Learning Festival - Programme

Time	Programme
9:00am	Welcome & Opening Address Mr Khoong Chan Meng CEO, NUS-ISS
9:10am	Digital Disruption & The Uncertain Times We Live Mr Damien Cummings Chief, Digital Strategy & Leadership Practice, NUS-ISS
9:30am	Innovating for Success in a VUCA World Ms Magdalene Loh Head of Innovation, Prudential Assurance Company Singapore
10:00am	Break
10:15am	Design for Growth: Leading through Disruption Mr Mario Van der Meulen Director for Customer Strategy & Design, Deloitte Digital
10:45am	Navigating Digital Disruption - A Bright Future Ms Amy Huang Chief, Digital Products & Platforms Practice, NUS-ISS
11:05am	Panel Discussion
12:00pm	End of Forum

Track 1: An Amazing No-code RPA Tool Hidden Inside Your Microsoft Excel 

There are a lot of people who think that RPA is rocket science –something very complicated and costly that only someone with programming or IT knowledge can do. Many also think that RPA takes weeks, months or even years to implement. This 100% hands-on session lets you play with one of the RPA tools by Microsoft – the Power Query. This is probably one of the best-kept secrets from Microsoft – so simple-to-use yet so powerful, but so little known or used by people. It is especially useful if you use Excel heavily in getting data from multiple sources, cleaning up data and consolidating reports from multiple spreadsheets. This is also one of the very few no-code RPA tools out there that you can use to create your own bot right after this session – without any IT or programming knowledge. 

Venue: Innovation, Level 3
Speaker:
Yu Chen Kuang, Principal Lecturer & Consultant, Digital Strategy & Leadership Practice

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Track 2: Real Attacks on Blockchain Systems & Countermeasures

In this talk, the speaker will survey the security attacks on blockchain and compartmentalise attacks that are generic to IT systems, singling out real attacks specific to blockchain and their countermeasures.

Venue: Beacon, Level 4
Speaker:
Ng Kok Leong, Senior Lecturer & Consultant, Digital Strategy & Leadership Practice

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Track 3: AI in Finance: An Ensembling Architecture Incorporating Machine Learning Models and Genetic Algorithm Optimisation for Forex Trading

Algorithmic trading has become the standard in the financial market. Traditionally, most algorithms have relied on rule-based expert systems which are a set of complex if/then rules that need to be updated manually to changing market conditions. Machine learning (ML) is the natural next step in algorithmic trading because it can directly learn market patterns and behaviours from historical trading data and factor this into trading decisions. An end-to-end system is developed for automated low-frequency quantitative trading in the foreign exchange (Forex) markets. The system utilises several State of the Art (SOTA) machine learning strategies that are combined under an ensemble model to derive the market signal for trading. Genetic Algorithm (GA) is used to optimise the strategies for maximising profits. The system also includes a money management strategy to mitigate risk and a back-testing framework to evaluate system performance. The system performance is promising under ideal conditions. The ensemble model achieved about 10% nett P&L with −0.7% drawdown level.

Venue: Inspire Theatre, Level 2 
Speaker(s):
Gu Zhan (Sam) , Lecturer & Consultant, Artificial Intelligence Practice
Nirav Parikh, Product Strategy & Management, Citi Singapore

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Track 4: Journey towards Organisational Digital Excellence 

Process excellence, collaboration, emerging technologies, employee developer mindset and data analytics are just some of the factors contributing to an organisation's digital excellence. Find out the importance of each of these and how they need to co-exist at different scales in order for organisations to show progress in their digital transformation journey and achieve data-driven outcomes. 

Venue: Influence, Level 3
Speaker:
Tan Kok Yong, Chief Data Officer, A*STAR 

Track 1: Architecting Across Healthcare and Technology Boundaries

Healthcare and IT are both knowledge-intensive industries with complex processes and high variability – every patient, every IT system is unique. Both professions are also continually evolving their bodies of knowledge with increasing sub-specialisation of practice. In addition to understanding this complex operating context, IHiS architects need to continually balance between national imperatives and local institutional needs. This talk shares how our Chief Architect’s Office is organised to guide enterprise IT at the portfolio and solution levels.

Venue: Inspire Theatre, Level 2
Speaker:
David Lim, Assistant Director, Enterprise Architecture, Chief Architect's Office, IHiS

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Track 2: Developing Non-Fungible Tokens using Ethereum Smart Contract

There is great excitement over blockchain and Ethereum in particular. What is Ethereum? It is a public blockchain platform for developing applications called Smart Contracts using a language called Solidity. These Smart Contracts can be used for commerce, voting, to show provenance and more as a new norm of decentralisation. 

Venue: Beacon, Level 4
Speaker:
Kenneth Phang, Senior Lecturer & Consultant, Software Systems Practice

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Track 3: Transition from Project to Product 

How do organisations transit from project management to product management? What are challenges and transformation required? Join Garret Yap from GovTech Singapore as he shares more about a product transformation journey in both the private and public sector.  

Venue: Influence, Level 3 
Speaker:
Garret Yap, Deputy Director, GovTech Singapore 

Track 1: Preparing and Acing your Kubernetes Certification

Kubernetes is one of the 'go to' platform for deploying containerised workloads. A certification in this area is a recognition by an industry body of your skill. The assessment itself is a grueling two hours task oriented assessment where you will need to solve multiple tasks from the command line. 
In this talk, NUS-ISS Chief of StackUp Programme will talk about the 3 Ps, - Preparation, Practices and Process in your certification journey. 

Venue: Inspire Theatre, Level 2
Speaker:
Lee Chuk Munn, Chief, StackUp Programme

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Track 2: Reimagining Talent Development for the Digital Age

Digitisation has impacted the value of different skills in many industries. Every organisation is looking for innovative ways to optimise how machines and humans can work together to uncover new value for their businesses. Recruiting and retaining digital talent to support digital business strategies has been a constant challenge for organisations while they keep a delicate balance between cost and value. In this talk, we will look at how to rethink Talent Strategy to embrace the Digital Age by evaluating the impact of digitalisation on skills, exploiting the diversity of digital talent pools, and redesigning jobs to unleash new business value.

Venue: Beacon, Level 4
Speaker:
Sharon Lau, Principal Lecturer & Consultant, Digital Strategy & Leadership Practice

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Track 3: Fantastic Platforms: The Secrets of the Crypto-Metaverse

Venue: Influence, Level 3
Speaker(s):
Vincent Lau, Chief Executive Officer, Massive Infinity 

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Track 4: Secure Your Application With Pattern Oriented Design 

History repeats itself. If there is a pattern in the events that exposed vulnerabilities in many systems, could we mitigate the threats by looking into a reusable solution? Design patterns are reusable solutions to common problems that occur in software development. Have a glimpse of how we could adopt software design patterns in designing security mechanisms for our applications.  

Venue: Innovation, Level 3
Speaker:
Chia Yuen Kwan, Senior Lecturer & Consultant, Software Systems Practice

Track 1: Satisfying the ‘-ilities’ of an Enterprise Cloud Service

‘Feature is DONE !’ A regular statement that is typically shared by an overjoyed engineer who is declaring the completion of a feature that he/she has implemented and has been approved by a test engineer. BUT is it ‘Done, Done ?!!’ Engineering an enterprise cloud services would require teams to satisfy the ‘ilities’ requirements. If you are wondering what they are, how engineering teams tackle them and satisfy these requirements, this session will give you an insight of the work and investment needed for a feature to be ‘Done’ in the enterprise cloud world. 

Venue: Inspire Theatre, Level 2
Speaker:
Jeff Salleh, Director, Cloud Engineering, Oracle

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Track 2: Agile Architecture – Enabling the Organisation’s Successful Digital-Agile Transformation

Architecture has an important role to play when deploying Agile at scale. In this session, we will take a look at Agile Architecture, its key building blocks, the mental model change that Agile Architecture requires and how it plays a critical role in supporting an organisation’s Digital-Agile Transformation success.

Venue: Beacon, Level 4
Speaker:
Tan Eng Tsze, Principal Lecturer & Consultant, Digital Strategy & Leadership Practice

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Track 3: Driving Product Success through Experimentation

In a world of ever-changing customer needs and behaviors, product experimentation has become an indispensable way for organisations to validate new ideas, de-risk delivery and drive impactful outcomes.

This opens up a whole new set of challenges and opportunities:

• How do we use experiments to drive product success and business outcomes?
• How do we apply experimentation methods and make it into a continuous process for our organisations?
• How can we leverage the experimental mindset to take the guesswork out of product innovation?

Venue: Influence, Level 3 
Speaker(s):
Felicitas Seah, Principal Lecturer & Consultant, Digital Products & Platforms Practice
Scott Si, Senior Lecturer & Consultant, Digital Products & Platforms Practice

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Graduate Programmes Information Session

NUS-ISS offers multiple learning pathways. The NUS-ISS Graduate Programmes will give learners an unparalleled edge with the applicable knowledge of data, digital transformation, processes and technologies. With 5 highly sought-after skill sets and specialisations to choose from, our learners will be poised to embark and achieve greater heights in their career progression and aspirations in the Digital Economy. Learners can take series of graduate certificates that will also stack up towards a Master of Technology.

Join the Information Session to find out more about NUS-ISS Graduate Programmes as a through-train programme or stackable programme: 

Graduate Diploma in Systems Analysis
Master of Technology in Digital Leadership
Master of Technology in Enterprise Business Analytics
Master of Technology in Intelligent Systems
Master of Technology in Software Engineering

Prospective students who are keen to apply for the January/February 2023 intake should definitely come and find out more.

Venue: Innovation, Level 3 
Speaker(s):
NUS-ISS Graduate Recruitment Team

Sessions will be conducted online via Zoom.

Time	Programme
9:00am	Jobs-to-be-Done: Q&A with Jim Kalbach and Scott Burleson  Jobs-to-be-done cuts through the complexity and “fuzziness” of the front end of innovation by helping innovators to understand customer motivation. It provides a language to discuss customer needs with precision not only for product teams, but also for marketing, sales, customer relations, and executive teams.  As a philosophy and method, Jobs-to-be-Done has gained a foothold for the simplest of reasons, a growing population of successful new products from its usage. In this session, learn about the basics of Jobs-to-be-Done, why it’s so powerful, the linkages with modern methods (agile, design thinking, etc.) and how you can get started with a few simple steps. Bring your questions, as there will be ample time for discussion with Jim and Scott.   Speaker(s): Jim Kalbach, Chief Evangelist, MURAL Scott Burleson, Senior Vice President, The AIM Institute Hosted by: Eugene Wong, Senior Lecturer & Consultant, Digital Innovation & Design Practice
10:00am	Feature Engineering for IoT In this digital transformation era, we have seen the rise of digital platforms and increased usages of devices particularly in the area of wearables and the Internet of Things (IoT). Given the fast pace change to the IoT landscape and devices, data has become one of the important source of truth for analytics and continuous streaming of data from sensors have also emerged as one of the fuel that revolutionise the emergence of IoT. These includes health telematics, vehicle telematics, predictive maintenance of equipment, manufacturing quality management, consumer behaviour, and more. With this, we will give you an introduction on how to leverage the power of data science and machine learning to understand and explore feature engineering of IoT and sensor data.  Speaker(s): Darryl Ng, Senior Lecturer & Consultant, Software Systems Practice Heng Boon Kui, Chief, MTech Software Engineering Programme
11:00am	Predictive Analytics With the use of Predictive Analytics, companies are able to predict future trends based on existing available data. The actionable business predictions can help companies achieve cost savings, higher revenue, better resource allocation and efficiency. Predictive analytics has been used in various sectors such as banking & finance, sales & marketing, logistics, retail, healthcare, F&B, etc. for various purposes.  Get set to learn more about the different stages of predictive analytics modelling such as data collection & preparation, model development & evaluation metrics, and model deployment considerations will be discussed.  Speaker(s): Dr Brian Ang, Senior Lecturer & Consultant, Data Science Practice Dr Rita Chakravarti, Chief, MTech Enterprise Business Analytics Programme
1:00pm	Diagnosing Complex Problems Using System Archetypes In today’s VUCA world, we are faced with problems coming in fast and furious. In order to resolve such problems quickly, we need to first understand the problems. One of the techniques to understand complex problem is through the use of system archetypes. System archetypes are patterns of behaviour of a system. Let’s us explore some of the system archetypes in this session as well as tips on how to resolve them. Speaker: Aaron Chua, Principal Lecturer & Consultant, Digital Strategy & Leadership Practice
2:00pm	Using AI for Bio-Threat Detection in Baggage Airports globally implement advanced security screening to maximise threat detection for prohibited items in luggage stemming from security and customs concerns. Baggage scanner machines are typically powered by X-rays, delivering an integrated efficient and automated system for object detection. Recent emphasis on bio-diversity threats for countries heavily dependent on agriculture called for detecting objects like boots that potentially carry soil contaminants and even diseases. This session will discuss the challenges in this problem and demonstrate the use of AI to do real-time detection of threats in baggage. Speaker(s): Dr. Barry Adrian Shepherd, Chief, MTech Intelligent Systems Programme Dr Tan Jen Hong, Lecturer & Consultant, Artificial Intelligence Practice Maureen Tan Yu Chee Leng
3:00pm	Focus on the winning ideas: Customer-Focused Innovation with Jobs-to-be-done  Organisations are drowning in too many ideas and options. With the rise of digitalisation and new technologies like AI options and ideas have exploded. Technological change is faster than ever, and new opportunities arise constantly. But which of these ideas and options truly add value to people’s lives? How to apply new technologies to unsolved customer problems? The Jobs-to-be-done logic provides a clear answer to such questions. It shifts the perspective away from solutions to the customers’ or users' true goal and need: The Job they want to get done. Solutions and technologies come later. The Customer-Focused Innovation approach (CFI) is a proven way to apply Jobs-to-be-done. It identifies customer problems in a concrete and granular way, measures their relevance in the market and spins solution ideas and technologies in such a way to solve still unsolved user problems. In addition, this speeds up innovation because the focus is clear and increases user adoption thanks to strong value propositions. In the talk Beat Walther and Yann Wermuth will illustrate the impact of the fact-based and proven approach using cases from software, the national Swiss railway, Medtech and others of the more than 100 times CFI has been applied. Speaker(s): Beat Walther, Owner & Managing Director, Vendbridge AG Yann Wermuth, Partner, Vendbridge AG Eugene Wong, Senior Lecturer & Consultant, Digital Innovation & Design Practice