0111 comes back to San Diego for the 3rd year!
October 10 & 11, 2019 for a special 2-day retreat for Chief Technology Officers (or similar)
Venue
Agenda
Wednesday, October 9: Hang with 7CTOs
Let’s kick off the retreat at 7 pm with a few drinks. Location TBD.
Thursday, October 10: Blow Your CTO Mind
9:30 am: Check-in & Welcome
Etienne de Bruin – Founder, 7CTOs
10 – 11:30 am: The Wisdom of Nature, The Hubris of the Engineer
Aaron Longwell – Director of Engineering, Justice Sector Support Program in Afghanistan
Today’s most innovative teams—those who embraced microservices and then serverless—allow data and functionality to be repeated throughout their infrastructure. The inefficiency and duplication makes the engineer in us cringe, but these approaches seem to work. Why? What if our engineering instincts are blinding us to better approaches?
This irreverent talk introduces concepts from modern evolutionary biology to explore better strategies for innovation and problem solving. We’ll go beyond the tropes of iterative design and capital-A Agile see what software communities can learn from the reigning champion of adaptability: nature. You’ll learn how biological principles like the evolutionary landscape, fitness functions, and robustness apply to software and business. You’ll leave with a new appreciation for diversity, randomness, and junior developers and rethinking what it means to be an engineer or an architect.
11:30 am – 1 pm: Developing a “learnings” framework to fuel innovation
Matt Aimonetti – CTO & CO-founder, Splice
Companies consider investing in “R&D” because they want accelerated and impactful innovation. It’s really hard to focus on delivering short term objectives (OKRs/KPIs) while also exploring risky hypotheses. Leaders often love “Innovation”, but the meaning and expected output are often unclear to set an R&D team up for success. We will discuss what success look like, how to setup a framework and evaluate progress.
1 – 2:30 pm: Offsite Lunch
See map of lunch recommendations below 🙂
2:30 – 4 pm: When your startup needs a VP AND a CTO
Manijeh Noori – VP Engineering, TheZebra
Early on at a startup, the titles CTO and VP of Engineering often have no distinction in their roles and responsibilities. As the company grows, however, there comes a time when one person can’t effectively manage delivery and execution while focusing on the architecture, the business, and the product. As the classic contrast between the maker and the manager emerges, it’s time for the head of engineering to choose one of the roles and hire for or promote to the other. Let’s discuss how you know when it’s the right time and how the CTO and VPE are complementary roles.
4 – 5:30 pm: Solving Hard Problems at Amazon – How Amazon continues to Re-Invent Customer Experience
Ilse de Bruin – Director Global Logistics, Amazon
As Amazon expands its reach of products and services across the world, we are increasingly challenged to match the cost/service expectations of the customers in the most economical way. New customers are connected through mobility around the globe but are accustomed to innovations local to their areas. Those that are in remote areas, do not benefit from the cost savings that density economics provides. However, Amazon customers expect vast selections at low prices and convenience which extends across multiple geographies, borders and regulators. Our solution to this problem is a robust global logistics infrastructure and in this talk we will review a couple of use cases in our consumer retail division aimed at filling the gaps in product selection around the globe.
5:30 pm: Sunset Bonfire on the bay with s’mores
Friday, October 11: Dare to Lead
6:30 am: Sunrise Beach Volleyball
9:30 am: Check-in
10 am: Dare To Lead
Leona deVinne – Leadership Coach, Accendo
How do we stand out above the competition when it comes to being innovative, maintaining the highest levels of success, and creating a corporate culture that’s engaged and productive? It takes a great deal of courage and some very practical research-based tools.
We will learn some practical skills based on 400,000 pieces of data and decades of working with all types of organizations for developing brave leaders and courageous cultures. It’s learning and practice that requires brave work, tough conversations, and truly showing up. Daring leadership is a collection skill sets that are 100% teachable and measurable.
We’ll navigate through the top 10 challenges that companies are grappling with and come up with some actionable items to address the top three challenges that your organization is facing. The common thread through these challenges? How we deal with fear. We will teach the skills required to tackle these issues by becoming braver leaders.
Daring leaders are self-aware, know how to have hard conversations, hold themselves and others accountable, build trust, lead with empathy and connection, take smart risks that lead to innovation, reset quickly after disappointments and setbacks, and give and receive feedback – especially when it’s tough
12:30 – 2 pm: Offsite Lunch
2 pm: Dare to Lead Programming Continues
4:30 pm: Close
Speakers
Manijeh Noori
Manijeh transitioned into the tech industry just over 5 years ago. Her background in communications and project management have helped her bring a different perspective to her roles as Director, and now VP of Engineering at The Zebra.
Aaron Longwell
Aaron is the Director of Engineering for a US State Department-funded project to support the rule of law and fair administration of justice in Afghanistan. Previously, Aaron led the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes’s migrations to the cloud as CTO at Culture Foundry and led the data science and engineering teams on property valuation products as CTO at Claremont Information Systems. He’s an active member of the Go community and is the maintainer of multiple Go packages.
Ilse De Bruin
As Director, Amazon Global Logistics, Ilse de Bruin is responsible for developing Amazon’s cross border transportation solutions for Sellers selling on Amazon’s stores across the world. She has extensive experience running multi-geography operations and sales teams, and before relocating to North America, Ilse played a leadership role in UTi’s Southern Africa division (2002-2012), managing the largest division within UTI international. Ilse holds an MBA from the University of Pretoria, South Africa, and Honors Degrees in Financial Management and Economics from the University of Johannesburg. Always athletic, she was a member of her school's first hockey team, and today she is a keen golfer and hiker.
Matt Aimonetti
Originally a sound engineer, Matt Aimonetti became an internationally known software developer, technical writer and open source contributor. As CTO and Co-Founder of Splice, he found a way to mix his passions: software, music and entrepreneurship. Matt is based in Santa Monica, CA where he likes building robots with his daughter, playing with sound gear with his son and enjoying a good meal with his wife.
Leona deVinne
Leona deVinne is a certified Coach, a dynamic facilitator, and custom program designer. Leona works with innovative leaders and teams, across the globe, in a variety of sectors; from social services to start ups in Silicon Valley. Leona uses her 20 years of leadership and business experience, combined with science based research, to help her clients gain the skills they need to reach the highest level of success.
Videos
Hotel Options:
This year we’re partnering with roomsteals.com, a service built by one of our own 7CTOs members!
Save up to 75% on hotels everywhere (including San Diego)! Absolute lowest hotel prices on the market. Guaranteed.
Check out the button below to get started: