2025 UEN Tech Summit

Join Jeremy Cox for an interactive Q&A following his Keynote: Command Line Culture. Dive deeper into how leadership behavior shapes team dynamics, ask questions about building intentional culture in tech teams, and explore practical strategies for scaling trust, accountability, and innovation from the top down.

In tech, the right command can change everything—and the same goes for leadership. In Command Line Culture, Jeremy Cox unpacks the concept of “leadership contagion,” showing how a leader’s mindset and behavior ripple through an organization to define its culture. Drawing on 25 years of experience in IT from both sides of the team, Jeremy illustrates how intentional leadership in IT can inspire innovation, psychological safety, collaboration, and accountability. Through personal stories, actionable insights, and a systems-thinking approach, this talk challenges leaders to treat culture not as an afterthought, but as critical infrastructure—engineered, tested, and deployed from the top down.

A history of the optical technology evolution, from where we started to where we are now. Highlighting research and education advancements and where we see the industry going.

PowerPoint slides on the evolution of technology, highlighting how far technology has come.

How to establish a recurring risk management/assessment process

This presentation will discuss how to implement an annual risk assessment using a business impact analysis and by performing qualitative risk assessment.

At the federal level, policy changes are disrupting Washington, D.C., the likes of which we haven't seen for more than 15 years. What do these changes mean for the tech sector and its economic outlook? Join us for an interactive discussion about the global, national, state, and local economies.

At the federal level, policy changes are disrupting Washington, D.C., the likes of which we haven't seen for more than 15 years. By some measures, we've never seen the type of swift changes we're seeing come out of the nation's capitol. The impacts of tariffs, trade, and DOGE will have far-reaching impacts for generations to come. These are the weeks when decades are made. What do these changes mean for the tech sector and its economic outlook? We will take an expansive view of federal policy, what it means for the tech sector, and discuss state and local budgets.

A simplified version of the business chemistry makeup of people you work with on a daily basis. In this session I will go over the basic framework, varieties, and examples of how this can help IT teams and IT leaders be a bit more understanding of their environments (including the variety of people around them).

Discussion, presentation, collaboration, and discussion.. nothing crazy.

More and more of my colleagues are using AI on a daily basis for everything from budgeting and managing compliance to email responses and generating policy documents. This is a discussion about the AI options (commercial AI, local AI, AI Agents, etc) and the headaches and helps of AI in the front office.

This will be a powerpoint with accompanying discussion with the attendees.

A reflection and examination of the Advocacy program run by UEN Technical Services.

In this session, the UEN Technical Advocates, T-forum co-chairs and members, and other interested parties will come together to celebrate and reflect on the 25th anniversary of the program. The Advocates will hold a brief regular monthly meeting followed by a reflection, review, and further planning session with UEN, stakeholders, and other interested parties.
Agenda: Critical path circuit project review, followed by the question: Should the Advocacy program continue? If not, then what would be put in its place? Balance of the meeting will be devoted to reflection and celebration (the good, the bad, and the ugly).