Dr. Aaron Genest

Senior Applications Engineer Manager at Siemens Software

Dr. Aaron Genest holds a B.Sc. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Saskatchewan. He works for Siemens Software in Saskatoon where, among other roles, he represents Siemens as President of SaskTech, an industry advisory organization to government and education stakeholders. Dr. Genest is deeply involved in the University of Saskatchewan, sitting on the Dean’s Advisory Committee in Engineering, as an appointee to the Intellectual Property Working Group to the OVPR, and as a member of the Signature Areas Steering Committee. He works closely with the U of R and Sask Polytechnic in addition to various government ministries in Saskatchewan and federally.

Dr. Genest is a committed member of the larger technology community serving as a mentor for the co.labs and Cultivator technology incubators and as Executive in Residence for Foresight Cleantech Accelerator. In these roles he helps leaders of start-ups and early stage companies navigate technical, governance, talent acquisition, and sales challenges. He continues that mentorship in his involvement with USask’s SIGMA entrepreneurship program and as a mentor through the USask Connects graduate mentorship program.

Keynote Title: Advocating for Education; a study in mismatched policies

Investment in education remains elusive across Canada as governments move to address presumably higher-priority issues such as health care or economic robustness. Yet the basis of our economic growth requires long term and strong investments across our entire education system, from kindergarten to graduate school. There’s moral, economic, and scientific alignment on the need for a strong education system, so why are we seemingly unable to invest effectively to achieve shared outcomes?

Dale Hopkins

Chief Technology Officer, Vendasta

Dale Hopkins is Vendasta’s Chief Technology Officer, reporting to CEO, Brendan King. Over the past 10+ years Dale has been responsible for guiding the processes, technologies, and tools that make up the Vendasta ecosystem. Through his leadership, Vendasta has scaled to over 20 agile software teams with over 100 developers supporting millions of users in the platform. Prior to Vendasta, Dale founded a software consulting company that specialized in digital video diagnostics and processing. Customers included Time Warner Cable and his previous employer Vecima Networks. Dale earned a bachelor degree in Engineering Physics from the University of Saskatchewan in 2005 with a dual degree in Computer Science.

Keynote Title: Evolution of Software Development Practices over the past two decades

Dale graduated from the UofS in 2005 after completing an internship at IBM in 2003. He lead a team of FPGA developers at Vecima Networks, started a consulting company and now is the CTO at Vendasta. Many things have changed and some have disappeared or fallen out of favour but there are a number of key practices that have stood the test of time and some that have become even more important. Dale will share his experiences and his thoughts on which practices have held up.