Next week for the first time, RE•WORK is bringing its AI Summits to Houston. As the fourth most populous city in the USA, the home of NASA, and a thriving hub of technology progressions, it’s set to be an exciting week. We’re highlighting 5 key points we’re most looking forward to, and why you shouldn’t miss the summits:

World-class expert speakers

RE•WORK events are famous for the calibre of speakers from both industry and academia coming together to share both research progressions and real-world applications. Here are some of the presentations we’ve got our eye on:

Top 5 Speakers:

MACHINE LEARNING FOR DEVOPS SUMMIT

Kohsuke Kawaguchi, CTO, CloudBees  
Kawaguchi is also the creator of Jenkins, Continuous Integration Server that's formerly known as Hudson. Its plugin system enables Jenkins to support a wide array of developer tools.

Vilas Veeraraghavan, Director of Engineering, Walmart Labs
Veeraraghaven will be presenting on ‘Using data to infer deployment profiles for cloud applications’. At Walmart there are hundreds of products under each technology pillar, and the presentation will explore challenges and focus on machine learning solutions.

Chris Corriere, Senior DevOps Advocate, SJ Technologies
Telephone is the party game where a phrase is whispered from the first player to the last until it spoken out loud to reveal how much the message has changed in transit. Chris will present on ‘The Worst Game of Telephone Ever.’

Chandni Sharma, Cloud Engineer, Google
As a Cloud Engineer on the Google Cloud Team, Sharma focuses on AI/ML, Big Data, Blockchain and Kubernetes for various customer use cases. Previously she was working with NTT Data ( Global Fortune ranking 55) in Big Data and Data Science.

Praveen Hirsave, Senior Director Cloud Platform Engineering, HomeAway
Hirsave is on a mission to revolutionize travel through the power of technology. He will share his expertise on how machine learning can enhance and optimise DevOps.

APPLIED AI SUMMIT

Julia Badger, Project Manager for Robotics and Intelligence for Human Spacecraft, NASA
Designs are underway for the next human outpost in space, a habitat in lunar orbit. This “Gateway” to deep space human presence represents a paradigm shift in human spaceflight, Badger will explore ‘Robotics and AI: The Future of People in Space’.

Prakash Mall, Senior Director Robotics Process Automation and Chatbots, Target
Mall will share how AI is changing the business landscape, with a special focus on ‘AI in Enterprises with Specific Relevance to Retail.’

Vivek Thakral, Director of Artificial Intelligence, GE
Thakral is a Digital Technology leadership program and MBA graduate with over 16 years of experience. His interests and expertise lie in robotic process automation, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, technology risk and compliance.

Dancy Li, Data Science Manager, Facebook
Li works on Marketplace, where the team enable people to connect via commerce on Facebook, with a focus on using applied data and analytics to build eCommerce behavior. She will share her work on ‘AI for Diverse Avenues/Applications: E-Commerce’.

Biao “Bill” Chang, Senior Data Scientist, eBay
With the remarkable growth of AI, there are also emerging pain points with algorithms behaving as black-boxes and concerns that human intelligence might become less relevant. Chang will touch on cases where human business insights help to improve AI and where business insights are gained from AI.

Diverse and engaging agenda

Ever wondered how Machine Learning can improve DepOps? Or are you unsure if you should be applying AI in your business? Maybe you already use AI or ML and you’re keen to learn more. Here are some of the top sessions to look out for:

MACHINE LEARNING FOR DEVOPS SUMMIT

1) Improving Adobe Experience Cloud Services Dependability with Machine Learning - Nicolas Brousse, Director, Operations Engineering, Adobe

2) AIOps Solution Enables Self-Healing Hybrid IT - Bishnu Nayak, CTO, FixStream

4) CI/CD for Machine Learning Systems - Haresh Chudgar, Software Engineer, Spotify

APPLIED AI SUMMIT

1) Driving Innovation with Machine Learning in the Enterprise - Lynn Calvo, AVP of Emerging Data Technology, GM Financial

2) Operationalizing Machine Learning for Lyft’s Business Platforms - Hao Yi Ong, Research Scientist, Lyft

3) Growing Pains of AI Adoption: Advice & Lessons Learnt - Margaret Mayer, Vice President of Software Engineering, Capital One

Complimentary access to interactive workshops

As well as a full two-day agenda of presentations, there are practical workshops running for all attendees across both days of the summit. Here are just a few of the sessions that will be running next week:

1) Infrastructure Slowing Your AI Projects? Nuts & Bolts of AI-Ready Infrastructure - Dave Logan, Pure Storage
Jumpstarting AI projects is complex. This workshop will explore important facets of an infrastructure built for AI, and show performance results that can shorten model training cycle from days to hours.

2) Designing Ethical AI Solutions - Greg Adams, Accenture
The imperative for ethical design is clear – but how do we move from theory to practice? In this workshop, Accenture expert and Responsible AI lead, Adams will lead an interactive design thinking and ideation session to illustrate how AI solutions can imbue ethics and responsibility.

3) Deep-Dive: Predicting & Preventing Outages with Machine Learning Forecasting - Myra Haubrich & Sharath M, Adobe
The Adobe team will be showing how they leverage AI and machine learning to build predictive autoscaling & self-healing services as well as automate risk classification. The workshop will be a deep dive into improving the Adobe Experience Cloud Services dependability with machine learning.

Meet leading VCs for feedback & advice

In the VC & Startup Mentoring Session attendees and startups more specifically, will be provided with the opportunity to ask questions and pitch to VCs and Investors in Technology and AI. Participants include: Tim Kopra (Blue Bear Capital), Andrew Smith and Jake Askew (Cannon Ventures), Stephanie Campbell (Houston Angel Network), Allison Sawyer (The League of Worthwhile Ventures) & Roy Johnston (Worthwhile Ventures).

Learn about STEM & Data Science in Houston

Head over to the Education Corner where there will be networking breaks with rising start & local tech programmes. Participants include: Jeremy Graybill, Sr. Manager of Data Science & Advanced Analytics (Anadarko Petroleum), who will be sharing information on their data science internships and student co-op program, Lisa Vaughn, Master’s of Data Science Program Manager, (University of Houston) & Detlef Hohl, Chief Scientist of Computation and Data Science (Shell) who will be sharing info about their AI Residency Program.

Join RE•WORK in Houston to explore the imminent revolution where Machine Learning will be harnessed to benefit DevOps, improve processes and give an insight into the data generated during these practices. Learn about real-life AI applications, case studies, business insights & results from leading companies leveraging AI to solve problems in enterprise.