Where GovTech leaders learn to ship software in the age of AI

  • Learn production-hardened strategies from leaders who've shipped in the toughest environments.
  • Spend three days training with the people who decide what gets built, who builds it, and who buys it.
  • Walk away with a plan and allies to drive real change.

August 25-27 | Nashville, TN

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07:30 AM

BREAKFAST & REGISTRATION

08:10 AM
Morning Show

Jay Ryan, Program Manager, Security Compass & Ashley Nichols, Chief Growth Officer, Improvix

Hosted by: Rachel Del Vecchio, Rise8 & Adam Furtado, Rise8

09:00 AM
Uncharted: Shipping Software in the Age of AI

Bryon Kroger
Founder & CEO, Rise8

09:25 AM
What Space Warfighters Need

General Stephen N. Whiting, Commander, U.S. Space Command

9:50 AM
Fireside Chat: Outcomes Oriented Acquisition

Shannon Pallone, PAE, BMC3I

10:25 AM

BREAK

10:45 AM
AI That Moves the Mission Forward

Josh Marcuse, Director of Defense Strategy & Growth, Google

11:10 AM
Delivering in Government: The 2026 Reality

Suzette Kent, Former Federal Chief Information Officer of the United States

Hosted by: Kristin Pearson, Vice President of Customer Success, Rise8

11:45 AM

LUNCH & LEARN

Hosted by RedHat
Kurt Kuntzelman, Strategic Account Manager, Space

12:55 PM
Bureaucratic Profiles in Courage

Peter Dixon, Co-Founder, Arkenstone

1:20 PM
Not Just Tech: Outcome Delivery from All Angles

Mina Hsiang, Former USDS Adminstrator

Hosted by: Becki Hyde, Delivery Lead, Rise8

2:00 PM

BREAK

2:20 PM
How AI Changes the Craft of Software Development

Kent Beck, Author & Founder, Extreme Programming

3:10 PM
AI Leadership in GovTech

Tom Roderick, Founder & Chief Technology/AI Officer, Flamelit
Bharat Patel, Managing Director and AI & Data Lead for Defense, Accenture
Jazmin Furtado, AI & National Security, Google
Hosted by: Courtney Barno, COO, Anthropic

3:55 PM

BREAK

4:15 PM
What If We Get This Right?
The Identity Reset for Leaders Navigating Mission at the Speed of AI

Patti Fletcher, Author, Strategic Advisor

5:00 PM

LIVE MUSIC HAPPY HOUR

Feat. Brooks Herring

07:30 AM

BREAKFAST & REGISTRATION

08:10 AM
Morning Show

Felisha Daemer, VP of Public Sector, Infusion Points, Mandy Graham, Director of Operations, Empower AI

Hosted by: Rachel Del Vecchio, Rise8 & Adam Furtado, Rise8

09:00 AM
Navigating Uncharted Territory: Lessons From The Past & The Futures

Dan Ward, Co-Founder, SparkLit Group

09:25 AM
Introducing the Outcome Factory

Bryon Kroger
Founder & CEO, Rise8

10:00 AM

BREAK

10:20 AM
Mapping Flow to Reveal, Navigate, and Overcome Constraints

Steven Pereira, Lead Consultant, Visible Value Stream Consulting

10:45 AM
From Chaos to Clarity: Designing Around the Domain

Paul Rayner, Author, The EventStorming Handbook

11:10 AM
Mapping the Mission

Paul Rayner, Author, The EventStorming Handbook
Steven Pereira, Lead Consultant, Visible Value Stream Consulting

Hosted by: Rob Monroe, Product Management Enablement Lead, Rise8

Monroe
11:45 PM

LUNCH

12:45 PM
Deterministic by Design

Palantir Technical Team Lead

1:10 PM
The Living Harness: Stop AI-Assisted Code from Drifting in Production

Russ Miles, AI & Platform Engineering Training Expert

1:35 PM
AI Augmented Software Development in Government

Nicky Pike, Field CTO for the Americas, Coder

Hosted by: Mike Gehard, Head of AI, Rise8

2:10 PM

BREAK

2:30 PM
When Compliance Replaces the Mission

Jonathan Mostowski, President, Agile Acquisitions, LLC

2:55 PM
Leveraging SBIR Phase III for Faster Acquisition

Bryan Guinn, Chief Growth Officer, SBIR Advisors

3:20 PM
Buying Mission Outcomes

Lori Ann Rissler, Founder, LASR Ops
Dolores Kuchina-Musina, CEO & Founder, REXOTA Solutions, LLC
Ryan Connell, Deputy of the Rapid Acquisition Cell, CDAO

Hosted by: Max Reele, Vice President of Delivery, Rise8

3:55 PM

BREAK

4:15 PM
Speed of Relevance, Scale at Risk

Chris Hughes, Founder, Resilient Cyber

4:40 PM
Transforming GRC Into Mission Engineering

Charles Nwatu, Former Netflix Head of GRC Engineering, Mario Lunato, Field CISO, Knox
Hosted by: Lloyd Evans, Head of Cybersecurity, Rise8

5:15 pm
Where GovTech Needs to Go From Here

Bryon Kroger
Founder & CEO, Rise8

5:30 pm

LIVE MUSIC HAPPY HOUR

Feat. Derek Stoner

Sponsored by SBIR Advisors

Pick one full-day workshop and focus on a single area of practice, turning the strategies from Days 1 and 2 into a working playbook for delivery in the age of AI. You'll leave with applied work in hand.
07:30 AM

BREAKFAST

07:40 AM
Morning Show

Mark Perry, Director of Growth, Tech Partnership/FS, Spectro Cloud
Hosted by: Rachel Del Vecchio & Adam Furtado

08:30 AM

WORKSHOPS
See descriptions below and make your selection during registration

11:30 AM

LUNCH

12:00 PM

WORKSHOPS

2:45 PM

CLOSING

Workshop Title

Description

Impact Lab for Leaders: Build Purposeful Software with AI

Led by Impact Lab Team

AI mandates and speed-first directives are moving faster than any GovTech strategy decks can keep up with. Impact Lab for leaders is a one-day, hands-on AI build. You’ll use AI-native tools to solve a real-world problem, build technical confidence, evaluate what AI can do, and leave with working software in production.

Harnessing Security Agents

Led by Lloyd Evans and Jeremy Arzuaga

Security can’t live in slide decks, waiver queues, or a checklist someone signs at the end. This hands-on workshop teaches Policy-as-Code as fieldcraft for government delivery teams: how to turn compliance and security requirements into automated tests that run against Kubernetes, infrastructure, and platform workflows. You’ll practice using the evidence those tests produce to harden delivery and keep builders moving.

Outcome-Based Acquisition: Mapping Contracts to Mission Outcomes

Led by Nick Setterberg

Most acquisitions buy deliverables: features, milestones, hours. This facilitator-led workshop shows you how to trace work from mission need to user value, then use what the map reveals to structure an acquisition around measurable mission outcomes and continuous delivery—instead of a fixed list of deliverables a vendor can complete without moving the mission. You'll leave with a method you can run with your own team, the language to make the case for it, and a prioritized plan for restructuring an acquisition around the outcomes that matter.

Find Your Flow: A Value Stream Mapping Workshop for Navigating Constraints

Led by Steve Pereira

You can’t improve a system you can’t see. This hands-on workshop applies Flow Engineering and Value Stream Mapping to trace your work from mission need to user value, exposing the queues, handoffs, rework, decision latency, and hidden dependencies slowing it down. You’ll leave with a map of where the work stalls and a prioritized plan to clear obstacles and deliver measurable outcomes in production.

From Chaos to Coordinates: A DDD EventStorming Workshop

Led by Paul Rayner

Stop guessing and start mapping. This hands-on DDD EventStorming workshop helps technical and non-technical delivery teams make sense of mission complexity through a realistic simulation. You’ll map the step-by-step workflows of a real mission area, uncovering the inconsistencies and gaps in how work actually flows. Then you’ll practice connecting commands, aggregates, and events—the raw material for event-driven and event-sourced architecture decisions. You’ll leave with the method, the muscle memory, and a map you can rebuild with your team back home.

The Living Harness: Stop AI-Assisted Code from Drifting in Production

Led by Russ Miles

Government delivery teams are under pressure to move faster, and mission-critical codebases are drifting quietly—because every session ends with the agent forgetting your conventions, your decisions, and the production incident that reshaped your error-handling. This hands-on workshop teaches agentic engineering as fieldcraft: a trust protocol for verifying AI output before it ships, a five-question interview for surfacing the constraints the model can't see, and a version-controlled harness that makes your team's hard-won understanding durable and enforced. You'll leave with a working HARNESS.md in your own repo, garbage-collection rules wired into your pipelines, and a 30-day plan to stop the drift before it reaches production—or your next authorization review.