The Pandemic has forced companies to re-evaluate their IT strategy. While cost pressures and risk management drove the agenda in 2020, as the global economy re-emerges, 2021 is going to require a fresh outlook. The Post-COVID world is going to be very different, with continued remote working and contact-less customer engagement. Virtualization and Digitalization will be the key driving trends. As IT Leaders plan their IT budgets and initiatives for the year, a greater emphasis on variable spends and a shift away from capital investments, will require a re-alignment with new business realities.

Avasant’s premier 2021 Outlook Digital Forum in partnership with Innovate@UCLA will feature research-backed insights on the areas that CIOs and CFOs should focus on to re-imagine their IT while strengthening their Business. Leading IT and Finance Executives from Global 1000 will share their learnings and strategies for architecting a more agile and responsive IT organization that can streamline operations, drive a richer customer engagement and empower business to thrive in the Next Normal.

Key Topics:

IT Spend/Budgeting perspective for 2021
Hybrid Cloud and Infrastructure Trends
Managed Services/Outsourcing Trends
Accelerating Digital investments
IT Governance and Service Management

During this event, the 2020 Fall Quarter Tech Bootcamp winning student team (Ctrl-Z) and their team coach will be presenting their AI-based text recognition application, Updata. Updata helps government social workers and case managers to automate data entry. The team members below will present their research and demo the product.

The Young Tech Professionals (YTP) program develops the next generation technology workforce by educating undergraduate and graduate students on business and technical skills that are necessary to succeed in the real world. Students engage in a 6-week hands-on bootcamp augmenting their academic curriculum with digital using the Google Design Thinking framework and core, professional skills, such as diversity and inclusion, project management, and communications. Students learn how to collaborate and work in diverse teams led by industry coaches who guide them through the process of ideating, validating and refining their solutions, to a final Minimal Viable Product (MVP), and finally present their solutions to industry judges during a pitch competition.

For a recap of this event, please click here.

This panel will explore the rapidly changing dynamics in the workplace and how leaders will need to re-imagine employee engagement and talent management. What are the implications of the use of new technologies in the workplace? What skills will be required to support the employee experience? How do leaders create organizations that are agile enough to keep up with the speed of innovation in an increasingly uncertain future?

For a recap of this event, please click here.

Video is transforming the human experience at a rapid rate. Together, screens and content have enabled individuals to share ideas and communicate in new ways. 

We wake up to our mobile devices have screens in our cars and on our wrists, engage through video services all day, use tablet screens to check out or check into retail and restaurants, watch live music through online video services, view dynamic billboards along highways, and consume video through a multitude of services in the burgeoning streaming landscape. Video is more accessible and easier to create than ever before. 
According to the well-cited study by 3M Corporation, the human brain processes visual information 60,000 times faster than text. With the inundation of information exchanged by text increasing and the ongoing advancement of internet capacity and video technology, how might humans use video in creative new ways to engage and process information faster in the future? 

Join Innovate@UCLA for an interactive discussion with leaders from Verizon Media, Qualcomm and Sony Pictures, to share insights on the growth of video through technology advancements, video’s implications beyond media and entertainment, and enterprise strategies to implement these technologies. 

For a recap of this event, please click here.

As traditional work boundaries are being redefined, there has been a significant impact on the technology knowledge worker, with business and social norms being disrupted and reborn to support changing customer behaviors.  

Learn how to digitally upskill for new opportunities by leveraging a vast array of available resources, while gaining insights on topics ranging from the state of in-demand digital skillsets to the pulse of the local technology jobs landscape in Southern California.  

Innovate@UCLA invites you to join us as we explore how traditional work boundaries are being redefined at our “State of the SoCal Jobs Market” virtual session. Technology leaders from Korn Ferry, Anderson Forecast, and UCLA Extension will discuss what technology executives and professionals alike must do to align and benefit from the evolving Digital landscape in Southern California and beyond.  

For a recap of this event, please click here.

The growth of MBAs in the business landscape, independent consultants graduated from Big 4 firms, technology degrees around the world, specialized consulting boutiques, and professional services offered by technology companies is changing the complexion of the consulting services landscape. Add a pandemic and conservative spending in some industries to the mix, and the rate of change and competition in consulting has accelerated. What is the future of consulting services? What capabilities should consulting services organizations focus on to maximize their growth and opportunity? What does this mean for how buyers should navigate the plethora of consulting services options for various projects and initiatives?

For a recap of this event, please click here.

You are invited to attend the Innovate@UCLA Young Tech Professionals (YTP) Tech Bootcamp Demo Day. Student teams from the bootcamp will showcase their projects to a panel of judges from the private sector, local governments and academia.

The Young Tech Professionals (YTP) program develops the next generation technology workforce by educating undergraduate and graduate students on business and technical skills that are necessary to succeed in the real world. Students engage in a 6-week hands-on bootcamp augmenting their academic curriculum with digital using the Google Design Thinking framework and core, professional skills, such as diversity and inclusion, project management, and communications. Students learn how to collaborate and work in diverse teams led by industry coaches who guide them through the process of ideating, validating and refining their solutions, to a final Minimal Viable Product (MVP), and finally present their solutions to industry judges during a pitch competition.

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For a recap of this event, please click here.

“Sometimes, you have to do something just to show that you can do it.”

– Håvard Grip, Mars Helicopter Chief Pilot at JPL.

When the Wright brothers flew for the first time, they flew an experimental aircraft. “The Wright Brothers showed that powered flight in Earth’s atmosphere was possible…”, said Håvard Grip. With NASA’s Mars helicopter Ingenuity, JPL did the same on Mars.

Innovate@UCLA invites you to join us for an eye-opening session with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Chief Information Officer, Randi Levin and Dr. Keith Comeaux, Mars 2020 Deputy Chief Engineer. As key members of the Ingenuity team, Randi and Keith will discuss this incredible achievement in autonomous robotics, and what it means for the future of roto-craft systems and the future of space exploration.

For a recap of this event, please click here.

Co-Hosted by Innovate@UCLA, the bi-annual Southern California CIO Executive Summit is ready to take the stage virtually on June 22nd from 8AM-3PM PST.

Join your CIO/CTO Peers for a great day of learning and collaboration. This SoCal CIO/CTO Virtual Summit is complimentary and will feature great topics on top IT issues facing enterprise companies and leaders. Some companies who are currently registered:

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Mazda, Yamaha, AEG, Molina, Mattel, Sony, City Nation Bank, Technicolor, Avery Dennison, Lionsgate, Skechers, Disney Television, City of Los Angeles, Golden State Foods, Epson, and more!

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Agenda Topics:

• Driving an Agenda that Enables and Transforms Your Business
• Fueled by the Power of Data or Enabling Work from Anywhere with 5G
• The CIO Mission – Directly Aligning IT to Business Objectives
• Work from Anywhere and the Evolution of Culture and Talent
• The Intentional Infrastructure – Cloud Clarity for Greater Outcomes
• Strategic Drivers to Digital Business Acceleration

Innovate@UCLA will be the host for the Networking Session from 12:45PM-1:15PM PST. Please make sure to join us, meet the speakers, the Executive Board and network with our community!!!

View the detailed agenda and learn about the speakers here.

CIOs are being called to evolve into leaders of marketing, innovation, and overall business velocity. Focusing on business systems and ERP is no longer enough. Join Innovate@UCLA in an interactive audience session as we reflect on how successful CIOs have evolved their roles to drive success for their companies and themselves. We will explore what the CIO role has been, what it is evolving to, and where the shortfalls are – and how successful leaders are addressing those shortfalls.

Our moderator and panelists are:

For a recap of this event, please click here

“Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.” -Dwight D. Eisenhower

The powerful words of one of America’s great leaders underpins the most difficult role of the CIO. Acquiring buy-in from key stakeholders is a challenge all leaders face. The ability to translate the transformative ideas we have dreamed up, into realizable opportunities, is what is progressing innovation forward.

Join Innovate@UCLA for an engaging thought leadership session featuring Lucy Avetisyan, Associate Vice Chancellor and Chief Information Officer of UCLA, Michael Bacharach, Associate Vice President of Technology Solutions at Contact Centers at Humana, and Kevin Gray, Chief Information Officer of the City of Burbank.

The panel will explore ways CIO’s can attain buy-in for their projects and initiatives, by examining use cases such as City of Burbank’s SAFe transformation project, Fox’s cloud transformation program, and more.

Our moderator and panelists are:

This is a hybrid event (on campus and streamed live)

Heather Caruso will engage you in a conversation on the future of leadership.  What changes are coming?  Will organizational designs be different/ more matrixed in the future?  What communication skills are needed to bridge different cultures or roles? How can leaders foster effective collaboration, especially for cross-functional and multicultural teams? What does it take to ensure that you provide your team with the right opportunities to grow, inspire and work together?

Biography

Heather Caruso joined UCLA Anderson in 2018 as assistant dean for equity, diversity and inclusion. A scholar and researcher of organizational behavior, she teaches in the Management and Organizations and Behavioral Decision Making areas.

Caruso’s passion for facilitating collaborative success runs deep in her life and work. “My formal interests in organizational and social psychology developed when I was an undergraduate at Stanford doing cross-cultural negotiation research with Jared Curhan and Lee Ross,” she says. These interests deepened during her years as an engineer and executive in a multinational Silicon Valley startup. “I was fascinated with the real-world experiences stemming from differences in cultural identity. Interpersonal problems could derail even the most talented individual performers, and effective collaboration skills could not only prevent such problems, but raise individual contributions to new heights.”

Layering rigorous academic training on top of practical experience, Caruso grounds her interests in the areas of: effective collaboration (especially for cross-functional and multicultural teams); skilled improvisation in leadership; management of identity, power and influence; and strategies for optimal choice, judgment and decision making. She focused on these topics in over a decade of teaching, research administration and scholarship at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and has moved to UCLA Anderson to enrich and expand her work.

“Propelled by our outstanding research in these areas, we are connecting to pioneers and pathbreakers, building bridges between research and practice to best accelerate innovation in the digital age.”

Caruso stays connected to the everyday priorities and challenges of the workplace by consulting for private- and public-sector organization leaders across the globe, as well as by teaching classes in leadership, team dynamics and power and influence. In addition, Caruso partnered with Chicago’s Second City to co-found the Second Science Project, which offers skill-building leadership workshops at the intersection of robust behavioral research and professional improvisational practice.

Caruso is a strong proponent of lifelong learning for management excellence, and encourages students to make the most of their professors’ knowledge, not only while they are pursuing their degrees, but also throughout their careers. “As a preeminent public university, UCLA has a a distinctive opportunity to advance equity, diversity and inclusion,” she says. “It is an honor to help UCLA Anderson seize that opportunity by creating the kind of challenging and rewarding educational climate that can benefit leaders from every walk of life.”

Thanks to Our Platinum Sponsor

Box (NYSE:BOX) is the Cloud Content Management company that empowers enterprises to revolutionize how they work by securely connecting their people, information and applications. Founded in 2005, Box powers more than 92,000 businesses globally, including AstraZeneca, General Electric, P&G, and The GAP. Box is headquartered in Redwood City, CA, with offices across the United States, Europe and Asia. To learn more about Box, visit http://www.box.com

In a hyper-accelerated digital era, to succeed today, technology professionals can no longer operate in silos. Across industries, focusing only on solving the problems that have been handed over by business partners is solving just one piece of the puzzle. With technology being a key enabler of transformation, employees have to scale up on critical business skills to be effective partners to functional leaders across their organization. This interactive session will address following questions:

• What critical business skills do tech professionals need to scale their business?
• At which levels within an organization are these business skills needed? 
• What strategies are needed to implement business skills training programs within an organization?
• What challenges do we foresee in training our workforce?

Featured Speaker:

The bandwidth delivered by 5G coupled with renewed investment in AR hardware and edge compute has the potential to deliver innovative experiences to consumers. We will discuss how the spatial web will allow these experiences to be placed in the real world and experienced in real time. This session will address following questions:

• An overview of the technologies (5G, AR, & Edge Compute)
• The Spatial Web, what is it and why its important
• The opportunity, how these combine to deliver new experiences
• Potential challenges

Featured Speaker: