Open Tech Calendar

We're excited to announce Mode 2 Meetup episode 10, sponsored by SolarWinds:


Mode 2 is a regular meetup about IT innovation within large companies across central Scotland.

Each meetup will feature two short talks and a chance to connect with IT innovators in a relaxed environment with free beer/wine and pizza. The talks for this meetup are.

1: Aled Sage, VP of Engineering, Cloudsoft

Aled Sage is VP Engineering at Cloudsoft, and co-founder of Apache Brooklyn. He spends his time helping customers migrate, run and evolve their applications in AWS; and developing the backend automation and processes to do this efficiently and reliably.

Aled has 20 years’ experience developing and managing distributed applications, mostly in the enterprise sector. Particular areas of interest include cloud, automation, devops, fault tolerance and concurrency.
Migrating to and Exploiting the Cloud, without Losing Control

In this presentation, Aled talks about how to migrate apps to the cloud. Beginning with a summary of the pros and cons, he then moves onto details of applying the 6 Rs of application migration (retire, retain, repurchase, rehost, replatform and refactor). Finally Aled describes how to evolve your application architecture to save money, increase resilience, respond to changing events and exploit the astonishing pace of innovation in public cloud.
2: Dr. Greig Paul, Communications & Security Research Engineer, Strathclyde University

Greig has worked and consulted across a variety of sectors including FinTech, financial services, critical infrastructure security, and blockchain. He is a regular international speaker on these topics, and consults and advises businesses and entrepreneurs at all stages, from pre-launch FinTech start-ups through to large investment companies. He holds a PhD and degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Strathclyde, and has a particular interest in building systems which are secure by default.
Killer Algorithms are here today - how can we secure what we build?

Recent headlines have peeled back the curtain to highlight the extent and scale on which personal data is used and traded by large internet businesses to influence opinion and actions. Combining the omnipresent data being captured with prediction and optimisation algorithms may sound fairly uninteresting, but the risks of this are very much real. We've created the capability for algorithms to kill, today, but not in the way you'd expect.


Contact Us:

Mail: mode2meetup@gmail.com
Twitter: @mode2meetup
Periscope: @mode2meetup


What is Mode 2 Meetup about?

Technology is evolving at an amazing rate, and customer expectations with it. Headlines are dominated by tech companies disrupting the world with new technology and fearless business models.

However many of the organisations we work in are far older than the Internet. Legacy technology, organisational silos and hierarchies are all around. Every decision involves many stakeholders and complex processes are everywhere. Change of any kind can be slow and difficult.

Can Silicon Valley thinking translate to our established, risk-exposed, regulated organisations? Should it? In any case, how can we apply technology and creativity to delight our customers and avoid being overtaken by competitors or disruptors?

We're aiming to create a friendly, relaxed environment where we can discuss the reality of innovation in larger organisations. There will be two short talks per month, with plenty of opportunity to network afterwards over free beer/wine and pizza. The talks will cover a broad range of topics about technology, business and culture change.

We need ideas and volunteers for future talks, although the golden rule is: no sales pitches! We're also looking for venues for future events, so please let us know if you are able to host a meetup.

We'd love to build a diverse audience representing the increasingly blurred line between IT and business across different industries: financial services, public sector, energy, consultancies etc.

Hope to see you there!