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So Tech 50. It's virtual, it's free. Please join us. This is an opportunity that we've been doing this 24 years, Jonathan, this will be 24 years. Isn't that amazing? Oh my goodness, Audrey next year? We have to think about something big for 25 years? That's kind of like a milestone, if you know what I mean? Yeah, that's sort of insane. So it's been almost a quarter century of us honoring the fastest growing coolest tech companies in southwestern Pennsylvania, and COVID will not stop us. No.
And we and we have just something action packed as well. We added a new category this year called Top Pivot And that best pivot is really related to all the things that all of us have gone through exactly. Driving, you know, change for our companies. But what's more important is the tech companies, because they're the ones who are building the future apps. And, you know, let's just start to review Who are these top COVID pivots?
Right? As you said, it's a brand new category, which is cool. We brought it on this year and got applause for it. When we announced it, we're like, Wow, that's so cool. So I was very pumped. We have a bunch of other categories, people run for whether whether you're going for top IT company, robotics and automation, whatever that may be, we have categories, go to PGH tech.org, and learn about them. But we're gonna talk about the pivot stuff. So I'll be the first. The first, the first a finalist in our pivot list is Indiana University. And I can only imagine how they had to pivot getting all of their courseware.
For universities, they really I mean, we're gonna go through each and every one, but school systems, in particularly, universities, students are leaving home. Exactly. Right. They're relocating, and they're leaving home in the middle of the most uncertain crisis of our time. And they've had to plan it. So they had a quick reaction. And they migrated over 1500 courses that amazing, you know, you got to remember, at least in this time, there have been online courses, right? People have getting online degrees, they've been doing that work, but not everybody.
Doing it, right, from universities that have sort of, you know, market history. And, you know, IUP, there's been a lot of new courses, and they're certainly things that have come up all over the internet that have been, you know, pretty phenomenal. Right? Now you have this college experience. So then you have like, over 650 different faculty members, and they made this pivot in 10 days, that's a pivot and they were able to deliver what 3300 synchronous sessions in that first week. And many, many other institutions were not able to do this. No, weren't they were not able to pivot. There were many institutions that just said, we're gonna do in class, we're gonna do hybrid, we're gonna set up, you know, teachers so that they're far away, and we're gonna put, you know, Plexiglas up or, you know, flat screens everywhere, right. And remember, at the same time, these universities were going through all these changes, the the law, the immigration rules were changing. Absolutely. It meant if you were going to come from another country and come study in the United States, your courses couldn't be all online.
Yeah, Birdbrain Technologies. They are another really cool companies. They created just a bunch of free resources for K through 12 educators, parents, students to continue to learn computer science and robotics and I gotta tell you, we had them on our virtual first virtual stem summit that we held back in May and they rocked it out. Yeah, and control them through zoom as well too, which I thought was pretty cool. So hey, good for Tom. Man. That's that's definitely a cool pivot. I see why he's a finalist this year. That is amazing.
So, what about Cognistix being a finalist for the pivot this year? So they did something they developed an AI system to accelerate the review process for COVID through the loan application process, so they're very, you know, they're interested in FinTech. And they you know, essentially everyone was frenetic during that period of time. Oh, yeah. It was like a long time ago. But look at look at all you know, the resources for people for PPP, the ideal these are, you know, the kinds of engagements that typically most small businesses are not privy to they don't have that much experience at that. Boom, you know, Cognistix we're gonna help we're gonna they received a contract from Florida, I believe, yeah, Miami Dade, yep, implement the technology to decrease the application review time, taking it from 30 minutes to something that can be completed immediately. Like milliseconds. Now they're now they're looking at working on the same system with the loan forgiveness program for PPP and their next phase. So that's ordered right now. That's loan forgiveness piece of started. The cool thing about cognis sticks as you could see how that could be used for anything.
So Ethical Intruder, our guy, David Kane, he stepped up big time as COVID hit, even helping us detect counsel, when it comes to all things cybersecurity audit. Tell us more about like, remember when zoom, you know, in the middle of this whole process, zoom before they It must have been like, April, everyone's using zoom. And there's all these zoom bombing?
Yes.
Like all these crazy stories like that. Don't tell me anything more, don't tell me anything more. We engaged with Ethical Intruder to help us sort of quell the concerns and work with us on zoom. But they you know, they became we had them actually on via you early.
Yeah, I think exactly back in the early days of COVID. Right. So they have, they began offering no charge penetration testing for businesses and you know, for disaster recovery and helping organizations with fighting, you know, the issues of COVID. Because if you remember, we had the southwestern Pennsylvania Attorney General on talking about all the kind of cyber attacks that were increasing during COVID. So people were like, so concerned about security. So Apple had their hands on that.
I see why he's a finalist, I want to remind our listeners in case you just tuned in, we were talking about the Tech 50 Award finalists this year for the biggest pivot to the top picks, which we're really excited about new category added because we want to honor companies that pivoted during the Covid 19 pandemic. We're about halfway through list Audrey and next on our list is Locomotion. These guys are so cool. And we had them on Business as Usual as well. This is almost like a laundry list of who is on our webcast so cool.
And they they completed during that time their first live on road pilot transporting commercial freight. Yes, they actually deployed trucks, self driving trucks like nothing standing in the way of like 400 miles across the United States. And like that turn about the stress. Oh, yeah, long haulers in the trucking community they needed Yeah, cuz all the supplies going back and forth and right. Yep. Crazy. So that was really exciting. They got some national notoriety for for their success on that.
How can you not It's first time someone's doing that? I mean that's pretty rad. So what about Mitsubishi Electric Power Products? The Diamond Vision Division, right. So that's their display division, and they were used in Manhattan and other major areas during the pandemic. PSA, public service announcements. Yeah, they've also been they've initiated messaging to honor and give thanks to those working in the front line. So they've been using their digital tools to sort of connect They things it's so funny when they say during the Covid 19 pandemic when we think of it, no, we're in it now, man, I know exactly.
How about Piper Creative? We've known known these guys for a very long time, great folks over there. And these guys, all they do is pivot.
So I think what Piper was able to do was to double their audience, right by doubling down on their digital efforts. So they have core competencies in the virtual world. And they're just setting you know, new peaks for the consumption of their YouTube videos. And they were already having significant presence and it's escalated. So it's just that further validated, right?
So Audrey Pitt Moss was once again on Business as Usual back in the day.
I love this company. Well, I mean talk about that's another so interesting company, they patented a method of upcycling paper into you know, so they have to call through the paper but into reusable soil free of polluting peat moss I learned so much about peat moss. Here's the deal. I bought a whole bunch of Pitt Moss after our business as usual. Yeah, used it. It's really interesting, really interesting. I mean, my mum's are coming back after being out in the cold, and I've got them sort of encapsulated in soil. They're working out in Ambridge, right? They're working out in a place where there's not a lot. And you know, there's a lot of people betting on agriculture and the world and recycling and upcycling this definitely hats off to them. Yeah, cool.
So Sentact? I'm just saying. It's a tool, you know, they created rapidly a suite of tools to help respond to COVID. So what does that mean? Within 72 hours, their team got feedback from healthcare experts nationwide, and worked 24Xseven, to launch an application that supported incident command centers, addressing the pandemic of over 100 hospitals nationwide. Pretty cool stuff. Yeah. So I mean, they were just really proud that they were able to support their customers within no time.
Exactly. I can't wait to see who the winner is going to be this year. And we will not know until November 12. And you will learn about them and all the other finalists who will be announced as winners in our other categories. Just register. It's free. It's fun is best night in tech. It really is. You need to join us you get it. And you'll feel proud. You'll feel proud that that these are people who, you know, I always say Against All Odds are achieving enormous amount of greatness through taking risks and building solutions for tomorrow.
It's great stuff all the way around. Like I said, That's why I'm so pumped up about Tech 50 because I can't believe we're on the precipice of 25 years of doing tech 50. That's so cool, man. I think it's amazing work all the way around. So go to PGH tech.org. You can register there you can actually learn more about the finalists across all of our categories. And you can really nerd out and geek out on these files or pivot categories. Audrey, I will see you virtually at Tech 50 and hope to see our listeners virtually out there tech as well, too. We're taking a quick break. We're coming back we got a great segment with our friends at Excellerent doing some great work .Orne Bey was on business as usual. We had a great interview with ammaji. We're going to play that next. This is Jonathan Kersting.
And this is Audrey Russo.
Once again PGH tech.org. That's our home base for all things Pittsburgh Technology Council right back after this fast break.
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Welcome back, Audrey. I tell you what, man, I'm really pumped for tech 50 on November 12, as you can see, by those companies that are pivoting, that's just a little story, what's going on, you got to attend tech 50 to really get all the good details this year to get a PGH tech.org. In the meantime, Audrey, once again, we are digging in the business as usual archives, you know, the reason archives, we had a really cool guest on. Orne Bey from Excellerent as a cool cool model as to how he's taking care of business. Audrey, I really love this interview.
He's got, like many of these entrepreneurs have, just such fascinating stories. Inspirational. He is a family that came from where not far from where you grew up, right?
Beltzhoove- Knoxville area, absolutely right over that right next to Mount Oliver, really, you know, really very candid about his background and about his journey pretty clear about, you know, wanting to start a business and, you know, got into tech and tech services. And, and, you know, he really sort of understood opportunities, like he gives back to his local community in delta Uber, and tries to serve as a role model for people to get in tech and to build businesses either or, but what's very cool is he's actually developing engineering talent in Ethiopia. And his part of his reasoning is, is to give people opportunities, and to provide cost effective solutions. And so Meanwhile, he's attracted some of the best and brightest people in Ethiopia, and he's adhering to the UN goals. I think number eight and 17. I looked them up.
Now, yeah, cuz his commitment is to, you know, to eradicate hunger, hunger, to make sure that, you know, the world is a better place. And everything that he's doing is creating, you know, a minimizing the footprint. And so he believes that talent exists everywhere. And not just cost, but it's also opportunity. And he spent time in Ethiopia before move it, it was a great interview. Even though people talk about digital transformation, and everyone's doing that. And that's the buzzwords, I'm glad that we have an opportunity to share this interview with the large world because this guy is right here. He's humble. And we had a chance to meet one of his teammates who actually joined his company, because he was passionate about his vision and the UN Global Goals. So that's pretty cool.
Really, when it comes because of the vision, that's pretty rad. So great, I love it. Let's give it a listen. And let listeners see what they think about this, because I think they're gonna think it's pretty cool. So let's give it a spin.
So my first job and IT services was in late 97. And I actually started off as an account manager and kind of got my feet wet and understanding, you know, the landscape of IT services, what are the gaps there? and business was certainly booming back then I remember, you know, getting into it, the everyone was on this path to destruction unless we go in and extend the codes for y2k, right? Back in those days, so was massive amounts of data, you know, huge, you know, mainframe legacy systems that needed to be, you know, changed in order to account for the millennial, you know, for the 2000s. So that's kind of where I started my career. So I think it was a very good place because you have that that insight, you know, back to the the mainframe world, to the legacy world. Then, you know, again, moving into client server, then quickly thereafter to the, you know, the e commerce boom. And, you know, the whole digitation digitization of everything was was more or less eirp systems becoming like, you know, standard, right. DRP implementation, you know, to web development, now to cloud and cloud migration, you know, so we've kind of seen the whole, I guess, the whole lifecycle of that, and a big part of my career, you know, what's been consistent across all those different areas, from y2k, all the way till now, whether it's moving into machine learning, you know, cloud migration, etc, has been the need to leverage a global workforce to get it done. Right, you know, early on, you know, it was very apparent that there's, you know, tons of gaps. Initially, those gaps were filled with, as I'm sure most folks in technology would know, for, you know, massive amounts of h1 B's coming into the country to fill the void. Right. And that, that continues. But as Internet tools and VPN, you know, became secure and standard, then it was quickly offshoring. You know, I think, as early as, you know, 99, you know, I was working with US companies, introducing them to how VPN works, you know, how you can leverage your global workforce, and, and for a very long time that was done out of India, you know, India, certainly, you know, dominates that landscape. And my first visit to India was in in 99, in fact, you know, so I was a firsthand, you know, witness to the transformation of India, in how they were able to, to leverage their number one resource, which was their, their people to really transform the country, and do it in a way where it's adding value to a global landscape, right. And one of the in just going to lead into me found me an accelerant is that, you know, throughout that, that journey, it was just a huge boom. And at some point, however, you know, the market was validated. India, outsourcing became best practice, and the market became saturated. Right. So now, anyone, everyone who's anyone has, you know, a team of 1000 engineers working for them out of India. So became a lot, I guess, the, it became a lot more challenging for for a mid tier in, in, in, I guess, smaller organizations to attract and retain top talent in India. Because suddenly you're competing, you're not just providing opportunities to engineers who don't have opportunity. you're providing opportunities, but you're competing with Microsoft, and Google and Apple and Amazon. And then you have, you know, the fortune 100 companies like Sony and GE, you know, who have massive presence in India, and then, you know, if you're able to get by those guys, and you have the huge consulting firms in India, who have, you know, 10,000 plus employees each, you know, so it's become so that ecosystem, I mean, it's, it's great, because it allowed India to really improve the quality of life of millions of people, increase the wages have millions of people. So now you have this massive upper middle class in India, where 30 years ago that was void. But, you know, it created, you know, challenges with attrition, you know, again, I think when you're looking at, you know, organizations that are looking to leverage, you know, an outsourced model offshore, it's important that they get productivity. And a big part of that is, is making an investment into your business domain, making an investment into, I guess, the relationship and marriage of the organizations. But what I found is that because of the challenge with attrition, you know, we weren't able to give or continue to give our, our clients the biggest bang for the buck. Because by that time, resources ramped up to a certain level of productivity, and you always want to manage towards, you know, a resource offshore approach in the level of productivity that you would find in your own office, right. And that's when you're really getting value. But what we were finding is, by the time you approach that level, these resources we're moving on, right, they're getting either getting recruited out of your organization, or they're getting promoted to other projects. So became challenging, and it led me to explore, you know, two things. One thing Andre, I found that there was that void as I mentioned, um, secondly, I was a witness the transformation of India, you know, where they were able to create this massive amount, massive middle class to really drastically, you know, improve the infrastructure of the country, drastically improve the quality of life of 10s of millions of people in country. And then of course, that economy creates a sub economy, right? Because suddenly you have engineers that are making more money than it could have ever, you know, thought about and suddenly have this disposable income that kind of creates a simple economy under it. So I took the lessons from that. And it made a very conscious, intentional decision to invest in a, I would say, you know, dare I say, historically impoverished developing country, who have all the hallmarks that made India successful, right, and that is the the volume of educated engineers, right? So we first looked at universities and what they were producing, dependable infrastructure, political friendliness, you know, lack of crime, you know, availability to the US. And, and we started our development center in Addis Ababa, which is the capital city of Ethiopia.
So, wait, so you started the company that I actually so so when I started Excellerent, you know, my vision was not to actually in Ethiopia. But you know, but because of just the necessities of running a business. And, you know, depending on the investment that you have, etc, you first need to create value in business, enough to keep the lights on, right. You know, so that model, so I didn't start accelerate, you know, in, and the Ethiopia delivery center in parallel, the vision was always there, accelerant was founded on, you know, for the very purpose of starting a delivery center in Ethiopia. But we didn't start that initially, you know, initially starting accelerant, I kind of relied on, you know, relationships and infrastructure that I had in place. You know, throughout my relationships, we did start with a center in India, and of course, our offices here in Pittsburgh. And we do both, of course, you know, a business in the US, and look at leveraging offshore. So eventually, we started our, you know, after, you know, three years of kind of building our business, building our clientele, building our brand, you know, we were fortunate enough to actually get our kickoff, and kickoff our delivery center in Ethiopia.
I told you, that was cool. I'm gonna say it. I think Orne is a cool dude. And I love what he's doing. I think it just works on so many levels.
Does And plus, you know, he is contributing to the community and in a way that's so understated. Yeah. And really appreciate and really appreciate, you know, his story and his work. One day, Jonathan, you can go to Ethiopia and visit. You know, the work that he's doing there.
You never know, you might just send me there for all I know, once we're able to travel. I do say, Jonathan, those are the days those are the days. Absolutely. Well, another TechVibe Radio under our belt, it's gonna remind everybody, Tech 50 nov 12. Be there be square, because it's a lot of fun. There's no reason not to attend and connect with the coolest women in men in Pittsburgh's tech sector. It's as simple as that. I know you're pumped up for it. And very excited.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai