Consumers at the Cutting Edge of Technology

The last few years have seen a tremendous resurgence in applications of technology in the consumer sector. Today’s consumer has never had it so good: you can order any type of good or service and it is delivered within days with complete reliability. Home devices like Alexa or Google Home talk to us and understand our requests to play music, make phone or video calls and turn the lights on. Services like Netflix and Spotify make personal recommendations for music or movies based on your taste and personal history.

This growth in advanced technology available to consumers is driven by convergence of multiple technology trends, including Big Data and Data Analytics, Cloud Computing, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. In the future, the use of delivery drones and autonomous vehicles will take this to the next level. This also opens up issues of data security and privacy controls for individuals and groups.

In this event, a distinguished panel of speakers working at the cutting edge of consumer tech will delve into the the convergence of technology trends, the challenges they face and the future of these technologies.

When: February 9, 2019, 3-6 PM

Registration: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/consumers-at-the-cutting-edge-of-technology-tickets-55010460769

Speaker Bios:

Pragati Mathur, EVP/CTO and CIO, Staples

Pragati Mathur has led enterprise level technology information architecture at General Motors, Boeing and Biogen Idec. As senior vice president for technology and business solutions,  Biogen Inc. she oversaw enterprise architecture, analytics, integration and collaboration services, and led the business intelligence team to determine how to aggregate and extract the right data from multiple sources. Recently appointed as CIO at Staples Inc., she leads the public cloud and devices initiative; and owns retail, point-of-sale, corporate and supply chain systems. She has a MS from Carnegie Mellon; and an MBA from Walsh College.

Rama Ramakrishnan, Serial Data Science Entrepreneur

Rama Ramakrishnan is a serial data science entrepreneur, seasoned tech executive (VP Oracle, SVP Salesforce), advisor to startups, angel investor and board member. He has founded or been a senior executive in 4 software companies that have exited to technology titans Oracle, Salesforce and Demandware and delivered exceptional returns to venture capital investors. The complex analytics/machine-learning systems built by Rama’s companies are in widespread use today globally and benefit hundreds of millions of consumers daily. Earlier in his career, he was a consultant at McKinsey. An IIT Madras graduate, Rama got his M.S. and Ph.D. in Operations Research from MIT.

Venki Nagesha, Research Scientist, Siri, Apple Inc.

An expert in the area of speech and voice recognition over networks, Venki Nagesha, currently works on Siri at Apple. Starting his career at AT&T Bell Laboratories, he went on to work at Dragon Systems and it’s successor, Nuance Communications, where he led the research team for Dragon Naturally Speaking line of products for consumer and medical dictation. Venki is a graduate of IIT Madras, with a Ph.D. from the University of Rhode Island.

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