The Hudson Valley Tech Festival 

 UPDATE: The festival was a great success and organizers look forward to a repeat in 2020.

The Hudson Valley Tech Festival a self-described, technology-driven economic development festival featuring a two-day Conference and a Hackathon is running during this Columbus Day weekend, starting at 8:15 a.m. sharp, Friday, October 11th & concluding Saturday, October 12th, 2019 in the late afternoon.

The two days will be split between the campus of SUNY Orange, Newburgh and Mt. St. Mary College, Newburgh.

The following information is an informal guide you as you consider attending the various lectures, and/or participating, or observing the Hackathon.

Goals of the Hudson Valley Tech Festival

The Festival is offering both the conference and hackathon as vehicles through which attendees may explore the Hudson Valley’s tech landscape, especially as it involves developing a workforce and employing that workforce.

On day one, keynotes presentations, workshops, and lightning rounds will be featured.

Topics covered include:

• building a tech workforce
• assistive technology
• advancements in open data
• cybersecurity
• machine learning
• 5G and the Internet of Things (IOT)
• cryptocurrency

On day two, the Hackathon occurs, but there are also a series of lightning round breakout sessions scheduled also.

From the organizer

“The “regional” tech market is burgeoning and therefore ripe for a gathering such as the Hudson Valley Tech Festival. Having lived here for over 5 years, I have witnessed an increasing interest in technology and I’m happy to see that the Hudson Valley is experiencing a surge of activity in the tech industry.” says festival founder Yulia Ovchinnikova. “After working with tech communities in Orange, Ulster, Dutchess and Sullivan counties, I appreciate the vibrancy of the region and that it is time to spotlight the entire valley,” adds Ovchinnikova.

The Conference

The Tech Festival Conference brings together Hudson Valley area tech companies, entrepreneurs, startups, investors, professionals, educators, students and more, offering a Keynote speaker on Friday who is an expert on AI and machine learning.

Rensselaer Polytech Institute’s Dr. James Hendler, Chair of Computer, Web and Cognitive Sciences at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute will cover the hot topic Artificial Intelligence (AI) currently and its future implications, specifically what the near future may bring.

Following Dr. Hendler will be a number of other panels and breakout sessions, including two workforce development panels from two different perspectives – existing hiring – training pipeline and future-readiness.

 

A view of Mt. St. Mary College, Newburgh

Lineup and schedule

The festival’s program lineup and schedule can be found here.

The Hackathon

The Hackathon is being held at Mt. St. Mary College and encourages young people to get involved, learn tech and do so to solve community problems.

The problems being solved for are:

1. Education leading to Employability 
2. Professional development and employee retention

Mount St. Mary College President , Dr. Jason N. Adsit kicks off the event.

Those youth who participate in the hackathon will be participating in a side of the Hackathon dubbed the first-ever youth hackathon in the region — and named the AT&T Hudson Valley Hackathon. 

Hackathon participant details

Free for youth

The AT&T Hudson Valley Hackathon is free for youth, and the first 100 youth participants registered will be welcomed into this event.

Computer programmers and others involved in software and hardware development will collaborate intensively on projects in order to solve challenges by using technology.

According to a press release about the Hackathon, “participants will build apps, games, websites, animations and interactive stories related to solutions for education, such as availability, employability, skilled workforce retention and professional sustainability, while being judged on their teamwork, imagination, code and design skills, while rating the digital solutions provided to the Hudson Valley education and workforce community.” 

The hackathon will feature mentors from area colleges, tech companies and local developers assisting the participants.

Free food

Meals and snacks will be provided.

Those with laptops — or even tablets — should bring them, but attendees can participate even without their own devices.

Adults to pay

No prior coding experience is necessary. There is no upper limit on adult attendance.

All participants must register in advance at https://bit.ly/HVTechFest; ticket prices for adults are shown on the web site.

Some not to be missed presentations

All the presentations look interesting, here are a few notable picks:

Dana Jones

Dana is a recent graduate from Dutchess Community College and a recipient of the Think Dutchess 2019 Business Excellence Award  as innovator of the year:

Her winning submission was Accessadoor.

 

Dana Jones creator and founder of Accessadoor

For Dana, the day-to-day challenges of accessing doors inspired revolutionary technology. Together with a fellow Dutchess Community College student, Accessadoor was born in 2018 to change decades-old technology and create access for millions of differently-abled people everywhere. Now entering the manufacturing stage, these young innovators are a testament to the valuable educational resources and talent that exists in the area;

Kianga Daverington

Ms. Daverington is a crypto asset manager, cryptocurrency miner and founder of a boutique law practice, Daverington PLLC, that advises clients on crypto-asset investing and regulatory compliance for decentralized finance.

Ms. Daverington began her career as an Associate in the Derivatives practice group at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP in New York. In later roles gained extensive experience supporting the derivatives, FX, derivatives prime brokerage and commodities trading businesses at Goldman Sachs, derivatives and physical commodities trading at Lehman Brothers, and global commodities merchant trading businesses at Castleton Commodities International.

This will be a fun and non-technical talk designed to de-mystify cryptocurrency for those who need a basic intro, but also informative historical perspective on how “money” technologies have evolved over centuries. Also will cover some practical topics like where to go for info, how to purchase, how to securely hold digital assets, and how to avoid scams and bad actors. I could also offer a workshop with more hands-on demonstrations about creating exchange accounts, basics of trading, hardware wallet set up and usage for securely holding cryptocurrency. She is the founder of a digital asset investment firm and passionate about making sure that all people -regardless of wealth- may have the knowledge to take advantage of the early stages we are still in for the growth of these new assets.

Friday, October 11, 2019 – 1:00pm to 1:30pm

 

College Information:

SUNY Orange – Newburgh

3 Washington Center

12550 Newburgh , NY

See map: Google Maps

Mount Saint Mary College

330 Powell Ave

Newburgh , NY

See map: Google Maps

About Open Hub

Open Hub (Sponsor and originator of the Tech Fest) is a technology resource center in the Hudson Valley. It provides technical education and networking opportunities throughout the region.

Open Hub provides support to a growing network of talented techies in the Hudson Valley who are inspired to work together and promote doing more together through collaboration, sharing resources, knowledge, and opportunities. OpenHubProject.com

 

 T-SEC, is a proud supporter of Hudson Valley Tech Festival 2019