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The Westly Group, a key investor in VIA, has invited CEO Colin Gounden to present during their virtual demo day on July 30th. Colin will present an overview of VIA and progress to date to a group of 100 investors and senior energy executives.
VIA is proud to host the first session of its GDAC™ Virtual Mini-Series on June 24th at 5:oopm ET. Participants in the mini-series include GDAC™ founding members and features a presentation from Andrew Bright, former ABB executive and VIA advisor.
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.
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.
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 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!
The best part of working at VIA? Its people. Twice a year, our Montreal and Somerville offices get together for what we call the “All Hands”. All Hands are essential to our company culture: they offer an uninterrupted time of sharing team wins, solving project challenges, and planning for the next big thing. In a few short weeks, we will be recharging our batteries and getting ready to tackle 2020!
VIA’s Chief Operating Officer, Kate Ravanis, was invited to speak at Greentech Media’s Blockchain in Energy Forum which took place on September 25, 2019 in New York City. Speakers at the GTM event shared use cases and success stories for blockchain in energy applications. Kate’s presentation covered the challenges facing the energy sector and how VIA’s GDAC™ program is currently helping utilities unlock the value of their data through privacy preserving collaboration. For more information on the event, visit GTM’s website.
Earlier this month, VP, Strategic Initiatives, Joe Babiec attended DistribuTECH, the utility industry’s leading conference on electric power transmission and distribution. Hosted in New Orleans, the event featured speakers from Exelon, FERC, and Siemens, among others, and welcomed more than 12,000 attendees over two days.
“Speakers like Paul Hinnenkamp of Entergy, and many vendors emphasized the importance of customer and operational data. A major theme of the conference was the value of gathering and analyzing this data in order to improve current operating efficiency and create new services. I spoke with representatives from a number of utilities about this issue, and I was delighted they felt that VIA’s TAC™ application offers a great solution to the difficult challenge of making customer and operational data more easily available for analysis,” remarked Joe.
For more information on the event, please visit DistribuTECH’s website.
Earlier this week, CEO Colin Gounden and CSO Jeremy Taylor were among a select group invited to the inauguration ceremony for Denmark’s Innovation Center in Kendall Square. VIA has established a presence within Denmark’s innovation community, thanks in large part to the support of Accelerace’s Cleantech program. This center is part of a partnership between the Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Boston now joins Silicon Valley, Shanghai, Tel Aviv, Munich, New Delhi/Bangalore, Sao Paolo, and Seoul on the list of cities home to Danish Innovation Centers.
The new center will create opportunities for Danish researchers and companies to connect with Boston’s universities and cutting-edge start-ups, with a focus on cleantech and sustainable energy solutions.
Jeremy Taylor joined the roundtable discussion led by Danish Minister for Higher Education and Science Tommy Ahlers. “Denmark has established an innovation cluster for artificial intelligence and robotics. One topic we discussed was the challenge with supporting ongoing development of these technologies in a socially and ethically responsible way. Montreal recently released its Declaration for Responsible AI, and I think that could be a great roadmap for Danish researchers and entrepreneurs as well,” said Jeremy.
In October, VIA’s Joe Babiec, VP, Strategic Initiatives, was invited to present at EUCI’s conference: “The Blockchain Technology Revolution: Implications for the Energy Sector”. Hosted in New Orleans, the event welcomed thought leaders and decision makers from leading utilities and energy providers, local government agencies, research organizations, and technology companies to discuss business use cases of blockchain in the energy industry.
In his session, “Valuation of Utility Data Through Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence”, Joe discussed the ways customers are using VIA’s TAC application to reduce costs and monetize operational data in secure and privacy-protected ways. He explained how TAC’s blockchain-enabled smart contracting capability allows data owners and analysts to reach agreements with one another much faster than by traditional methods, and with the confidence that the terms of their agreement will be observed by all parties.
Fellow presenter Kristen Brown, a principal of technology innovation at Exelon, touched on implications of the transformation taking place in the energy industry. Specifically, she called on energy companies to embrace the transition from business models that prioritize “pipelines” to new approaches that emphasize generating value from “platforms” that connect energy providers and consumers in new ways.
For information on upcoming EUCI conferences, visit their website.
In October, Joe Babiec, VIA’s VP, Strategic Initiatives, was invited to speak at Cleantech Group’s Executive Summit, “Blockchain in Energy & Mobility”. The summit, hosted in New York, invited top leaders in energy and blockchain to discuss the technical, commercial, and regulatory challenges of scaling blockchain-based applications within the energy industry.
Joe spoke on the opening panel, which focused on the value propositions and business models being used by innovating companies like VIA. He explained how VIA’s Trusted Analytics Chain (TAC) application generates revenue by helping energy companies reduce operations and maintenance costs, and by providing secure, private data access to external analysts. Joe also noted that TAC has an important advantage as a new product: unlike some future-oriented blockchain applications, TAC helps energy companies address challenges and opportunities they already experience, so using TAC allows companies to realize substantial benefits right away.
VIA is now engaging in a series of proof of concept pilots to confirm TAC’s evolution from a prototype to a production-ready application. The company plans to officially launch TAC in 2019.
VIA’s VP, Strategic Initiatives Joe Babiec was invited to speak on a panel at Greentech Media’s Blockchain in Energy forum earlier this month. The panel, hosted at Pacific Gas and Electric’s San Francisco offices, focused on monetizing energy company data with the help of blockchain. Greentech Media’s Emma Foehringer Merchant moderated.
On the panel, Joe shared this insight into why VIA developed its blockchain-based Trusted Analytics Chain (TAC): “We identified a problem which turns out to be very common: in a typical nine-month project you often spend over two-thirds of your time getting access to the data before any of the value-add analytics work can begin.” TAC solves this challenge by establishing secure access to confidential data for analysis by third parties. Employing TAC to facilitate access to on-premise or cloud-stored data provides two key benefits: cost savings from better and faster analysis, and the opportunity for energy companies to generate new revenues by making data available, safely and privately, to in-house and external experts.
For more information about the event, visit PG&E’s website.
Earlier this month, VIA CEO Colin Gounden gave the keynote speech during an event hosted at Siemens’ Denmark offices. The Danish Intelligent Energy Alliance, Intelligent Energi, organized the event for its members. Intelligent Energi’s goal was to encourage dialogue between network companies, suppliers, and academics about opportunities and challenges to adapt to variable and renewable generation in the electricity distribution network.
Colin shared VIA’s AI and blockchain expertise, with a particular focus on its AI results to improve operations and maintenance and its Trusted Analytics Chain (TAC) application. One major topic of discussion at the event was related to the massive transformation that electrification is having (e.g., changing consumption due to electric vehicles and electric heat pumps). In particular, participants agreed that to ensure the reliability of the grid under new stresses like electrification and renewables, improved sharing of digital information and AI are necessities.
In August, VIA’s VP, Strategic Initiatives Joe Babiec was invited to introduce VIA’s Trusted Analytics Chain application (TAC) and its innovative use of blockchain technology to more than 100 energy industry leaders during an address at the Swiss-US Energy Innovation Days (SUEID) conference in Geneva, Switzerland.
SUEID, hosted by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy and swissnex Boston, is an annual, invitation-only event that unites industry and thought leaders across Switzerland and the US. This event convenes a dynamic community of corporate, government, and academic leaders eager to exchange ideas, explore potential collaborations, and showcase promising energy-related innovations. One major theme voiced by conference participants was the need to increase information sharing within the energy industry while also respecting privacy concerns like GDPR. Joe’s address highlighted TAC’s ability to facilitate advanced analysis while ensuring compliance with customer-imposed or government-mandated security and privacy requirements.
Joe was also invited to meet with some of Switzerland’s largest power companies as well as leading academics in the country’s blockchain community, all of whom were interested in learning more about TAC and exploring potential future collaborations with VIA.
To learn more about the event, visit SUEID’s website.