Members of the business community throughout Galway are being invited to learn more about how they can thrive through digital transformation at an upcoming free online festival featuring leading business and technology speakers. This year’s itag AtlanTec Festival will reflect the surge towards digital business necessitated by the pandemic and explore how more companies and organisations can equip themselves for the future of work and the changed corporate environment post Covid-19.
Now in its seventh year, AtlanTec will run across five days from Monday 17th to Friday 21st May and will cover a diverse array of topics relevant to conducting business in 2021 and the years ahead. It will feature topics as diverse as networking in a changed world, the needs for a digital workplace, artificial intelligence, drone technology, quantum computing, data and analytics as well as the use of digital voice assistants. Last year more than 3,000 people participated in the festival.
All the talks are free to attend and accessible remotely. Anyone from Galway who wishes to participate just has to register in advance via www.atlantec.ie Among the high profile speakers who will be participating in the event are former Twitter VP, Bruce Daisley who will discuss building a culture of innovation; author, founder and futurist Nicklas Bergman who will address how to navigate the tech storm; Dr. Jessica Barker of Cygenta will be focusing on the human side of cyber security; Microsoft’s Sarah Armstrong Smith on securing the future of remote working as well as author and consultant Kristina Podnar who will talk about the power of digital policy. Other well known speakers will include Marek Zmuda, Intel Technology; Steve Forcum, Avaya; Laura Delizonna, Stanford University and Kinsley Aikins, The Networking Institute.
They will be joined by Galway-based speakers including David Renton, security and compliance project manager at Genesys, who will discuss what it takes to secure data in a cloud native world; Dr Edward Curry, VP of the Big Data Value Association, who will talk about common data sharing spaces for European artificial intelligence; GMIT’s Dr Ian McLoughlin will look at how SME’s can embrace data analytics, Professor Jim Duggan of NUI, Galway will focus on how system dynamics has been deployed during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as wellbeing coach and facilitator, Pat Divilly who will focus on resilience and dealing with uncertainty.
Other Galway-based speakers include Dr Trevor Clohessy, GMIT, who will look at how blockchain powers digital transformation; author and meditation facilitator, Dermot Ryan; Rent the Runway VP and site lead, Dorothy Creaven; Kathrin Koedderitz of Globalization Partners; Fidelity Investments VP, Ann Roddy and SVP Lorna Martyn; distinguished engineer and site leader at Cisco, Keith Griffin; Hewlitt Packard MD, Paddy Medley and Dr Noel Carroll, NUI, Galway.
itag’s AtlanTec Festival is a key event in Ireland’s tech conference calendar and is supported by the technology cluster along the AtlanTec Gateway including Cisco, Genesys, Fidelity Investments, HPE, IBM, Storm, NUI Galway and itag Skillnet and many more.
“As anyone in the Galway business community will have witnessed over the last 14 months, we are increasingly moving towards digitally enabled business and corporate environments,” said Caroline Cawley, CEO itag. “What was already a trend has taken a major step forward driven by pandemic necessity. It means that more and more businesses in Galway and beyond are having to use digital technology to continue to operate in these remote working, socially distanced times.
“Crucially, we want to provide the answer to the question that occupies a lot of people in business: ‘Where to next?’ That is why this year’s conference focuses on thriving through digital transformation. We want to show the business community in Galway and all across the Atlantic Gateway region just what can be achieved through embracing these digital technologies and the many possibilities that can be unlocked for them and their companies. We hope that people from Galway will take advantage of this top class line up of speakers and topics and will register to attend these free talks which will run for a week beginning on 17th May,” Ms. Cawley concluded.
