A.I., Cybersecurity & the Changing Face of VC at X·CON Next Week

Bob Brennan has some pretty interesting lessons from his time working with Veracode and CloudHealth Technologies. Those are two of the bigger Boston tech exits in the past few years—the companies were acquired by CA Technologies and VMware, respectively. Brennan, the former CEO of Veracode and Iron Mountain, and former board member of CloudHealth, will be sharing his thoughts at a special event we’ve organized over three days, November 4-6, in Boston.

That’s right, we are less than a week away from X·CON 2018, an extravaganza covering the biggest trends and players shaping the future of the innovation community. You can check out the full agenda here.

Here are three startup-related highlights people will not want to miss:

—A strategy panel featuring the CEOs of Zapata Computing (Christopher Savoie), Cellino Biotech (Nabiha Saklayen), and ClimaCell (Shimon Elkabetz), moderated by The Engine’s Reed Sturtevant. Their hard-tech sectors range from quantum computing to gene-editing techniques to weather forecasting via wireless signals. All potentially transformative areas. That’s happening Monday morning at the ICA.

—A chat on the changing face of innovation and investing, with Clement Cazalot of Techstars Boston and Eveline Buchatskiy from One Way Ventures. They will cover founder and investor issues in the fast-evolving landscape. Also Monday morning.

—A closing discussion on security and A.I., featuring Veracode’s Bob Brennan, Cybereason’s Yonatan Striem-Amit, and McAfee’s Michael Leland. They’ll cover scaling and M&A strategies as well as dive into the latest technologies. That’s at Google in Kendall Square on Tuesday morning.

That’s it for now. Looking forward to seeing you next week (a few remaining tickets are here).

Author: Gregory T. Huang

Greg is a veteran journalist who has covered a wide range of science, technology, and business. As former editor in chief, he overaw daily news, features, and events across Xconomy's national network. Before joining Xconomy, he was a features editor at New Scientist magazine, where he edited and wrote articles on physics, technology, and neuroscience. Previously he was senior writer at Technology Review, where he reported on emerging technologies, R&D, and advances in computing, robotics, and applied physics. His writing has also appeared in Wired, Nature, and The Atlantic Monthly’s website. He was named a New York Times professional fellow in 2003. Greg is the co-author of Guanxi (Simon & Schuster, 2006), about Microsoft in China and the global competition for talent and technology. Before becoming a journalist, he did research at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. He has published 20 papers in scientific journals and conferences and spoken on innovation at Adobe, Amazon, eBay, Google, HP, Microsoft, Yahoo, and other organizations. He has a Master’s and Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT, and a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.