(OCTOBER) SIM Seattle  Panel:  What it really means for engineering organizations to “do more with less” on Wednesday, October 18, 2023.                      

Event Details -

While the recent economic climate is affecting all departments of a business, software engineering is paricularly stressed in this "do more with less" environment.  As Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella recently said, "Doing more with less doesn't mean working harder or longer.  It's not longer. It’s not going to scale. It means applying technology to amplify what you can do, and ultimately, what an organization can achieve amidst today’s constraints.”

But how can engineering leaders do this practically? How can they apply technology to amplify what they do while also managing the costs of their department?In this panel discussion hosted by SIM Seattle, we’ll explore how leaders are doing this today. The panel will answer questions on deploying new technologies, achieving greater alignment with business goals, enabling better remote collaboration, and more. You’ll come away with some thought provoking ideas to consider within your own organizations.

(JANUARY) Growing Technology Leadership: A Taste of the Regional Leadership Forum (RLF)
on Wednesday, January 20th, at 4:00pm
featuring Christine Putur, REI EVP Technology and Operations, and Tanya Hannah, King County CIO

Quick Overview: RLF is rigorous and immersive and this is key to what makes this program unique to leadership development. Personal thoughts and perspectives on RLF and its impact from Seattle CIO's/Technology leaders including: Chris Putur, REI, EVP Technology and Operations Tanya Hannah, King County, CIO Lowell Millard, Lone Wolf Distributors Inc, President Barend Brink, F5, Senior Manager

Event Details-

Join us Wednesday, January 20th, at 4:00pm to learn about the powerfully transformative experience of SIM's Regional Leadership Forum. Learn why this program is a key part of mentorship initiatives for Christine Putur, REI EVP Technology and Operations, and Tanya Hannah, King County CIO, and how they use it to develop their future leaders. This event includes an overview of the program by PNW RLF facilitators Fred Pond, retired CIO from Columbia Sportswear and Butch Leonardson, retired BECU CIO

(DECEMBER) Seattle SIM Members' Virtual Holiday Party
A Virtual event featuring a Mixology Class and Virtual Games
Wednesday, December 16, 2020 4:00 - 5:30 PM
featuring mixologist Robert Rowland, runner up for Bartender of the Year by Eater Magazine

Event Detail- This year looks a bit different for everyone, but as Seattle SIM Chapter members, we would still like to do something to celebrate the holidays together! On Wednesday, December 16th at 4:00pm, in lieu of our annual holiday party, we will be hosting a mixology class followed by virtual games! For this event we will be sending you a box of the relevant supplies, for either the mocktail or cocktail -- please identify which you are interested in receiving. Because we need to send you supplies, we need your RSVP by Monday, December 7th! This event is free and exclusive for SIM Seattle members! We're excited to come together and just have fun! We hoped by keeping our usual, before dinner time slot, this wouldn't interfere in your Hanukkah night-- please let us know if it does and we'll find a way to include you in a different way! REGISTER HERE Our mixologist Robert Rowland has been in the hospitality industry for over 15 years in Seattle. Along the way he has worked at some of the most respected cocktail establishments in the city while creating and running successful bar programs at multiple fine Bars and Restaurants. He was also runner up for Bartender of the Year by Eater Magazine.

(NOVEMBER) SIM Seattle Event: Engineering Lessons Building of teams, culture, and how to operate large scale multi-tenant offerings
featuring Praerit Garg, CTO at Smartsheet

Quick Overview: Praerit will discuss his experience building large scale solutions at Amazon and Smartsheet Praerit's talk will highlight the importance of creating engineering talent, curating a culture, and building high performance teams.

Event Detail-

Praerit’s experience spans start-ups to mature organizations and in between. He’s held leadership roles at Microsoft, Amazon, and now as CTO of Smartsheet. Over his career, he’s developed engineering, product, and customer principles that enable his teams to create quality product offerings. Join us as Praerit shares his key insights, both what works well and where improvements could have been made related to:

• Engaging and Delighting Customers
  
• Building and iterating on Systems
  
• Organizing for Scale
  
• Building for Scale and Performance
  
• Operating at Scale

Join us on November 17th, at 4:00 PM, to hear Praerit discuss the value of customers, technology, people, and process.  He will highlight how each are foundational to a high performing team, ensuring the right products and services are being created.  

Praerit Garg is the Chief Technology Officer at Smartsheet. He brings more than 23 years of experience building large-scale distributed systems and internet services, and is co-inventor of more than 25 patents. He joins us from AWS, where he was general manager for identity, access, and directory services; prior to that, he co-founded Symform, a distributed internet storage startup which was acquired by Quantum. Prior to Symform, Praerit built and led a 300-person organization at Microsoft that delivered distributed systems management capabilities across Windows, System Center, and Visual Studio products. He was also part of the original team that built Active Directory.

Praerit is passionate about building an engineering culture of innovation, finding simple solutions to hard problems, and delivering great experiences for customers. He holds a master’s degree in Computer Science from Purdue University. In his free time, he loves to travel with his family, experiencing different cultures and their food, art, architecture, and history.

(OCTOBER)  SIM Seattle event: Security Leadership & Risk Management for IT Leaders
The evolving role of security in business enablement
featuring Bill Shinn, Senior Principal with AWS

Quick Overview: Bill will discuss how a strong security focus can be the ultimate business enabler He will highlight how high performing organizations focus on security engineering He will share how all IT leaders can help empower the organization to manage risk effectively, without compromising agility

Event Detail-

As leaders in Information Technology, the need for effective information security and risk management rises all the way to the board room. Today, security is everyone's job and all IT leaders benefit from understanding the perspective of the Chief Information Security Officer and how to best partner with security and compliance teams across their organization. Strong security, risk, and compliance programs enable organizations to adapt to rapidly changing conditions, focus on innovation, and take advantage of the many benefits of agile practices. Building a solid foundation based on security best practices helps organizations improve resiliency, drive faster internal adoption of emerging technologies and improve time-to-market.

In this session, Bill will share his lessons learned in working with thousands of AWS customers as they adopt cloud, while achieving their goals in security and risk management.

And a huge thank you to our sponsor for this Month

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(SEPTEMBER) SIM Seattle event: Insights that apply to all -
Leadership, Technology, Culture, Finance, and People
featuring David Bell, REI Platform Engineering

Quick Overview: David will discuss REI's Cloud journey, and the successes and learnings they have experienced  David's talk will highlight how technology change is just the tip of the iceberg

Event Detail-

REI was not born in the cloud and like most firms their cloud journey required strategic decisions, justification, planning, and execution. Leveraging the cloud brings transformational changes to the organization with increases in speed and agility, scaling compute autonomously, reduction in capital expenditures, and forms of innovation. However, these are only realized through changes in the organization and department's operating model changes specific to people, process, technology, communication, and skills. 

Join us on Sept 30th, at 4pm, as David Bell, leader of REI's Core Platform Engineering team, shares his insights and unique perspective to their REI's journey.    Learn how REI managed this transition with an employee-centric mindset to support the ever challenging needs of the business.

After David's talk, there will be a virtual happy hour, for those who would like to stay and network with other peers, and to discuss this talk, or other topics that technical leaders are addressing today.

And a huge thank you to our sponsor for this Month

(AUGUST) SIM Seattle event featuring

Stephen Heard, King County CTO-

Quick Overview: Stephen will discuss why leading through a pandemic  requires sound leadership skills and habits Stephen's talk will highlight that being prepared isn't an accident and often is based on many past decisions

Event Detail-

Guiding a team, organization, or company successfully through a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic takes leadership excellence. Crisis leadership, however, starts way before a crisis actually happens by making sure your organization is prepared.

Join SIM Seattle on Wednesday, August 26^th at 4pm, we welcome Stephen Heard, CTO at King County.  Stephen will explain how his IT team prepared to meet the needs of the community during a crisis and how strategic decisions - even some made a decade ago - contributed to his team’s success.  This successful response helped ensure that the approximately 2.3MM people in King County could rely on King County's government services through this ongoing pandemic.

And thank you to our sponsor for this month,

(JULY) SIM Seattle Leadership Discussion,

after Ibram X Kendi global event-

Quick Takeaway: Attend the July 20th Global event with award winning and bestselling author Ibram X Kendi, as he discuses ‘How to be an Anti-Racist  (Sign-up below) Attend the SeattleSIM discussion, post event, to discuss how Kendi’s theories apply to our role as technology leaders (Register Below)

Event Detail-
On Monday, July 20^th at 4pm, the SIM board will be attending Ibram X Kendi’s talk on ‘How to be an Anti-Racist.’ 
This is not a SIM sponsored event, but one that the SeattleSIM leadership team believes is important for every leader today.

Kendi is one of America’s foremost historians and leading anti-racist voices and best known for his book ‘How to be Anti-Racist’.
He is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow and #1 NYT Bestselling Author.  He is a Andrew W. Mellon Professor in Humanities and
Founding Director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research, as well as a contributing writer at The Atlantic
and a CBS News correspondent.  Kendi's talk is sure to be insightful and enlightening.

After Kendi's session, at approx 5pm on July 20th, we plan to have our own moderated, virtual discussion,
focused on how Kendi’s theories apply to our role as technology leaders.