With 100+ Speakers, Plenty of Options at ProgressNEXT

From the engineers who build the products to the most innovative customers using them, to compelling keynotes, you don’t want to miss out on the excitement of ProgressNEXT.

ProgressNEXT is less than a month away and we’re putting the finishing touches on the agenda. We’re up to more than 140 sessions, something for everyone! From our keynoter Megan Smith, Chief Technology Officer of the United States from 2014 to 2017, to Shelley Chase, a Software Fellow with Progress for more than 20 years who drives OpenEdge architecture, to CGI’s Anna Lehtoranta who spearheaded Profio360, a revolutionary solution for project-based businesses to manage their information and processes, there’s no shortage of great content at ProgressNEXT.

A Few Speaker/Session Highlights

Let’s begin with keynoter Megan Smith. She’s an award-winning tech entrepreneur, engineer and evangelist. As the third U.S. Chief Technology Officer, she helped the President harness the power of technology, data and innovation to advance the future of our nation and the world. She also served as Vice President of new business development at Google, managing early-stage partnerships across the company’s global engineering and product teams, leading the acquisitions of Google Earth, Maps, and Picasa. She also served as CEO of PlanetOut and is today CEO of shift7, which focuses on tech-forward networked innovation for impact and economic inclusion. Her session is titled, How Technology and Innovative Approaches Can Transform Your Organization.

We have a range of Progress experts presenting and here are three engineers who build the products you work with.

Shelley Chase, a Software Fellow with Progress for over 20 years, drives the architectural direction of OpenEdge with both her technical skills and customer-driven focus. Her passion is to provide a well-architected product with an excellent user experience, and works with engineers, product managers and services to guarantee success. She also has a patent pending for her work on “Alternate Presentation Types for Human Workflow Activities.” She’ll be presenting at two sessions, Beyond the Code Workshop: Evolving Your App to the Cloud, and Beyond the Code: UI Options for Cloud Applications.

James Arsenault, Director of Product Engineering at Progress, is an accomplished software architect and engineering manager with a record of leading high-performance teams that deliver great products on time. Jim has been a software architect, programmer, tester, writer, trainer, strategist and manager and his experience creates global, agile teams. He’ll be presenting at three sessions: Corticon: JavaScript Rules, Business Policy Automation with Corticon Rules, and Big Data Rule Processing.

Lilia Messechkova, Senior Director of Software Engineering at Progress, leads a team of 60+ software engineers developing Progress Sitefinity, the company’s leading digital experience platform. Lilia works closely with the product group to define the product’s vision and strategy and is driving the achievement of goals leading up to its success. Lilia will be speaking at two sessions: Achieving Geo-Distributed Performance with Sitefinity, and Moving Toward Decoupled CMS with .NET Core.

You’ll also hear from customers and partners who take innovation with Progress technology to new heights. Anna Lehtoranta, Account Growth Director for CGI, one of the largest IT and business services firms in the world, has deep cross-functional experience in product development, consulting and project and service management. In her session, she’ll take you through CGI’s journey with Progress, CGI and Progress: An Ongoing Development and Modernization Journey.

Claudio Ferreira is Teknion’s Director of Digital Corporate Marketing, leading a team of creative technologists to manage Teknion’s content strategy, branding, web and social presence. In his session, Teknion: Digitally Transforming a Global Brand with the Help of Sitefinity, Claudio will talk about how Sitefinity has enabled Teknion to digitally transform its global brand, affecting all aspects of the business.

Philip Laney has more than 30 years of experience in the software business, with the bulk of that at B&L Information Systems, where he became CEO in 1999. While maintaining OpenEdge for database and business logic backend, he provided leadership to transition the frontend to a browser-based UI as well as moving to SaaS licensing and Cloud deployment models. He’ll talk about the company’s journey to Cloud/SaaS in his session, From Legacy to SaaS and Everything in Between.

This is just a small taste of what you’ll get at ProgressNEXT. Don’t forget about the other 140 sessions, and the expo hall, social events and all that sunny Orlando has to offer. Be sure to register today.

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