and how to move on. This is a subject few seem willing to talk about. We'll cover the stigma of setbacks and retooling your mind to move forward again.
Advanced Git
Binns Room
Speaker(s): Alex Mayer
Do you use git for work or personal projects? Ever wonder if your workflow could be better? Let's go over a few features of git that can help improve your process.
Hacker Public Radio - Why You Should Listen, and Contribute
Choral Room
Speaker(s): murph
Hacker Public Radio is a community podcast that run 5 days a week. It is dedicated to sharing knowledge and has been running in various forms for nearly 20 years. Anyone that has anything that is of interest to hackers is welcome to submit a show.
11:30 AM to 12:20 PM
Session 3
Software Eng and Ops When 1 Minute Downtime is Immediate Termination
The Auditorium / Steinman Hall
Speaker(s): Jeff Barrett
This is going to be a high-level technical overview of software engineering and operations in the space of high-frequency trading and financial exchanges. In an ecosystem of 30-70MM messages/second and 3K trades/second with sub-microsecond response latency, it is immediate unquestioned termination if you cause a minute of downtime. How you architect solutions and code will directly relate to your job security.
Supercharging Innovation: AI’s Role in Ideation and Visualization
Binns Room
Speaker(s): Tom Courtney
This talk shows how AI can generate 70 innovative product or service ideas using ChatGPT and 14 ideation methods, exporting them to Excel. You'll also learn how to use DeepSeek to write a Python program that reads the Excel file and automatically creates 70 AI-generated images with DALL·E -bringing all 70 ideas to life in seconds. A provided template lets you apply this process to your own business.
Curious George Makes a Job
Choral Room
Speaker(s): Rob Hudson
There was once a curious not-so-little monkey, or at least 99% similar (by DNA), who could not decide what he wanted to be when he grew up. And by all reckoning, he was well past grown-up age. He liked computers, and he liked people, and he liked making them work together. But no job was just right for him. So he got the idea to hack his way to a new job for the future. This presentation is that story.
Lunch
12:30 PM to 1:30 PM
Lunch
Time for a brain break! A dietary-restriction-friendly lunch from Silantra Asian Kitchen will be provided to all attendees in the Atrium. During this time, you may also find yourself networking and connecting with peers in technology, or you can enjoy your meal in one of the quieter corners of the venue.
Afternoon
1:40 PM to 2:30 PM
Session 4
Nimbits: The Open Source IoT Platform That Shaped My Career
The Auditorium / Steinman Hall
Speaker(s): Benjamin Sautner
In 2004 I was working in the process control / data acquisition field doing automation of chemical plants in Pennsylvania. I've always enjoyed home automation and connecting devices to the internet and one day asked if I could get a licence for some of the data acquisition software we used so i could try to connect my aquarium to it. I was denied because it was expensive and proprietary. So I wrote my own just to shown them! Nimbits was born!
GenAI for Customer Support: Making an LLM More Capable on Niche Topics
Binns Room
Speaker(s): Andy James
This talk will shed light on the journey to integrate generative AI into Elastic's customer success and support operations, providing you with a behind-the-scenes look at our process. Topics include building a knowledge base, UX considerations, tuning RAG search, and observability for the features.
A GitOps Approach with ArgoCD
Choral Room
Speaker(s): Peter Stukalov
A real world GitOps example using ArgoCD with code and the ability to poke buttons in a real infrastructure.
2:40 PM to 3:30 PM
Session 5
Unleashing the Power, Potential and Productivity of Teams
The Auditorium / Steinman Hall
Speaker(s): Anupam Priya
Through this session, I aim to revisit the fundamentals of effective teamwork, uncover common blind spots, and explore research-backed strategies for building high-performing teams. Participants will critically reflect on how to unlock the full power, potential, and productivity of teams and gain actionable insights to drive collaboration and success in an engaging environment.
AI in the Support Stack: Real-World Applications & Critical Considerations
Binns Room
Speaker(s): Scott Dienner
Explore practical AI implementations in support operations through real-world examples: automated Zendesk ticket summarization, RAG-powered knowledge base queries, and vector search for Jira issues. Learn how these solutions enhanced support efficiency while examining the gap between AI reality and perception, separating genuine potential from inflated expectations.
Automate Infrastructure with Incus and Ansible
Choral Room
Speaker(s): Tim Freund
Learn how you can quickly build, destroy, and rebuild labs and project infrastructure using Incus (LXC / KVM), OpenTofu (Terraform), and Ansible. This talk is informed by experience building and rebuilding labs for class. Participants will get access to a live container for the duration of the talk and all configuration artifacts will be available for download so you can build your own lab later.
3:30 PM to 3:50 PM
Sweet Snacks in the Lobby
Fuel up for Lightning Talks and beyond with some delicious desserts, perhaps chatting about your favorite talk takeaways with your neighbors in line.
3:50 PM to 4:45 PM
Lightning Talks
The Auditorium / Steinman Hall
Throughout the day, all attendees have had the opportunity to submit lightning talks. Join us in Steinman Hall for some knowledge dispersment, at lightning speed -- a.k.a. 5 minutes at a time!
4:45 PM to 5:00 PM
A Fond Farewell
The Auditorium / Steinman Hall
Evening
6:00 PM onward
After Party
The fun doesn't have to stop! Details to come
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