Meet the Team: Annvie Nguyen, UX Designer

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Through a Q&A-style interview, you will hear from VIA team members about things like a typical day at the office and favorite foods.

What does a typical day at VIA look like for you?

The only typical part about my days at VIA is that it changes every day! As the go-to media person, I’m lucky to have the opportunity to collaborate with different teams and work on a variety of projects. Some days, I’ll be working on filming and editing videos for VIA (check out the careers video produced by yours truly). Others, I’ll get to flex my design eye and work with our developers to create user interfaces for our products. Today, I’m updating our website and writing a fabulous blog.

What’s something you have worked on at VIA that you are most proud of?

There are so many cool things I want to talk about, it’s difficult to choose!

For one, I really enjoyed working on the interface for the GDAC™ Transformers  30-Minute Pilot. In that project, I designed the user experience for a data analysis demo. It presented an interesting challenge: how can we make complex analysis simple for others to understand, operate by themselves, and see the value? I was able to participate from the conceptualization stage all the way to the user interface and experience. It was so rewarding to see the pilot go from its baby stages to a full-fledged site.

What’s your favorite VIA memory?

My favorite VIA memory might have to be this past holiday party. We made gingerbread houses, ate some delicious desserts (essential to the VIA brand), and played a ridiculous reindeer ring toss game that had us crying with laughter. Hats off to Jackie for being our star party planner!

via GIPHY

 

If you were given an extra hour in your day, what would you spend it doing?

I can’t deny that I’d be playing Animal Crossing on Nintendo.

What’s your go-to food?

Nothing can outrank my comfort food of choice: a nice, warm bowl of pho. It’s Vietnam’s most famous noodle soup, light but also flavorful. But to me, it’s like getting a hug from Grandma.

What’s something everyone may not, but should know about working at VIA?

You should know that at VIA we’re always working on improving ourselves. With retrospectives at the end of each sprint, open ears during one-on-one’s, and offsites each year, being open to feedback is an essential part of VIA culture.

Working Remotely? Us too!

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Along with people all over the world, the VIA team has adjusted to a new normal over these last few months. 

Given our distance apart, we asked some of our team members what they look forward to each day of working remotely.

Check out our video below to see what our team has to say (spoiler: this will give you all the feels!)

 

 

Colin Gounden Presenting at EDP Innovation Immersion Program Virtual Event

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VIA’s Colin Gounden has been invited to speak at EDP’s Innovation Immersion Program virtual event on May 14th. The program was developed internally at EDP “to promote innovation within the group and establish EDP as a leading player in the global energy market.” Colin will give a presentation on how VIA’s software platform, Trusted Analytics Chain™ (TAC™) can help companies like EDP unlock the value of their data.

Tracxn Includes VIA in “Top Renewable Energy Tech” List

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Tracxn, a market research platform that tracks startups, private companies, and innovative sectors, has included VIA for the second time this year in one of its 2020 Emerging Startups lists. In January, VIA earned a spot on their “Top Emerging Blockchain Startups” list. This time, VIA is among nine companies in the “Top Renewable Energy Tech” list and is again considered a “Minicorn.”

Tracxn describes what it means to be one of their Emerging Startups:

“Tracxn Emerging Startups provides a handpicked selection of high growth and high potential companies, founded since 2013, that are making an impact in the new-age sectors. The shortlisting is based on a combination of multiple publicly available signals and detailed analysis of the company by our internal sector specialist teams. The companies that make the cut are the ones that show promising performance on multiple parameters – market size, investment by marquee investors, execution excellence and future growth prospects.”

For more on the “Top Renewable Energy Tech” list, visit the Tracxn website.

 

VIA and HSLU Co-Presenting at Virtual SUEID 2020 Event in June

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VIA’s Joe Babiec will be co-presenting alongside Ben Bowler and Antonios Papaemmanouil of the Lucerne School of Engineering and Architecture at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences (HSLU). VIA and HSLU met during the SUEID event in 2019 and have since been working on a collaboration. The virtual event will take place on June 4th beginning at 10:30am ET, with VIA and HSLU’s joint presentation at 11:15am ET.

Kate Ravanis Interviewed for Profile of a Founder Blog

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VIA’s Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder, Kate Ravanis, was interviewed by The Tech Tribune for its Profile of a Founder blog. The blog features founders of companies selected by The Tech Tribune as the “Best Tech Startups,” from cities in the US. VIA was included as one of eight companies on the 2020 Best Tech Startups in Somerville list.

In the interview, Kate gives some insight on how VIA got its start, challenges along the way, and what the future holds for the company. She also gives some thoughtful advice for aspiring entrepreneurs:

“We have lots of values at VIA that I live by every day. I think the one that is most important and has made the most impact on my career is “love in = love out”. The idea behind the value is if you love what you do, it will show in all your interactions with colleagues, clients, and work. There are so many challenges that you will encounter on your journey, and it is often hard to see how you will get beyond them. I have found just focusing on the things that I truly believe in and the reasons that got me started in the first place have translated to stronger partnerships, customer relationships, and ultimately a team of colleagues who will stick by you until you come out successful on the other side.”

For the full interview, check out The Tech Tribune’s blog.

The Tech Tribune Includes VIA in 2020 Best Tech Startups in Somerville

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VIA is pleased to share that we have been included in The Tech Tribune’s 2020 Best Tech Startups in Somerville list. The list includes eight startups in Somerville with solutions that range from 3D printing to 360 degree smart video conferencing cameras to software for the rental real estate market.

According to the Tech Tribune, there were four factors in deciding the top startups including (1) revenue potential, (2) leadership team, (3) brand / product traction, and (4) competitive landscape. 

For the full list of startups, check out their website.

 

Meet the Team: Emma Fechney, Senior Lead, People and Operations

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Through a Q&A-style interview, you will hear from VIA team members about things like a typical day at the office and favorite foods.

What does a typical day at VIA look like for you?

One of the things that I love about my job is that for me, there is no such thing as a “typical day.” Because my role encompasses the entire candidate and employee experience, there are often lots of different projects going on at any moment. Examples include planning recruitment events, working with the team on our professional development program, or even ordering a whole lot of pizza for our regular lunch and learn sessions.

I always try to start my day by consulting my to do’s and then from there, it can be a mixture of meetings, catch-ups with team members, interviews, or planning the next team event.

What motivates you to come to the office each day?

People! I am motivated by the idea of enhancing people’s work experience, whether it’s exploring ways to support professional development or strengthening the connection between our team and our vision. Plus, finding ways to celebrate and have fun together never gets old!

What’s something you have worked on at VIA that you are most proud of?

Introducing Lattice, our performance management platform, was a big win for me. Lattice is a tool that helps us plan and track goals, organise 1:1’s, and is an excellent vehicle for supporting a feedback-rich culture. We love the integration with our #shoutouts channel on Slack for constant praise and appreciation! (Not a paid plug, I promise).

What’s your favorite VIA memory?

My first official day is something that sticks out. Not only were lots of pastries involved, but the whole office pushed pause in whatever they were doing to welcome me over breakfast and to get to know more about me and my background. This really set the tone of inclusivity and respect that has not faded since!

If you were given an extra hour in your day, what would you spend it doing?

The angel on my shoulder says learning french, but the devil on the other says catching up on some z’s.

What’s your go-to food?

I can’t go past a really good Kiwi meat pie!

What’s something everyone may not, but should know about working at VIA?

In addition to being a kick-ass energy tech company, our team could have a side career in the food industry. Everyone is either an excellent home cook and/or just genuinely enjoys the ritual of eating great food.

Meet the Team: John Muddle, Team Lead, Data Science

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Through a Q&A-style interview, you will hear from VIA team members about things like a typical day at the office and favorite foods.

What does a typical day at VIA look like for you?

My typical workday starts with a coffee, from either one of the local third-wave coffee shops or the machine at work. Once I’m settled, I look at my calendar and plan my day, this can be anything from looking at notes from a previous meeting to making sure I’ve booked a room. When that’s complete, I look for something I can quickly finish before Scrum of Scrums or continue with the task from the day before.

Each day at 10:30, I attend Scrum of Scrums. As a technical lead, I need to know how my epic is progressing, so typically, I will check in with my colleagues before the meeting for any updates and check that the JIRA board reflects our current progress. Typically, there are a few meetings to take a deeper dive on topics raised at Scrum of Scrums. These are a great way to make sure that we are aligned across our epics and to share knowledge. 

Having conditioned myself over many years that 12 o’clock means lunchtime, I take a break at 12 to either buy lunch or heat up some leftovers. Lunch is a great opportunity to socialize with my colleagues on different epics and to give my brain some time to process in the background. Conversations range from the latest computer game, movies, and hockey, but mostly food. 

After lunch, my afternoons consist of meetings, customer calls, and development time. My time tends to be split into hour-long chunks which I’ve planned out in the morning. A lot of my work revolves around supporting my colleagues by answering questions, problem-solving, and pair-programming. One of the favourite ways to tackle a problem is to jump into a spare room and rubber duck the problem. Basically, by describing a problem to a rubber duck, you verbalise the issues you are facing and through this process, you tend to have a better understanding of your problem. Luckily, VIA has hired people rather than rubber ducks, so in fact, you can also get feedback, questions, and suggestions from your colleagues. 

At the end of the day, which is typically signaled by the sending of GIFs on Slack that it’s home time, I make sure to leave my work in a state that allows me to continue the next day.

What’s something you have worked on at VIA that you are most proud of?

At VIA, I have had the opportunity to work on many different projects. I’m proud of every single one of them, but if I have to choose one, then I am most proud of the GDAC™ Transformers project. The reason I have chosen this project is because it is the first application built on top of TAC™. I’m proud to have helped develop TAC™, but it’s even better to use it for the benefit of our partners. The partnership aspect is another element that makes me proud to have worked on GDAC™ Transformers. I have worked closely with our partners for almost a year and to see how far we’ve come together is fantastic. Having had the opportunity to meet our partners in person, I was able to see how the work we have done together will benefit them going forward.

What’s your favorite VIA memory?

VIA is a great place to work, I have so many memories from my time here. One that stands out to me, in particular, was “Game Night”. Each offsite (a company-wide in-person event where we talk about wins, solve project challenges, and plan for the next big thing) typically has an activity where we have a chance to socialize such as bowling, mini-golf, and a scavenger hunt. But, nothing quite beats seeing your own office converted, in-secret, to the ultimate “Game Night” experience to the point where it is almost unrecognizable and something I will never forget.

If you were given an extra hour in your day, what would you spend it doing?

One thing I say to myself quite often is “If only I had more time”, but what would I do with that extra time. If I had an extra hour in my day, I would like to improve my French. Montreal is a fantastic bilingual city and very little French is actually necessary, but to really appreciate its culture and to get the full Quebecois experience a good handle on French is essential.

What’s your go-to food?

My go-to food has to be a sandwich, you can’t beat the convenience, variety, and taste of a good sandwich. In particular, I’m a big fan of a bacon butty, which, for those of you who are unfamiliar, is a very basic sandwich with bacon and butter filling. Bacon buttys tend to be eaten in the morning at home or out and about. They are an excellent way to start the day if camping, at a sports event, or just a day of gardening.

What’s something everyone may not, but should know about working at VIA?

If you have the pleasure of working at VIA then you should know that using GIFs in presentations and on Slack is encouraged. Communicating context and meaning using just text can be difficult at times, but GIFs can add so much more. A strong GIF game is essential to signal it’s time to go home, go to the pub, play badminton, get bread, or celebrate the latest prize that VIA has won.

 

 

Meet the Team: Antoine Dozois, Software Developer

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We’re thrilled to launch a new blog series at VIA called “Meet the Team.” Through a Q&A-style interview, you will hear from VIA team members about things like a typical day at the office and favorite foods.

What does a typical day at VIA look like for you?

Like most startups, we are working on lots of exciting projects. Here are some of the challenges that I’m involved in on a daily basis.

  1. Infrastructure: This means having the right data storage and resources through AWS necessary for our workloads. This is in constant evolution because every new project or project phase has different needs. So, we always look for improvements ranging from storage capacity and ease of use to performance and access management.
  2. Data (management, cleaning, processing): To deliver the best AI solution, data needs to be widely available, in the proper format, with good workflow, and overall managed well. This part of the work is more around trying to structure the workflow and the processes involved in the team’s recurrent tasks. We also need to understand the data to manipulate it and find insights that are most relevant for our customers and internal teams.
  3. Building software to empower the team: Software can be built to access data, compute some metrics, build a machine learning model, or display some insight. We build libraries to help us automate and optimize our workflow. Overall, we are always trying to create efficiencies internally through streamlining and automating recurring tasks.
  4. Collaborating with the team: This relates to reviewing code, meeting to organize our work, and helping each other when needed.

What’s something you have worked on at VIA that you are most proud of?

It is hard to pick just one piece of work that I am the most proud of since we are tackling lots of exciting new projects and challenges. But, in the first months of being at VIA, I wrote code to help us better ingest and manage data. It was the first time that I was put in charge of developing some code to solve a problem and make tasks more efficient for the team. We still use part of the code today and are continuously improving it. I think it was a real issue and being able to solve that problem was really rewarding.

What’s your favorite VIA memory?

My first offsite was really special for me, it was the first time I saw the whole team in-person and was able to learn more about every member of the team. It was also really nice to learn about the next challenges we were going to take on as a company.

If you were given an extra hour in your day, what would you spend it doing?

I like to learn, so anything from reading, learning a new skill, watching a documentary, or building something new would be mostly what I would use that hour for.

What’s your go-to food?

As a proud Montrealer (born and raised) I must go with Poutine (from La Banquise for the best in Montreal). I wouldn’t eat it every day because it is not the healthiest food, but I never say no to Poutine when proposed to me.

What’s something everyone may not, but should know about working at VIA?

The different backgrounds and diversity of every person in the company makes it a unique and fun workplace.

 

 

VIA Selected as a Finalist for EPRI’s Incubatenergy Labs Challenge

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VIA is pleased to share that we have been selected as one of 17 companies, out of over 130 applicants, for the next round of EPRI’s Incubatenergy Labs Challenge. As part of being a finalist in the program, VIA will participate in Challenge Pitch Day in the beginning of April.

Incubatenergy Labs was created to connect innovative startups in the energy space with major utilities for demonstration projects. Erik Steeb, who leads the Incubatenergy Labs program at EPRI said of the selected group of startups:

“The finalists’ applications outline technologies that may provide electric power customers effective energy management solutions and utilities new tools to maintain system quality, reliability, and efficiency while supporting sector-wide decarbonization.”

For more information, see EPRI’s recent announcement.

 

VIA Files Over 10 Patents for Trusted Analytics Chain™

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VIA, a leader in providing energy analytics while maintaining data privacy and security, is pleased to share that it has filed over 10 patents to protect techniques used in its Trusted Analytics Chain™ (TAC™) software. The patents cover a range of capabilities from homomorphic encryption, streamlining data access provisionment, and distributed computing approaches, among others.

“At VIA, we have delivered AI and machine learning solutions to governments, regulators, and utilities at a global scale. A constant theme has been data privacy and security. We have made data privacy a priority for TAC™ to give our customers confidence that their data assets are secure during analysis. The patent portfolio is VIA’s best way to protect the investment we have made in pioneering these techniques,” said Jeremy Taylor, Chief Scientific Officer at VIA.

VIA has built a team of experts in AI, blockchain, and cryptography to develop a suite of privacy tools to validate and sanitize queries (python scripts) submitted by analysts as well as responses that are the result of running the script on the data.

Taylor continued, “TAC™ is being used by some of the largest utilities in the world to unlock powerful insights from their data. We believe that TAC™ will become the go-to data sharing platform among utilities and beyond.”

About VIA

VIA helps governments, regulators, and power companies deliver $200Bn in energy every year to more than 100 million customers. VIA’s privacy-preserving analytics software, Trusted Analytics Chain™ (TAC™) reduces the cost and improves the quality of service of electricity transmission and distribution using AI and blockchain technologies. TAC™ (patents pending) is the bridge that securely connects power company data, distributed across many locations, to potential AI solutions. VIA established the Global Data Asset Collaborative™ (GDAC™), built on top of TAC™, to allow multiple companies to securely pool data for more accurate analytics. Headquartered in Somerville, Massachusetts, VIA has been featured in Wired and Inc. Magazine for its leadership in technology innovation. For more information, please visit www.solvewithvia.com.

Let’s TAC™ About It: The Bridge to AI Experts

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This is the first installment of our new blog series, where we will cover the many capabilities and benefits of VIA’s Trusted Analytics Chain™ (TAC™). So, are you ready to TAC™ about it?

Data science roles have proliferated in the past decade. The growth numbers look flat, however, in comparison to other technology trends.

AI is embedded in our phones, our TVs, and our cars. With 67% of large companies projected to have AI initiatives in place by 2021, big data and machine learning are no longer relegated to long-term, R&D projects in mainstream businesses. These are now critical functions required for the long-term prosperity of business. 

Many organizations with vast amounts of data struggle to recruit, develop, and retain the data science talent they need to analyze their data and deliver actionable insights. A large ecosystem of big data companies, AI specialist companies, and tools have emerged to address this data glut and talent shortage. However, there are very real data security and privacy risks to consider for the firms that work with external AI companies. In addition, selecting and managing AI companies is costly and time consuming. These barriers can trap an organization’s data and limit its insights. 

TAC™ reduces the time, cost, and risks to data security and privacy of working with external analysts in multiple ways.

  • TAC™ leaves the data where it is. Instead of sending data to an analyst, TAC™ controls the code delivered to the data’s location (even in multiple locations) through federated learning.
  • TAC™ automates data anomaly checks, data cleaning and harmonization, and NLP PII checks.
  • TAC™ tracks and, when required, restricts what analysis can be performed at the data’s location, through smart contracts and other programmatic controls.
  • TAC™ provides data owners control over results returned to analysts through digital watermarking, k-anonymity, additive homomorphic encryption, and other mathematical safeguards.
  • TAC™ streamlines data access workflows so companies can even grant multiple AI experts access to the same dataset. This allows companies to leverage the wisdom of the crowd to select the best solution for their particular challenge. 

In short, TAC™ is a secure bridge between a company’s distributed data and expert analysts. VIA works with global electric utilities and government agencies to help them gain access to the AI specialists that can harness massive datasets, even across companies, to transition to a cleaner, safer, and greener energy industry.

Kate Ravanis and Ashley DaSilva Invited to Speak at Brandeis University

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VIA’s COO, Kate Ravanis and Team Leader, Product Development, Ashley DaSilva have been invited to speak at Brandeis University for the session, “Analyzing data in the energy industry.” Kate will provide students with an overview of VIA and Ashley will discuss the ways we solve problems for our customers. Check out their website for the full agenda: https://www.brandeis.edu/global/events/2020/climate-change/index.html.

VIA Participates in NPPD’s Annual Innovation Showcase

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VIA was delighted to support Nebraska Public Power District (NPPD) specifically and innovation in Nebraska more generally this past weekend. VIA’s CEO, Colin Gounden traveled to Aurora, Nebraska for the Aurora Open & Innovation Showcase to meet with hundreds of students and local community members to give them a glimpse into working for a technology startup. During the event, there was also a robotics competition, as seen in this local news clip, where the VIA sticker made its TV debut!