2020 Technical Conference List
Corona virus is affecting many tech conferences forcing them to postpone or transition to a hybrid virtual event.
NOTE: After conference content is made available online I’ll be updating this page with notes on some of the sessions I attended.
If you see:
- The television icon (📺) it’s linking to a video on YouTube or another cdn.
- Globe icon (🌐) is a lander or other general info page.
- If you see the Newspaper (📰) it’s a link to technical papers.
- The hammer and wrench (🛠️) indicate a workshop or tutorial.
- And if you see a Calendar (📅) is a link to an event schedule page.
Conference by Month
April
Red Had Summit
Google Cloud Next 2020
August
IMS: Aug 4 - Sept 30
Defcon: Aug 6 - 9
Blackhat USA: Aug 1 - 6
KubeCon Europe: Aug 17 - 20
September
GRCon 2020
Modern Day Marine 2020
Air Force Association - Air Space Cyber conf: Sept 14-16
Microsoft Ignite : 22-24th
IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS 2020): Sept 26 - Oct 2
VMWorld : Sept 29 - Oct 1
AWS Summit Online: Sept 29
October
Blackhat Asia: Oct 1 - 2
Hawk Ridge Systems - Design to Manufacturing (D2M): Oct 6-8
SAS Con: Oct 6-8
EDICON: Oct 6 - 27
Association of The United States Army event (AUSA): Oct 13 - 16
CyberCon 2020: Oct 28
Adobe MAX: Oct 20 - 22
HortiCann Light + Tech: Oct 20-21
McAfee MPower: Oct 29 - Nov 12
November
Antenna Measurement Techniques Association, AMTA 2020: Nov 1-6
IEEE BiCMOS and Compound Semiconductor Integrated Circuits and Technology Symposium (BCICTS): Nov 8-11
KubeCon US: Nov 17-20
AWS reInvent : Nov.30 - Dec.18
December
TBD
April
Red Hat Summit
- Red Hat Summit is the premier open source technology event for thousands of IT professionals to innovate and focus on high-performing Linux, cloud, automation and management, container, and Kubernetes technologies.
Google Cloud Next 2020
Due to COVID-119, Google Next 2020 was postponed from it’s normal April dates. It was rescheduled as a free 9 week virtual event with virtual sessions.
Sessions of Interest
📺 CMP202 - Solving real world high performance computing problems with google cloud and partners
August
🌐 IMS: Aug 4 - Sept 30
IMS is part of Microwave Week, a group of colocated conferences which includes the Radio Frequency Integrated Circuit Symposium (RFIC) and the Automatic Radio Frequency Techniques Group (ARFTG).
Sessions of Interest 📺 list was to long to live here, so I broke it out into a separate page. IMS2020 notes
Defcon: Aug 6 - 9
The world’s largest, longest continuously run underground hacking conference.
Sessions of Interest 📺 list was to long to live here, so I broke it out into a separate page. DEFCON SAFEMODE 2020 notes
Blackhat USA: Aug 1 - 6
Black Hat Briefings is a computer security conference that provides security consulting, training, and briefings to hackers, corporations, and government agencies around the world.
Microsoft sponsored talk: MSTICpy ‘mistic pie’
KubeCon Europe: Aug 17 - 20
September
GRCon 2020
GRCon is the annual conference for the GNU Radio project & community.
Modern Day Marine 2020 - The Corps America Needs
Presentations from Marine Corps & Department of Defense strategic leaders covering a wide range of topics in the context on future operating concepts, requirements, experimentation and acquisitions objectives, and implications of the emerging operational environment.
Lt. Gen. William Mark Faulkner, President and CEO of MCA&F
- Hopes to communicate how important industry is and the role it plays on the continued success of today’s and tomorrow’s Marine Corps.
📺 Mr. James F. Geurts, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development & Acquisition
Power of digital. WiFi. Network. AI.
Talent development is crucial in Force Design 2030. Getting things into the hands of Marines as soon as possible. Going back to the way it was is failure. We need to be looking forward like ways we haven’t before. Decentralized to the lowest capable level. What we need would be a WiFi anywhere around the world and any platform can click into. So we’re not building infrastructure. Marines on the battle field 3D printing stuff. Key to scale is integration. Key to integration are relationships.
MCWL: What is needed from Industry ISO Force Design 2030 Phase 3 Experimentation focused on the next 6 - 18 month time frame:
- Battle Management Command & Control - Any Sensor/Any shooter
- Manned-Unmanned Teaming
- Non Satellite Terrestrial Communications
- Localized Micro-Aerial Superiority
- Unmanned / Multi-Dimensional Battlefield Effects
- Expeditionary Logistics
📺 Building the Future Force: Futures, Requirements, Acquisition
DoDs 5000 series acquistions enablers - Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory (MCWL), Marine Corps Systems Command (MCSC), Capabilities Development Directorate (CDD), & Program Executive Officer Land Systems (PEO LS).
📺 General David H. Berger, 38th MCC
Gen Berger on the future of the Corps.
He’s thinking about 2030 - 2050. The Marine Corps needs to take on an industrial age type of model. Supporting a learner centric type of training. Focusing on wargaming at every level. Lets fail early on, so we can move on quickly. We need a mosaic of shooters and sensors. C2C resilience. Affordable distributable capablities. Know where all our items are in real-time. Be difficult for advesary to find and track us. Divesting from legacy equipment by increasing long range precession rocket fires and developing technology that can close kill chains / break kill chains like mobile shore based launch systems. Integrating 3-4x ummaned aerial systems. Utilizing ‘Smaller boats’ for more lateral movement. Train new marine litoral forces starting in hawaii. Modernizing our wargaming capabilties. Wargames are different from exercises. Exercise is testing out the muscle movements that are already on paper. Wargamming is trying to sort through what you might need in the future. Your going through and changing variables as you go. The new bread of Marines will come with new unforseen abilities.
Asked about Force design 2030. What are the real life challenges of the hide and find? Reconnisance v. counter-reconnisance. With adversary sensor networks becoming ubiquost, from satellites to other sensors that make it very difficult to remain concealed. Electronic signatures. What do we need to do mask our signatures? How to we make duplicated decoy signatures to it makes it difficult? Visually - optical camofalgue. Cheap umanned devices that can replicate systems on the ground decoys. Difficult for adversary sensor network sigint. The whole electromagnetic spectrum of decreasing our signatures, but create and move duplicate fake signatures. Marine corps stands in force our ability to see and hear forward. 5 - 6 squadrons of UAV
Asked about diversity in the MC. The best organizations are diverse. Too much simularity, the more homogenous you are, you’re gonna get killed. Because we’re going to come up with solutions that we’re all familiar with and are easy to follow, but it’ll get countered easily. We draw Marines from society, but our job is to fight and win. Traditional power projection force design with head on head slaughter on the beach is to narrow and doesn’t work any longer. Our warfighting requirement means we need to out think our enemy.
Marathon Targets - smarter training is the fastest, cheapest way to get ‘Lethality Today.’ Kind Edward’s archers ‘fought outnumbered and won’ crushing defeats, while Vietnam’s TOPGUN training tripled lethality overnight. Today, Marines train against a thinking, adaptive and unpredictable Autonomous Robotic OPFOR that triples lethality “in just one day.”
Non Lethal - Intermediate Force Capabilities
beta.sam.gov - gov contracts and awards</a
Defense Innovation Marketplace
DoD Research & Engineering Enterprise Small Business and Technology Partnership
Air Force Association - Air Space Cyber conf: Sept 14-16
ASC will provide Airmen, Space Professionals, and industry leaders direct insights into the plans, policies and vision of Air Force and Space Force leadership, and emerging trends and developments in aerospace and cyber technology.
Microsoft Ignite : 22-24th
Annual conference for developers and IT professionals hosted by Microsoft.
Links
Microsoft Ignite Cloud Skills Challenge - Complete by OCT. 7
Master the basics of Azure AI Fundamentals
Sessions of Interest
📺 Microsoft Dynamics 365: Reimagine How You Can Meet The Needs of Tomorrow
Covered the ability create a CRM with automation that competes with Salesforce. AI, NLP, and other MS machine learning products.
📺 Invent with Purpose on Azure
Azure Arc enabled data services.
📺 Achieve resilence with Security, Compliance, and Identity
- Security. Compliance. Identity.
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Microsoft Defender + Azure Sentinel SEIM centralized dashboard for cyber security events.
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MS Compliance Manager
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Azure AD Zero trust and decentralized identity.
- MS Data Loss Prevention tool for endpoint
📺 Ask the Expert: Intelligent Manufacturing
Adding AI to manufacturing lines.
📺 Reinventing the electricity grid
📺 Azure in Space: Innovation at the final frontier
📺 [Explore Intelligent Edge, Vision, Edge AI and IoT benefits across industries
📺 The Data Behind Space Exploration with NASA
🛠️ Microsoft - Build tech skills for space exploration
🛠️ MSIgnite Github Learn zone resources
IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS 2020): Sept 26 - Oct 2
Sessions of Interest 📺 list was to long to live here, so I broke it out into a separate page. IGARSS2020 notes
VMWorld : Sept 29 - Oct 1
Content will be available live and on-demand across 7 channels – Vision and Innovation, App Modernization, Digital Workspace, Intrinsic Security, Virtual Cloud Network, Multi-Cloud and Telco 5G – including business-level overviews and technical deep-dive sessions.
AWS Summit Online: Sept 29
The AWS Summit Online features over 50 sessions including topics such as how to choose the right database, modernize your data warehouse, and drive digital transformation using AI.
AWS Summit Online Training Lab
📺 AIM204 - Get started with AWS DeepRacer
Build and train a reinforcement learning (RL) model that you can race on the track for a chance to climb the AWS DeepRacer League leaderboard.
ML overview
- Supervised (Example driven, every datum has a corresponding label)
- Unsupervised (No labels for training data)
- Reinforcement (Leanrs through consequences of actions in a specific env)
RL often called the policy. How to learn a model or policy that can drive a car across a track.
RL terms:
- Agent; thing being driven by RL model
- Environment; where the agent lives, i.e. track
- State; anything we can observe like images / LiDAR
- Action; observe state then take an action
- Reward; high points on course, low points off course in the grid world
- Episode; completing instructions and hitting termination condition like 1 lap, or vehicle off track
Exploration: Iteration and convergence
Filling out a value function. How valuable am I in this state, and how do I get to a more valuable state?
Exploration versus exploitation
gather episode using current policy. calculate the gradient of estimated cumulative reward. Update the policy for gradient ascent to maximize long term reward.
AWS DeepRacer Cloud architecture
Amazon SageMaker VPC -> CloudWatch Amazon RoboMaker VPC - CloudWatch & Kinesis Video Streams Amazon S3 -> OpenVINO, SageMaker VPC, & RoboMaker VPC
📺 CMP202 - Bringing AWS services closer with AWS Outposts and AWS Wavelength
In this session, learn how AWS Outposts and AWS Wavelength bring AWS infrastructure and services to customer premises and 5G networks around the world, enabling developers to build and innovate wherever their applications need to be deployed.
AWS Outposts service - brings aws 42U rack on-prem. Built on AWS Nitro System. Single pane of management
📺 CMP206 - Introduction to AWS Wavelength
AWS Wavelength is a new service that embeds AWS compute and storage services within telecommunication providers’ data centers at the edge of the 5G network.
📺 AIM202 - Build, train, and deploy ML models with Amazon SageMaker
See how to use powerful tools - notebooks, experiment management, automatic model creation, debugging, and model monitoring - in a single integrated development environment (IDE) for machine learning so that your models get to production faster with much less effort at a lower cost.
Juypter Notebook instance can run on low cost hardware. Training jobs can then run on HPC config.
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Juypter labs where, model.fit(), can call a S3 bucket (training clusters), that can spin up required EC2 instances. Once training is complete, instances shutdown.
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Automatically create a RESTful API around model with Multi Model Endpoints
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SageMaker Autopilot will generate notebooks for you.
October
Blackhat Asia: Oct 1 - 2
Hawk Ridge Systems - Design to Manufacturing (D2M): Oct 6-8
See what’s new in SOLIDWORKS, 3DEXPERIENCE & digital manufacturing.
SAS Con: Oct 6-8
The Kaspersky Security Analyst Summit (SAS) is an annual event that attracts high-caliber anti-malware researchers, global law enforcement agencies and CERTs and senior executives from financial services, technology, healthcare, academia and government agencies.
EDICON: Oct 6 - 27
Covering topics in RF, Microwave, Signal Integrity, Power Integrity, and EMC/EMI
Association of The United States Army event (AUSA): Oct 13 - 16
• Informative and relevant presentations on the United States Army’s current state and future plans • Panel discussions and seminars on pertinent national security subjects • A variety of valuable networking events • Hands-on opportunities to learn about and interact with the latest technology available
CyberCon 2020: Oct 28
Brings together military and government leaders to discuss the unique threats the nation faces, how the military can best prepare to fight off these challenges and how war fighters can prepare for these battles at a time when much of the world is staying home.
Adobe MAX: Oct 20 - 22
Covering building skills in design, video, photography, illustration, UI, and UX.
HortiCann Light + Tech: Oct 20-21
Commercial growers, greenhouse manufacturers, urban and vertical farmers, horticultural lighting specialists will learn about the latest advances, research, and case-study findings regarding lighting optimization and efficacy, energy and cost savings, operations and environmental control systems, and strategies for integrating multiple ag-tech management technology platforms.
McAfee MPower: Oct 29 - Nov 12
Breakouts and product demos showcase the whys and how-to’s of McAfee technologies, from NextGen SWG and SASE, to XDR and the latest in comprehensive cloud security.
November
Antenna Measurement Techniques Association, AMTA 2020: Nov 1-6
IEEE BiCMOS and Compound Semiconductor Integrated Circuits and Technology Symposium (BCICTS): Nov 8-11
KubeCon US: Nov 17-20
AWS reInvent : Nov.30 - Dec.18
Packed with keynote announcements, training opportunities, and technical sessions, re:Invent is a chance for the global cloud computing community to find out the latest news from AWS HQ, brush up on their skills, and take valuable insight back to their teams and businesses.