March Nerd Therapy: The Secret Sauce—How Continuous Innovation Disrupts Markets!

Topic:

How do you support continuous innovation?

How do you use it to cause ripples in your marketplace?

And how does this impact your approach to talent acquisition and empowerment?

Please join us for an exclusive event as our guest panelists share their perspectives:

• Tom O’Neill — Chief Executive Officer, The Nerdery

• Jake Nickell — Chief Executive Officer, Threadless

• Stephen Prosser — VP of Software Development, Guaranteed Rate

• Jen Busenbark — Director of Product, Braintree

Our guest panelists will share best practices and the secret sauce that has worked within their companies. As always, attendees are encouraged to come prepared with questions for our panelists.

Agenda:

5:30-6 p.m.: Food, networking, craft beer tasting and photo booth

6-7:30 p.m.: Nerd Therapy

7:30-8:30 p.m.: Craft beer, networking, photo booth and karaoke

Your host:

Gregg Walrod — Head of Software Engineering, Chicago

Gregg is a proven business leader that focuses on the employee and client experiences. He works as the Head of Software Engineering where he leads and supports the Chicago-based team. He has worked in numerous leadership roles in his 12-year services business career, which includes leading Geek Squad in China. In his spare time, Gregg is an avid music lover and loves to travel abroad.

Panelists:

Tom O’Neill — Chief Executive Officer, The Nerdery (https://www.nerdery.com/)

Tom O’Neill joined The Nerdery as a programmer in 2004, he soon became a cultural leader at the custom software development company. He launched The Nerdery’s Chicago branch as VP of Development and returned to Minneapolis as COO. In 2013 Tom became The Nerdery’s first President since founding-President Luke Bucklin passed away. Tom took over the role of CEO from Co-Founder Mike Derheim in 2016. Tom personifies The Nerdery’s belief that passionate Nerds are the driving force behind business breakthroughs, and leads a team of 500 software engineers, UX designers, QA engineers and other Nerds whose purpose is to redefine what’s possible through technology. He is a perennial volunteer for The Nerdery Overnight Website Challenge, a 24-hour event where web pros donate their time and talent to help nonprofit organizations build better websites. Tom is passionately dedicated to furthering The Nerdery’s vision to be the best place in the world for Nerds to work. Tom gave a TEDx Talk in 2014 that he titled, “Willful Ignorance - Never Tell me the Odds.” Tom serves on the Advisory Board of IoTFuse, which unites doers, makers and hackers with executives, investors, entrepreneurs and innovators focused on the Internet of Things. Tom also serves on the Board of Directors of The Nerdery Foundation, whose mission is to activate the passion and skills of technologists to better our world.

Jake Nickell — Chief Executive Officer, Threadless (https://www.threadless.com/)

Jake Nickell is Threadless' young and fearless entrepreneurial leader. Driven by a passion for learning new things, whether it’s how to create awesome t-shirts or design and program an e-commerce website, Jake’s main focus is running the worldwide, hugely successful business that Threadless is today. A creative, unconventional thinker, he constantly keeps Threadless one step ahead by encouraging out-of-the-box ideas and challenging the “business” side of running a business. Jake maintains his geek cred through a love for programming, and when he’s not working, he’s busy hanging out with his wife Shondi, daughter Arli, and son Dash.

Stephen Prosser — VP of Software Development, Guaranteed Rate (https://www.guaranteedrate.com/)

Stephen is a passionate technologist, agilist, and entrepreneur. His goal is to build teams, culture, and software that are bleeding edge, fault tolerant, secure, and fun while teaching and advocating successful practices to anyone willing to listen. Throughout his career he has worked in everything from start-ups to multi-billion dollar organizations, all with a focus of successfully delivering software that customers find valuable shipped from insanely happy engineers.

Jen Busenbark — Director of Product, Braintree (https://www.braintreepayments.com/)

Jen Busenbark is a Director of Product at Braintree. As the company’s initial Product Manager, Jen has had the unique opportunity to evolve a product from pre-beta payment processor to a global payments solution used by some of the world's leading, most innovative companies. Her expertise helped design Braintree’s processes including planning, building, launching and everything pertaining to software delivery. Jen was able to help scale the product management organization to over 20 Product Managers, establishing best practices and processes along the way that have enabled the team to continue to push for the best product experiences.

Prior to joining Braintree in 2009, Jen spent close to 9 years as a consultant for ThoughtWorks, a global IT consulting company, helping clients build products in industries such as leasing, insurance, and online auctions.

As a member of the tech community in Chicago, Jen has taken an active role in groups like Women in Product, Product Tank Chicago, as well as smaller groups to help empower and engage her peers.

About The Nerdery: (http://www.nerdery.com)

We are a custom software design and development company built on the belief that passionate nerds are the driving force behind business breakthroughs. Our vision is to be the best place in the world for Nerds to work; our purpose is to redefine what’s possible through technology.