Monday, November 10, 2025
Registration - CASCONMichael Harrison explores how process automation and workflow optimization transformed offering onboarding at enterprise scale. By automating key friction points across compliance and operational readiness gates, his team reduced manual effort and decision latency, enabling accelerated delivery and unlocking substantial new revenue. This presentation discusses the challenges, the process improvements implemented, and lessons for balancing speed with governance, as well as examining how emerging technologies like generative AI can further optimize software delivery across the offering management lifecycle.
Jimmy Yan presents an AI-enabled Slack Bot, powered by Large Language Models (LLMs), Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and a tool-box orchestration approach, designed to streamline vulnerability management. By automating ticket triage, fix assignment, exception identification, and documentation drafting, the bot significantly reduces manual effort and accelerates resolution timelines. From an economics perspective, this solution offers tangible business value: it reduces the need for additional developer headcount, reallocates existing developer capacity toward innovation, and enhances compliance efficiency.
Kajanth from Atomic Build leads this interactive workshop focused on helping innovators and product teams bridge the gap between ideas and real customer needs. Participants will learn practical techniques for identifying and validating customers, uncovering pain points, and rapidly testing solutions. The session also introduces key product strategy frameworks, such as Jobs to Be Done and MoSCoW prioritization, to turn customer insights into focused, actionable product roadmaps. This hands-on workshop provides essential skills for reducing product development risk and ensuring market fit.
Bitnobi, a company founded at York University by Professor Marin Litoiu, and postdoctoral fellows Mark Shtern, Mike Smit and Brad Simmons in 2016, offers a data sharing platform with enhanced security, combining centralization and data partitioning to support distributed data science project without compromising data privacy. Supported by York Innovation, TIAP, NSERC and OCI, Bitnobi was a product of academic innovation transformed into entrepreneurial success. With application in government, health and financial information services and software application, Bitnobi acquired a number of important clients, before being acquired by Myant in 2025 to accelerate precision healthcare and take the Bitnobi platform to the next level. Professor Litoiu will talk about his journey with Bitnobi and how a group of visionary researchers at York University delved into this entrepreneurial venture.
Professor Kontogiannis will talk about his long experience in commercializing software research projects. As an expert in distributed architectures and cyber-physical systems and with long-standing industrial collaborations, most notably with IBM and Ulysses Systems, commercialization is a well-known term for Professor Kontogiannis and his team. While they have delved into entrepreneurial ventures by themselves, they have also worked closely with teams of professionals and their tools are now integrated with state-of-the-art platforms, such as IBM Watson, IBM Websphere and IBM DevOps. In this talk, Professor Kontogiannis will discuss the opportunities and challenges in commercializing research projects, as well as what pitfalls to avoid to guarantee a successful software product.