_data/techtalks.yml
- title: Robotics Process Automation (RPA) Tech Talk with Jasmeen Bowmaster
date: February 22, 2018
time: 1p-1:30p
location: Virtual and 1800F Room 3334
description: Robotics Process Automation (RPA) is automation of a manual process that is largely rules based, structured, and repetitive using software robots. Two pilots are currently being conducted at GSA, which if successful, will be leveraged to prove out, build, and stand-up an RPA enterprise solution at GSA using an iterative approach. Join us on the 22nd to learn more about RPA at GSA.
presenter: Jasmeen Bowmaster
register: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1LBPeo2pLFCVAl7pKMUhjHJ3geH8QymKIBBU6VHUVzXc/
slides:
recording:
- title: Manufacturing your infrastructure with Terraform Tech Talk with Aidan Feldman
date: February 8, 2018
time: 11a-11:30a
location: Virtual and 1800F Room 4232
description: >
"Ok, to set up this system, go to the EC2 page in the Console, then click ‘New Instance’. Oh, sorry, that button moved - go to the Instances page first. Go ahead and create- wait, you made the subnets already, right? What about the Security Groups?" Sound familiar? Manual setup and configuration of infrastructure can be time-consuming, tedious, confusing, and error-prone. Computers are really good at following instructions - why don’t we let the computers follow the instructions for us? Better yet, what if there were a tool where we tell it what we want the infrastructure to look like, and it magically figures out how to build it? This talk will make you wonder how you ever lived without infrastructure as code, and show how Terraform can be used to turn your devops up to 11.
presenter: Aidan Feldman
register: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/11fo-CzbTkT_LlDXQ20SNNm9QgOm5KSoNUpGR_8wH9yI/
recording:
- title: Taxonomy Tech Talk with Angela Pitts
date: January 25, 2018
time: 1p-1:30p
location: Virtual and 1800F Room 4143
description: In the world of Knowledge Management, Taxonomy is a discipline focused on the building of classically structured hierarchies of terms that are used to represent defined concepts. Typically, the hierarchy which is leveraged within a system is also called a taxonomy. The system employs the taxonomy to classify documents, digital assets and other information. In addition to categorizing content to improve findability (navigation and search), a taxonomy also allows content to be discovered. In these fast-paced times, taxonomies are expanding beyond the classic hierarchy to include semantic networks (often referred to as ontologies), thesauri and established lexicons (controlled vocabularies). Leveraging new tools, taxonomy development and maintenance can ideally fit into any Continuous Improvement plan. The use of new strategies and tools also promotes interoperability and improves the flow of information through enterprise systems. As a result, organizational barriers continue to be broken down so information can be more effectively used and reused.
presenter: Angela Pitts
register:
slides: /assets/downloads/techtalks/tech-talk-taxonomy.pdf
recording:
- title: Conducting an Agile Project Tech Talk with Alicia Cyrus
date: January 11, 2018
time: 1p-1:30p
location: Virtual and 1800F Room 4113
description: Are you looking to increase cross-functional communication and transparency, while better engaging end users and showing progress more rapidly for your projects or pilots? Depending on the nature of the effort, an Agile approach can help you achieve your goals! Join us as Alicia Cyrus presents the CTO Office recommendations and resources for conducting an Agile project
presenter: Alicia Cyrus
register:
slides: /assets/downloads/techtalks/tech-talk-conducting-an-agile-project.pdf
recording:
- title: Privacy Tech Talk with Richard Speidel
date: December 7, 2017
time: 1p-1:30p
location: Virtual and 1800F Room 2213
description: Heard about the Equifax breach? Were you affected by it or any other recent cyber security or privacy incident? Ever wonder what GSA IT is doing in the area of information privacy? Come to the Privacy Tech Talk and listen to Richard Speidel and the privacy team talk about the importance of Privacy here at GSA IT and get answers to any questions you may have.
presenter: Richard Speidel
register: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1POLpkRUoOd0H5mspCY4wevE5uXeusbnTb8PnKNkyqvw/
slides:
recording:
- title: Github Tech Talk with Sara Cope
date: November 16, 2017
time: 1p-1:30p
location: Virtual and 1800F Room 3211
description: "A Tour of GitHub for Non-Developers: GitHub is a collaboration platform where users can work on open source projects together. In this session, we’ll take a look at the many GitHub features and get you up to speed with version control terminology. We’ll also take a look at a few workflows in GitHub for contributing to open source projects without coding. This is a beginner friendly session for someone who has little to no experience with GitHub."
presenter: Sara Cope
register:
slides: /assets/downloads/techtalks/GitHub-TechTalk-Sara-Nov2017.pdf
recording:
- title: TBM Tech Talk with Megan Sikora
date: November 2, 2017
time: 1p-1:30p
location: Virtual and 1800F Room 3334
description: Ever find yourself always trying to answer the question of why IT costs what it does or a cost per user? Do your customers want more information as to what drives the cost of the services GSA IT delivers, but you find yourself answering questions with more question? What if there was a standard taxonomy and model that once loaded with the copious amounts of data that we possess that could answer those questions? In fact, what if those questions could be answered and we could drive both ourselves and our users to more efficient and effective uses of our IT? This answer does exist within our Cost Transparency Initiative, utilizing Technology Business Management. Please join us for this TechTalks to learn more about cost transparency and how we can shape business demand and deliver value for money.
presenter: Megan Sikora
register:
slides: /assets/downloads/techtalks/GSAITCostTransparencyTechTalkNov2017.pdf
recording:
- title: GEAR Tech Talk with Chris Campbell
date: October 26, 2017
time: 1p-1:30p
location: Virtual and 1800F Room 3334
description: Maybe you've heard someone talking about GEAR, and want to know what it's all about. Or maybe you've used GEAR to check if a certain technology is approved at GSA. Did you know you can export all of these reports? Do you know how to see which applications belong to a single 2-letter office? Do you know how to get incorrect information updated? The EA team will provide a demo that will walk through the basic lists managed within GEAR, as well as some less-well-known ways to search for your favorite information. Come and see how much information is already available at your fingertips!
presenter: Chris Campbell
register:
slides: /assets/downloads/techtalks/GEARTechTalk.pptx.pdf
recording:
- title: Data Sciences October 5th Tech Talk with Amirah Aziz
date: October 5, 2017
time: 1p-1:30p
location: Virtual and 1800F Room 5213
description: Opportunities for data scientists—one of today’s hottest skills—are rapidly growing in response to the exponential amounts of data being captured and analyzed. Data scientists are needed in GSA to find insights into this data and to solve meaningful business problems within the agency. In this talk, we’ll explore what it means to be a data scientist as well as data science process workflow, tools, technology, and upcoming GSA training in Data Science.
presenter: Amirah Aziz
register:
slides: /assets/downloads/techtalks/tech-talk-data-sciences.pdf
recording:
- title: Salesforce Lightning for Gmail with Prerana Bhatt
date: September 21, 2017
time: 1p-1:30p
location: Virtual and 1800F Room 2213
description: Salesforce Lightning for Gmail is a brand new way to experience Salesforce right from within Gmail for CRM customers. Lightning for Gmail provides ability to integrate Salesforce with Google G Suite email and calendar applications. Salesforce team will provide demo to highlight how users can perform various actions in Salesforce from within Gmail which helps to increase productivity, efficiency and eliminates duplicate efforts.
presenter: Prerana Bhatt
register:
slides: /assets/downloads/techtalks/tech-talk-lightning-gmail.pdf
recording:
- title: Google App Scripts to the Rescue! With Mark Vogelgesang
date: September 7, 2017
time: 1p-1:30p
location: Virtual and 1800F Room 2213
description: Recently, Google App Scripts were made available for development by everyone at GSA. App Scripts yield tremendous power and can help automate many tasks that previously required manual intervention. For instance, do you want to automatically send calendar invites based on form responses? Or perhaps you want to scan a particular team folder to ensure that sharing settings are as expected. With a little bit of javascript knowledge, you can quickly start producing scripts for use by yourself and your team. In the talk, we will cover some app script basics, talk about the approval process for their use at GSA, and a quick example app.
presenter: Mark Vogelgesang
register:
slides: /assets/downloads/techtalks/tech-talk-google-app-scripts.pdf
recording:
- title: DevSecOps – A Case Study (D2D migration to Cloud) with Kishore Kakani
date: August 17, 2017
time: 1p-1:30p
location: Virtual and 1800F Room 3334
description: The objective of this tech talk is to explain the use of DevSecOps framework to migrate application workloads to cloud. The CTO team is collaborating with various teams (incl. IDI, security, and application development leads) to define and build DevSecOps framework to help migrate application workloads to cloud. The goal is to ‘develop/deploy/operate’ through automation. As part of this journey, the CTO team worked closely with the D2D team to migrate D2D applications to cloud by building some of these automation pieces and work towards that final goal of developing automated CI/CD pipelines. In this presentation, we will go over the D2D migration steps in detail and understand how DevSecOps automation process can help build repeatable infrastructure/application deployments with minimal manual intervention, and shorter provisioning times.
presenter: Kishore Kakani
register:
slides: /assets/downloads/techtalks/tech-talk-devsecops--for-d2d Platform.pdf
recording:
- title: Creating InSite pages with Joy Gatewood
date: August 10, 2017
time: 1p-1:30p
location: Virtual and 1800F room 4143
description: Have you ever wondered how to create InSite pages? And perhaps why? And how you could maximize your InSite pages to improve acceptance of your program? Maybe you've wondered how you could create self help pages that for your customers - that also cuts down on phone calls, emails and meetings? <p>We'll quickly walk through how to request an InSite page. Then provide a quick overview of GSA's style guides that include federal guidelines and laws that you must keep in mind when creating online content. </p>
<p>Finally, we'll show how helping customers complete their tasks on your InSite pages can improve customer satisfaction, and improve productivity and efficiency.</p>
<p>Slides will be shared that will go into more depth and include:
<ul>
<li>analyzing InSite page visits with Google Analytics</li>
<li>analyzing searches and using the results to understand your customer's keywords</li>
<li>improving your InSite pages' Search Engine Optimization (SEO)</li>
<li>using a shortcut - like insite.gsa.gov/myprogram - as an easy way to communicate with your customers and improve your branding</li>
<li>using customer feedback - like "Rate This Page" to continuously improve your Insite pages by using the voices of your customer</li>
</ul>
<p>If you're mystified by InSite and don't know where to start this talk is for you.</p>
presenter: Joy Gatewood
register:
slides:
recording:
- title: Data-to-Decisions (D2D) & GSA with Kris Rowley
date: July 26, 2017
time: 1p-1:30p
location: Virtual and 1800F
description: D2D is a GSA-wide initiative and cultural shift to bring GSA datasets together, ensure consistency of reporting, and empower employees at all levels with the outcome of building a data-driven organization. It is a capability used to aggregate data, store data securely using modern cloud technology, and develop flexible reports for your customers. During this tech talk, Kris Rowley, GSA Chief Data Officer, will present D2D's portal capabilities, offer discussion around what D2D can do to help better support our daily jobs, and answer any data related questions specific to the business. The D2D team hopes to continue contributing to the to the improvement of GSA's overall customer experience by helping reach insights quickly, collaborate meaningfully, and build a community around data.
presenter: Kris Rowley, GSA Chief Data Officer
register:
slides:
recording:
- title: Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and GSA
date: July 20, 2017
time: 1p-1:30p
location: Virtual and 1800F
description:
<p>Do you ever wonder how applications are synced across multiple devices? How you are able to receive instant updates to your mobile apps? This is possible because of Application Programming Interfaces, or APIs. APIs are software programs that enable computer programs and systems to talk directly to each other.</p>
<p>If you would like to understand how APIs work, then this Tech Talk is for you! Ryan Day and Joe Castle of IC and the GSA Digital Service team are going to explain APIs with particular focus on data transfer over web protocols and RESTful design with considering endpoints, nouns, and verbs. They will also demonstrate popular commercial and GSA examples while discussing the value they provide to the Agency and end consumers. Furthermore, information will be provided about GSA's API strategy, API inventory, and API standards for those wanting to create APIs.</p>
presenter: Ryan Day and Joe Castle
register:
slides: /assets/downloads/techtalks/apis-tech-talk.pdf
recording:
- title: Application Performance Monitoring within GSA's PBS IT
date: June 20, 2017
time: 1p-1:30p
location: Virtual and 1800F
description:
<p>IT applications are getting more robust and complicated each year. Applications developers are expected to deliver more features while improving application performance for end users.</p>
<p>This can be a challenging endeavor without the right tool to baseline and track application performance and identify where the bottlenecks are occurring.</p>
<p>During this tech talk, Phil Klokis and Allen Samuel will present how PB-ITS has used Riverbed ARX to improve application performance and identify usage of the application in supporting application rationalization activities.</p>
presenter: Phil Klokis and Allen Samuel
register:
slides: /assets/downloads/techtalks/tech-talk-arx.pdf
recording:
- title: 'The Agile Product Owner: Beyond the Books & Classrooms'
date: June 6, 2017
time: 1p-1:30p
location: Virtual and 1800F
description:
<p>As organizations embark on Agile transformation, many traditional project managers or business and technical leads are often assigned the Product Owner role with limited (or no) training or even an understanding of what the new role truly entails. In the midst of changing environments, conflicting mindsets, and other change-related issues, they are expected to start operating within a Scrum team after a few days of CSPO training and perhaps some reading. So, what are some of the tools and real-life experience required from a Product Owner?</p>
<p>During this Tech Talk, Alicia Cyrus will explore the differences between product ownership and traditional project management, and share some approaches on how Product Owners can effectively manage relationships and the responsibilities of their new role.</p>
presenter: Alicia Cyrus, CTO Office
register:
slides: /assets/downloads/techtalks/tech-talk-agile-project-owner.pdf
recording:
- title: Internet of Things & GSA/PBS
date: May 17, 2017
time: 1p-1:30p
location: Virtual and 1800f
description:
<p>Did you know that PBS at GSA uses The Internet of Things for Their Smart Buildings? The next Tech Talk on May 17th at 1 pm will have GSA-PBS IT’s Charles Matta and Andrew Vanjani sharing their insights into this very exciting topic.</p>
<p>They will talk about PBS and smart buildings, and The Internet of Things within the building industry, PBS, Federal Facilities and the real estate industry. How it works, Applications, Risks/Rewards, Cybersecurity, Contracting, Innovation and Opportunities will all be discussed.</p>
presenter: Charles Matta and Andrew Vanjani
register:
slides: /assets/downloads/techtalks/tech-talk-iot.pdf
recording:
- title: Version Control and GitHub
date: May 9, 2017
time: 1p-1:30p
location: Virtual
description: >
<p>Version control software allows multiple people to manage changes to a project at the same time without getting in each other's way. At GSA, we use it to help share and collaborate on open source software but it can be used for many other things as well. In this session, we'll talk about the basics of version control, look at how you might use it on your projects and take a tour of the GitHub ecosystem. This is a beginners session and no coding experience is required.</p>
<p>Please join Sara Cope from the CTO Office in this Tech Talk for a friendly introduction to Version Control and GitHub.</p>
presenter: Sara Cope, CTO Office
slides: https://saracope.github.io/github-techtalk
recording:
- title: DevOps
date: April 25, 2017
time: 1p-1:30p
location: Virtual and 1800F
description: >
<p>DevOps is a growing collection of practices that unify software development, QA, IT operations, and security. These practices are primarily focused on two areas: cultural change and process automation. By applying DevOps principles to our IT products, we can realize better product quality, lower costs, shorter lead time to release changes, increased reliability, and happier customers.</p>
<p>Please join Jeff Fredrickson from the CTO Office for this Tech Talk to learn more about DevOps and how GSA can benefit from it.</p>
presenter: Jeff Fredrickson, CTO Office
register:
slides: /assets/downloads/techtalks/tech-talk-devops.pdf
recording:
- title: Solutions Strategy
date: April 11, 2017
time: 1p-1:30p
location: Virtual and 1800F
description: >
<p>Like most organizations, GSA IT is embracing the shared services model to optimize common IT functions to more efficiently meet GSA's mission of delivering best value in real estate, acquisition and technology services. This means re-evaluating the way GSA IT defines and creates IT solutions and investment strategies for the enterprise.</p>
<p>In 2016, GSA IT established Solutions Strategy Division within the Office of the CTO to partner with you to innovate, guide and architect IT solutions that fit your needs and support GSA IT's shared services model.</p>
<p>Please join Akanksha Sharma from the CTO Office in this Tech Talk to learn more about how Solutions Strategy is helping GSA move to a shared services model. Furthermore, she will explain how to engage with the division for assistance with your current and future projects.</p>
presenter: Akanksha Sharma, CTO Office
register:
slides: /assets/downloads/techtalks/tech-talk-solutions-strategy.pdf
recording:
- title: Agile Behaviors
date: March 30, 2017
time: 1p-1:30p
location: Virtual and 1800F
description: >
<p>Like most organizations, GSA is embracing Agile to more effectively respond to rapid market opportunities, and is investing in approaches that facilitate the delivery of business value and quality products to its internal and external customers.</p>
<p>So, is there a "right" way to becoming Agile? Should an organization care about "going" Agile or better business results?</p>
<p>Please join Lulit Tesfaye and Alicia Cyrus from the CTO Office in this Tech Talk. They will discuss what Agile behaviors look like at the Team, Program and Organization level; enabling a supporting environment and share resources from coaching pilot Agile teams across GSA organizations.</p>
presenter: Lulit Tesfaye and Alicia Cyrus, CTO Office
register:
slides: /assets/downloads/techtalks/tech-talk-agile-behavior.pdf
recording:
- title: GSA Digital Services
date: March 14, 2017
time: 1p-1:30p
location: Virtual and 1800F
description: Technology in the federal sector is rapidly changing with focus on new technologies to meet emerging customer and end user needs. Design elicitation, rapid and continuous software deployments, open source technologies, sprint management cycles, etc., are the new norm. This talk will provide insight into Digital Services at GSA, how it started, its focus, and current projects.
presenter: Joseph Castle, Digital Service Team, CTO
register:
slides: /assets/downloads/techtalks/tech-talk-digital-services.pdf
recording:
- title: Open Source at GSA
date: February 28, 2017
time: 1p-1:30p
location: Virtual and 1800F
description: In this Tech Talk, Joseph Castle and Jeffrey Fredrickson from the Digital Services Division provided an overview of the OMB and GSA policies, discussed implementation and measurement, and discussed the importance of OSS to the agency.
presenter: Joseph Castle and Jeffrey Fredrickson, Digital Service Team, CTO
register:
slides: /assets/downloads/techtalks/OpenSourceGSA.pdf
recording:
- title: A Look into the CTO's Office
date: February 21, 2017
time: 1p-1:30p
location: Virtual and 1800F
description: The Office of the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) is responsible for driving innovation and modernizing technologies for GSA. In this Tech Talk, Navin Vembar, GSA CTO, provided the CTO vision for the future of technology at GSA, what services the office provides, and information about the projects currently underway.
presenter: Navin Vembar, GSA Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
register:
slides: /assets/downloads/techtalks/TheCTOOffice.pdf
recording: