SSAG Cognition 2024 Comprehensive Review

It was truly a memorable event to witness SSAG Cognition 2024 on 22-Jun-2024, Saturday in Infosys Hyderabad Campus.

It was also my pleasure to represent "True Agile Services" as a partner with SSAG (Satish & Sharath), though the heavy lifting was done by them and the warriors/volunteers and "Infosys" as the Venue Partner. For more information on True Agile, here is the web URL.

The idea of "in person conference" sprouted an year back after the "Virtual Agile Coach Summit March 2023" organized by SSAG. If you are interested, scroll down to the end of this article to view & listen to my talk "Agile Egos in the Transformation Journey" from the same conference.

The idea of SSAG Cognition 2024 became reality when SSAG team met sometime in April to strategize on this. Here is the funny video of just 5 mins to tell us how did they go about planning for it? Pay attention at the 1.02 min and 3.10 min to enjoy the acting and/or comedy timing of our fellow agilists, Leela VenkataSatish Kolla and subrahmanyam chandragiri mimicking Super Star Jailer Rajnikanth and Telugu Comedian Brahmadandam respectively. It then followed by 30 mins standup comedy show by subrahmanyam chandragiri. For me, these were the truly enjoying and laughing moments of the entire day. I say this, because, as agile is all about "People". And SSAG strategized perfectly to sandwich this between the talks.

The same (P for people) was echoed by Sathya Kotta as well, during his inaugural speech. Being a nature and environment lover myself, I could completely connect with him as his passion or caring towards "Sustainability" as well. Even the theme of the Conference was around SS, Sustainability and Scalability. I really felt it is an apt one given the current scenario of how AI is disrupting the market and how do we all of us need to scale up and sustain the environment at the same time.

Being from Bangalore (which is Infosys Headquarters), I never had an opportunity to explore the campus a I did it in Infy Hyderabad. I intentionally, walked to the Building 10 (conference main hall) through the greenery and enjoyed it thoroughly. Also, could observe the "Wall of Fame" which displayed the employee names who have completed 20 or 25 years in Infy. Now, I understand, why some employees are so loyal to their organization and what measures (tangible or intangible) the organization take to make their employees feel valuable!

Thanks Sathya Kotta Raghu Boddupally again for sponsoring the venue for us and personally for me to experience the Infy campus and the world class infrastructure for the conference auditorium :)

It was my honor to share the Lamp Lighting with Sathya Kotta Nagini Chandramouli Leela VenkataSatish Kolla Sharath Adsumillie Sugam Chitre

Rituraj Patil the 1st speaker, started with Sixers like our Rohit Sharma (if we are batting first) or flurry of Wickets from Bumrah (if we are fielding first or defending a score :)). Remember the dates, 22-Jun-2024, SSAG Cognition 2024 and an exact week after this is 29-Jun-2024, India won the 2024 T20 World Cup :).

OMG, what a speaker he is, lot of things went over my bald head :). He showcased industry analyst reports, code samples, his research on AI/ML etc....etc...

Harish Raju talked about some industry case studies in FMCG sector & ESG trends. It was interesting.

Vamsi Krishna Kakkireni talked about Product scalability aspects, the key learning for me was TOFU metrics.

Vinay Babu Tarala talked about AI tools for product scalability and also engaged us through Quizizz. Now, I know, why you are from Infosys Consulting :)

Balaji T Apologies, I could not attend his OKRs session completely, as it was getting late for my return journey to Bangalore. However, having known his community contributions I am sure, the audience would have found it as insightful.

Dear Speakers, if you are also interested in knowing your areas of improvement, please ping me separately, I will give you critical feedback as well personally.

Balakrishna Chintala nicely facilitated the panel discussion with Dr. Srinagesh Chatarajupalli Dr. Koti Reddy Bhavanam, Ph.D. Anita K Manda Sunanda Gundavajhala Deepthi Yeragudipati The panel discussion was superb talking about pros and cons, myths and facts about AI, scalability and sustainability. Panelists talked about side effects of AI, like consumption of too much of water to cool down Data Centers and that in turn affect the sustainability of the environment etc. See, this is where we need to take a balanced approach in our lives and preserve the nature for future generations. (see my recent post below on the similar lines titled "Middle Path, of course mainly focused on the individualistic perspective for now).

It was my privilege to felicitate one of the panelists Anita K Manda . During the panel discussion, she talked about Automation than AI in certain situations, which made sense to me. I keep repeating on the similar lines as "AI vs HI (CS)" to my fellow practitioners when there is a conflict. HI: Human Intelligence which created this AI. CS: Not just Computer Science, it is also Common Sense. We need to take a balanced approach (Read the above Middle Path article again to comprehend).

And Thanks Kalyan K. for your sharing your book(s) with all the participants.

And a big kudos to our volunteers for their commitment and support to SSAG to make this happen. Nirmala Mallavarapu Deepthi Nagam Prasanna Mutyala Rekha Jain ICP-ACC, PMIACP, CSM, SAFe RTE, Lean Six Sigma GB Anand Babu Chilukuri Prasad Anumula PMI-PMP?, LSSBB Krishna Paravasthu Samir Sahoo Sakir Hussain - MBA, PMP?, PMI-ACP?, PMI-RMP?, PAHM?Venkatasubramanian S Subrahmanyam B.

If I missed anyone, unintentionally, just ping me directly, I will provide a fix/patch by editing this article and add your name :)

Last, but not the least, gratitude to Infosys admin and facilities team members for all the support throughout the day, being a Saturday.

Dear Readers/participant's, I look forward to get your feedback in the comments section on this review. And feel free to share this post with others and ping me to engage me in such Content Creation or Public Speaking opportunities.

And before signing off, here my talk on "Agile Egos in the Transformation Journey" from the 2023 virtual conference, that mentioned in beginning of the this article.

Thanks Leela VenkataSatish Kolla Sharath Adsumillie again for making me part of this.

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