Progress (NASDAQ: PRGS), the leading provider of application development and digital experience technologies, today announced the speaker lineup for ProgressNEXT 2019, the premier event for modern application development, May 6-9, 2019 at the Omni Orlando Resort at ChampionsGate. With more than 150 sessions on topics including high productivity application development, mobility, AI, web experience, and much more, ProgressNEXT will provide attendees with the insights, technology and networking opportunities to create the applications and digital experiences of tomorrow, today. To register go to www.progress.com/next.

Mainstage Keynote Speaker

The event will feature a series of inspiring keynote sessions. Megan Smith, Third Chief Technology Officer of the United States (2014–2017) and CEO of shift7, will present on her time within the US government and how she and her team used technology to fundamentally alter the composition of the federal government. Smith will detail how they teamed up with colleagues to adopt new approaches to using data, innovation, and rapid iteration in order to create a more open, collaborative, and responsive government—and explain how other companies can do the same.

As the third U.S. chief technology officer, Smith helped the President harness the power of technology, data, and innovation to advance the future of the United States and the world. She recruited top tech talent to serve across government and to collaborate on the most pressing issues of the day, from data science and open source, to inclusive economic growth and criminal justice reform. She focused on broad capacity building by co-creating all-hands-on-deck initiatives, including the public-private program TechHire, the Computer Science for All initiative, and the Image of STEM campaign.

Prior to her role as U.S. CTO, Smith served as vice president of new business development at Google, managing early-stage partnerships across the company’s global engineering and product teams. She led acquisitions of Google Earth, Maps, and Picasa, steered the shift of Google.org to include more direct engineering impact. As CEO of PlanetOut, Smith was a leader of the online LGBT community in the early days of the Internet. She drove engagement and revenue by partnering closely with top Internet companies, including AOL, Yahoo!, MSN, Netscape, RealNetworks, and others.

Today, Smith is CEO of shift7, which focuses on tech-forward networked innovation for impact and economic inclusion. She is also an advisor to the MIT Media Lab, Vital Voices, and the Malala Fund, which she co-founded.

Customer Keynotes

Innovative Progress customers will also take the stage for a series of keynote sessions designed to share their stories and keys to their success. Speakers include:

• Ravi Chander, Group Architect, 407 ETR: Chander will discuss how Canada’s Highway 407 Express Toll Route (ETR) scaled its mobile app to support 2+ million active customers using the Progress® Kinvey® platform.
• Claudio Ferreira, Director, Digital Corporate Marketing, Teknion: Ferreria will discuss how Teknion, a global designer and manufacturer of modern office systems and furnishings, leveraged Progress® Sitefinity® to take control of its digital brand and create a modern, sophisticated website that represented the company’s progressive, trend-setting attitude.
• Neil Gomes, Chief Digital Officer, Jefferson Health Systems: Gomes will discuss how inventive internal applications and dashboards allowed Jefferson Health, one of the top hospitals in Pennsylvania, to take a lean, agile approach to organizational management; a donor app that helped the organization raise nearly $1.5 million in the last month alone; and his role in digital innovation, which spans his work in education and includes digital learning.
• Anna Lehtoranta, Account Growth Executive, CGI: Lehtoranta will discuss how CGI, one of the largest independent IT and business services firms in the world, used Progress® OpenEdge® and Progress® Kendo UI® tools to modernize its ERP application.
• Jehiel Oliver, Founder & CEO, Hello Tractor: Oliver will reveal the transformative impact Hello Tractor’s mobile app, built on the Progress Kinvey platform, has had on food production and food security, by enabling sub-Saharan African tractor owners and farmers to plant 40 times faster.

Breakout Sessions

ProgressNEXT will also offer a wide range of breakout sessions that will go in depth on topics from modern app dev to app modernization, mobility, web experience, and more. Sessions will be presented by Progress and organizations including: Acorn IT, americaneagle.com, Athracian, Bayshore Solutions, B&L Information Systems, Cludo, Consultingwerk, ConnectPlaza, Flywheel Strategic, Hawksearch, Harvard University, ISCorp, Loymark, Mark Information, Nimble Consulting Group, Paul Guggenheim & Associates, Inc., pavliks.com, Riverside Software, Roving Curmudgeon, Silli Solutions, Smooth Fusion, Solliance Corp., Subway, truematter, Vermont Systems, White Star Software, and more.

“The lineup of speakers we’ve secured for this year’s event is an amazing combination of the best and brightest in our industry,” said Loren Jarrett, CMO, Progress. “Sessions will provide must-have content for all of our audiences – developers, executive level, digital leaders, app dev and IT leaders, and marketers. Attendees will walk away with valuable insights, information and best practices that they will be able to take home and start using immediately.”

For more information on ProgressNEXT or to register, go to www.progress.com/next.

Additional Resources

• Follow Progress on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+
• Read the Progress blog

About Progress

Progress (NASDAQ: PRGS) offers the leading platform for developing and deploying strategic business applications. We enable customers and partners to deliver modern, high-impact digital experiences with a fraction of the effort, time and cost. Progress offers powerful tools for easily building adaptive user experiences across any type of device or touchpoint, award-winning machine learning that enables cognitive capabilities to be a part of any application, the flexibility of a serverless cloud to deploy modern apps, business rules, web content management, plus leading data connectivity technology. Over 1,700 independent software vendors, 100,000 enterprise customers, and two million developers rely on Progress to power their applications. Learn about Progress at www.progress.com or +1-800-477-6473.

Progress, OpenEdge, Kinvey, Sitefinity and Kendo UI are trademarks or registered trademarks of Progress Software Corporation and/or one of its subsidiaries or affiliates in the US and other countries. Any other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

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