Brian Sletten
Forward Leaning Software Engineer @ Bosatsu Consulting
Brian Sletten is a liberal arts-educated software engineer with a focus on forward-leaning technologies. His experience has spanned many industries including retail, banking, online games, defense, finance, hospitality and health care. He has a B.S. in Computer Science from the College of William and Mary and lives in Auburn, CA. He focuses on web architecture, resource-oriented computing, social networking, the Semantic Web, AI/ML, data science, 3D graphics, visualization, scalable systems, security consulting and other technologies of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries. He is also a rabid reader, devoted foodie and has excellent taste in music. If pressed, he might tell you about his International Pop Recording career.
Presentations
Machine Learning Workshop
Monday, 9:00 AM EST
Machine Learning is all the rage, but many developers have no idea what it is, what they can expect from it or how to start to get into this huge and rapidly-changing field. The ideas draw from the fields of Artificial Intelligence, Numerical Analysis, Statistics and more. These days, you'll generally have to be a CUDA-wielding Python developer to boot. This workshop will gently introduce you to the ideas and tools, show you several working examples and help you build a plan to for diving deeper into this exciting new field.
We will cover:
- The differences between data science, AI and machine learning
- The Five Tribes of Machine Learning (as defined by Pedro Domingos)
- Walkthroughs of some of the main algorithms
- Examples in Java, R and Python
- Tools such as Tensorflow and Pytorch
- The impact of GPUs on machine learning
- Stories about how companies are being successful with machine learning
- A discussion about the likely impacts of machine learning on the job market and society
Machine Learning Strategies
Wednesday, 5:00 PM EST
Machine Learning is a key differentiator for modern organizations, but where does it fit into larger IT strategies? What does it do for you? How can it go wrong?
This class will contextualize these technologies and explain the major technologies without much (if any) math.
We will cover:
- What organizations to get right before they can benefit from Machine Learning
- Learning styles and algorithms
- What can go wrong
Web Security Workshop
Thursday, 9:00 AM EST
If you're not terrified, you're not paying attention.
Publishing information on the Web does not require us to just give it away. We have a series of tools and techniques for managing identity, authentication, authorization and encryption so we only share content with those we trust.
Before we tackle Web Security, however, we need to figure out what we mean by Security. We will pull from the worlds of Security Engineering and Software Security to lay the foundation for technical approaches to protecting our web resources. We will also discuss the assault on encryption, web security features and emerging technologies that will hopefully help strengthen our ability to protect what we hold dear.
Topics include:
- Security Engineering
- Software Security
- Encryption
- Authentication and Authorization Mechanisms
- Emerging Web Security Technologies
Web Security Workshop
Thursday, 10:45 AM EST
If you're not terrified, you're not paying attention.
Publishing information on the Web does not require us to just give it away. We have a series of tools and techniques for managing identity, authentication, authorization and encryption so we only share content with those we trust.
Before we tackle Web Security, however, we need to figure out what we mean by Security. We will pull from the worlds of Security Engineering and Software Security to lay the foundation for technical approaches to protecting our web resources. We will also discuss the assault on encryption, web security features and emerging technologies that will hopefully help strengthen our ability to protect what we hold dear.
Topics include:
- Security Engineering
- Software Security
- Encryption
- Authentication and Authorization Mechanisms
- Emerging Web Security Technologies
Blockchain: Best or Worst Thing Ever?
Thursday, 1:30 PM EST
If you listen to zealots and critics, blockchain-based systems and the cryptocurrencies they enable are either the Best Thing Ever or the Worst Thing Ever. As you may suspect, the reality is somewhere in-between. We will introduce the major ideas, technologies and players as well as evaluate them from technological, economic and social perspectives.
Come have a spin-free discussion about these polarizing technologies to find how they might be useful to you.
The Decentralized Web
Thursday, 3:15 PM EST
While the Web itself has strong decentralized aspects to how it is used, the backend technologies are largely centralized. The naming systems, the routing systems and the traffic that all points back to the same place for a website are all centralized technologies. This creates both a liability as well as a control point.
In order to break free of some of these limitations, new technologies are emerging to provide a more decentralized approach to the Web.
This talk will walk you through some emerging technology to provide decentralized content storage and distribution, edge computing and more. We will touch upon the Interplanetary Filesystem, WebTorrent, Blockchain spin offs and more.