Puerto Rico IT Cluster’s annual conference set for Oct. 12-13
The Puerto Rico Information Technology Cluster (PRITC) will celebrate its 10th anniversary at its CIO & IT Leadership Conference on Oct. 12-13 at the Puerto Rico Convention Center.
In an interview with News is my Business, Alberto Lugo and David Linares, co-presidents of the PRITC – which comprises developers, consultants, policymakers, infrastructure companies and academic institutions – said this year’s two-day event will be different from past editions because it will include an IT Academy.
“In addition to the conferences with world-renowned keynote speakers, there is going to be a day dedicated to education,” Lugo said.
Lugo further noted that the CIO & IT Leadership Conference is the biggest technology event held on the island, where “we group technology companies” and it is not limited to only chief information officers but has grown to “a group of people who have accompanied us over the past 10 years in the conference.”
“What we are looking for is to gather technology companies together and touch on topics of interest for the industry, such as technology topics and topics like soft skills, because in technology everything is transactional,” Lugo said. “We also like to network during a forum where people can forge business connections, among other things.”
Lugo recalled that the conference was held virtually for two years due to the pandemic. However, last year the event was finally held in-person again.
“This year is our 10th anniversary, and we are very happy about getting together with all these people,” Lugo said. “We call it the class reunion.”
A broad agenda
Linares highlighted the vast content to be presented, which they “are looking to dive deep into.”
“There are different industries that all touch on IT, which is an important component, so that is why you are going to see a track that focuses more on government and others that concentrate on artificial intelligence and cybersecurity,” he said. “In fact, that is one of the biggest challenges that we face as co-presidents, being able to filter or maximize the content that we will be presenting to the audience because there are so many topics that trying to condense them into one agenda becomes a bit complicated.”
“And that takes us to the big change that we are introducing for the 10th anniversary, which is that traditionally the event lasted one day and this year we are expanding it to two days, in which the first day is an academic day, where we will get into these technical topics that aren’t necessarily aimed at the CIOs [chief information officers], or industry leaders but toward the entire team – for example, the security team, the staff in charge of development and infrastructure. So we are going to have really interesting topics such as the cloud, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence, mixed with development topics during the event’s first day,” Linares said.
The event’s second day, which follows a more traditional format, will focus on industry leaders. Linares explained that while morning sessions will interest the entire audience, afternoon tracks will delve into more specialized subjects, segmenting the audience accordingly.
The titles of the topics for the first day include Artificial Intelligence, Generative AI, Productivity AI, Intelligent Chatbots, Predictive Analytics, Cybersecurity, Zero Trust Architecture, the Road Map for Security Operations Maturity, the Human Firewall, How to Prepare for Your Next Ransomware Attack, Cloud Infrastructure, Multicloud Architecture, Hyperconverged Infrastructure and Data.
Notable speakers include executives from Microsoft, Armor Security, WorldNet, Sidif, Coopertone, and IBM.
Lugo added that, within artificial intelligence, three topics “are very important for the ongoing development of solutions and products that focus on AI, which is what is really in vogue right now. We want to speak in-depth about these with our audience,” Lugo said.
Lugo acknowledged that people are “a little scared” of AI taking over human jobs, but noted that the AI products that are available are designed to augment human jobs, not replace them.
“It’s important for people in technical or creative fields to learn how to use these tools because if they don’t, they will not be at par with their colleagues who do know these tools because they are using them,” he said. “An employee becomes a super employee and can work faster than an employee who is not using these tools.”
The event’s second day will feature keynote addresses from University of Puerto Rico Prof. Carlos Ortiz; Eric Siu, founder of Single Grain; Judge Maritere Colón-Domínguez; and Lorena Molina-Irizarry, senior adviser for Puerto Rico at the Department of Commerce, among others.
Those interested in attending can register here.
