My Time at Boston TechJam 2018

This was the third year in a row I attended Boston TechJam (yes, I’m the first guy you see on their website, 2 years running now), the yearly event where "entrepreneurs, emerging and leading tech companies, top-tier academic institutions and students, world-class venture capitalists, incubators, and an ecosystem of supporting service providers" convene on City Hall Plaza to celebrate greater Boston’s innovation economy. I could reflect ad nauseum on the value I’ve gotten from these events, but I figured a better way to convey that is to give some shout-outs to the nice people and organizations who took the time to have meaningful conversations with me, as in addition to evangelizing my firm SQA and the alive and well discipline of software quality and test, I was there genuinely to learn, connect, and contribute to Boston’s vibrant and limitless technology community. These folks and their organizations were as well...

It started off as I stopped by the Innovation Women booth and spoke with Kirstie Fiora, Program and Partnerships Director. This group is doing some great things by connecting women technology leaders and entrepreneurs with speaking platforms. At this particular moment in history, I’m extremely excited for the tsunami of pent-up value and good to come from the strides women are making toward equality in the workplace!

Next, I met the good folks at Predictive Index, the workforce assessments methodology that enables businesses to unlock the power of their people. According to the free online assessment I took before the event, I’m a Maverick Profile. I think this is spot-on and the value in such assessments is self-reflection and better understanding your drivers to elevate your work (and life!) effectiveness.

I believe next, as I was in line for a delicious Jack’s Abbey IPL, I met Chris Pratt in talent acquisition at DraftKings. No, not the Chris Pratt from Jurassic World, but just as friendly. What an affable guy. Of course, DraftKings is just another Boston rocket ship that’s poised for astronomical growth with recent regulatory changes, but they were growing at an impressive clip even before that. Bookies of the world, you’re on notice!

Around that time, I met up with my fellow SQAers, Rob Lesperance and Jeremy Hardison, both first-time TechJammers. We shot the breeze a bit (literally, the wind was strong that evening!) over another beer, I introduced them to Chris, and then we went our separate ways – a divide and conquer, if you will. From there, the chronology of who I met where gets a little fuzzy, as it is a massive event with 5,000+ people and so many exhibits to visit.

One person/company I can't forget, however, is Pete Connor, VP of R&D at Cadence. If you've ever heard or Moore's Law, Cadence is the company behind the incredibly sophisticated EDA tools and IP that enable chip manufacturers to push the boundaries of that law to an atomic level, so we all can enjoy ever-increasing compute power in the palms of our hands. Pete and Cadence are a TechJam staple, and in fact he's one of the first people I met at TechJam in 2016. According to Pete, this year's engineering talent surpassed even last year's, and while I believe it, I also think it has something to do with name the brand that Cadence has established (due in no small part to Pete) as a great career for engineers.

I have to say a standout of the evening for me was meeting the team from Vyasa Analytics. I walked up to three unassuming, approachable guys, playing beer pong, wearing some T-shirts with their compelling branding—a prism of sorts that conjured up “Dark Side of the Moon” for me. A guy wearing a ball cap spoke mostly, although the other guys were attentive. His explanation of Vyasa’s product brought the concept of Deep Learning to life for me. Want to learn more? Check out the write up on that guy in the ball cap, who turned out to be the CEO, and “molecular neurobiologist turned entrepreneur”, Dr. Chris Bouton, here in Forbes: How Vyasa Is Using Deep Learning Software To Help The Pharmaceutical Industry Advance R&D.

In truth, Vyasa was a tough act to follow, but I’ll give a lot of credit to Tom Barnes at Pixability. Man did this guy know his value proposition and how to message it. I won’t call out the booth next to theirs, but it certainly made it hard to have a conversation with the constant balloon popping going on. But this guy did it with poise and a smile. Tom is a true story-teller, a Copywriter at Pixability, and boy does it show. If you don’t know about Pixability, you should. It is a video advertising technology company that helps media professionals deliver revolutionary campaign performance across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snap. But, Tom said it much better I’m sure!

Somewhere around that time I got roped into a planking context at the Shyft Analytics booth, against my new buddy Theo from the technology learning platform PluralSight (who I beat), and Brett Lucas from Quick Base (who beat me with a 6+ minute plank!). Thankfully, I had only had two beers, and that unplanned Shyft Analytics WOD made sure I didn’t have any more. Probably for the best, as I still had plenty of hands to shake.

I had mentioned Cambridge-based Quick Base, who I want to give a shout-out to as well. I had a chance to speak with Sr. Product Manager, Sam Jones, and learn about their #lowcode app development platform that I believe will spawn value and efficiency for end users by giving non-programmers the tools to solve problems with software. If you don’t know about lowcode, you better ask somebody (like Forbes contributor Jason Bloomberg). It’s not going anywhere.

By this time, the evening (as is this article) was getting a little long in the tooth, but it still had some juice. The wind had picked up, the sun had gone down, and my decision to wear shorts/flip-flops became questionable. But there were some folks like me that were determined to get the most of this great opportunity to connect. So, I continued on, and I’m glad I did. Had I not, I wouldn’t have met Danielle Rand, Director of Marketing at Blue Bikes Boston (formerly Hubway), the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts sponsored bike-sharing program, that provides a “fun and affordable way to get around Boston, Brookline, Cambridge and Somerville.” My soon to be 3 year-old son (with his sticky little ring finger) says thanks for the Ring Pops!

I also wouldn’t have gotten to meet Melissa O’Dowd, Marketing Director, and Laura Tomaino, Director of Human Capital at HealthEdge, a “cutting edge software company focused on providing next-generation technology products to the health insurance market.” By this time in the evening, my mouth was dry and my stomach empty (although I did grab a tasty waffle from BlackDuck by Synopsis), but my thirst for conversation was quenched nonetheless. I had some fun, light-hearted banter with these ladies, while also discussing relevant technology topics, like the impact of DevOps and serverless architecture on software QA and test, a subject matter of which these ladies had impressive command.

All the above is to say nothing of the myriad food trucks, great beer, great music, and overall good vibes. I was a little disappointed on the T-shirt front, although the “swag” in general was pretty good. A surprisingly addictive fidget spinner and sometimes necessarily loose-fitting XL T-shirt from Bedrock Data, and a frisbee from DataDog (clever), a reusable blue “solo” cup from Cybereason, and a sometimes necessarily form-fitting t-shirt from Avecto that reads “I got 99 problems but a breach ain’t one”… get it? Because their endpoint privilege management product negates where something like 80-90% of all breaches come from – admin rights – by removing admin rights across your entire business. Thanks Matt MacDonald for the shirt!

* Update: By the time I posted this article, I got hooked up with a sweet T-shirt from SmartBear—they always have SWAGGER. These guys are definitely one to watch, and I feel a special connection to them because "Over 6 million developers, testers and operations teams use SmartBear products to deliver the world's best applications". And, while software quality/test is near and dear to their hearts, their innovative products span Dev/Test/Ops at all layers of development, from UI to APIs to database.

Last but not least, and actually somewhere in the middle of the evening, I got to meet Sarah Ivey and Conor O’Malley of Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC). These guys are a startup hub founded by MIT grads in 1999, and through their co-working space for startups and innovators, tout having been home to more startups than anywhere else on the planet. And, (here’s the part where I shout out Providence for the good things happening here under Governor Gina Raimondo) I was so glad to learn that CIC, along with co-tenants like Brown University and Johnson and Johnson, will be an anchor tenant in Providence’s new Wexford Innovation Complex.

And… just when you thought I was done, if you’re looking to maximize customer lifetime revenue with real-time, cross-channel marketing automation and attribution built on a single customer view, talk to my new buddy Will McKinley of Zaius. Not only is the product relevant in the marketplace, but the man has wholesome, Midwestern values, and most importantly, he’s a Buckeyes fan.

As you can see, these connections were not superficial. I would not argue that all sales folks (aka everyone in business – think about it) have to get out and shake hands at every event like this—it definitely can be a balanced approach incorporating every channel to get your message out there and meet people. LinkedIn, phone, text, email, in-person at Meetups, conferences, etc… you get the idea. The real key in any forum is truly connecting, believing in the value you bring to the community, and seeking to learn – one of our mantras here at SQA. If you’d like to learn more about Boston TechJam, or anything else in this post, well… google it, I guess? If you’d like to learn more about SQA – reach out to me! We’re technologists at heart, keeping our finger on the pulse of how technological advances will shape the future of software development and the digital economy, and the resulting implications for software quality—which will ALWAYS be needed.

Kevin Jones is a Client Services Manager at SQA - a professional services firm focused on software quality. Our services and delivery model range from strategic, operational, tactical and everything in between. Our experts have an in-depth understanding of how quality spans the entire software development life cycle as well as the impacts of new technologies, methodologies and tools. We are proud that hundreds of clients have relied on SQA for software quality transformation, optimization, automation and testing. When you need to design and release software or systems that work well, perform well and provide users with an exceptional experience, think SQA. www.SQassociates.com