Stories of Technology, Innovation, & Entrepreneurship in the Southeast

By Tom Ballard, Chief Alliance Officer, PYA

Nine individuals representing a variety of technology companies in the region provided updates at the start of Thursday afternoon’s annual “KTech PULSE Technology Summit” hosted by the roughly three-year old Knoxville Technology Council.

Held in the auditorium of Jewelry TV (JTV) in West Knoxville, the presenters represented everything from one of the area’s fastest growing companies (RDI Technologies Inc.) to those helping address workforce needs (Patriot Talent Solutions) and several involved in information technology in one way or another.

Collectively, they and keynote speaker Matt Sieger, Deputy Project Director for Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Frontier, the world’s first exascale supercomputer, provided a good picture of the region’s ever growing technology sector. (NOTE: Shannon Smith, Assistant Editor, will have a separate article on Sieger’s presentation in Monday’s edition of teknovation.biz.)

• Travis Howerton, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of RegScale, a company launched just a year ago, said that the dual-located start-up – headquarters in Tysons, VA and R&D operations in Knoxville – has grown in 12 months to 27 employees. It allows its customers to deliver compliance products faster, cheaper and with less risk. As announced in this August 2022 biz article, RegScale secured a $20 million Series A funding round led by SYN Ventures, a West Palm Beach, FL firm. “We’ve been on a tear since then,” Howerton told attendees.
• Joe Storch, Partner at Patriot, said the firm has doubled in the past two years and now includes 17 employees. The reason seems obvious: workforce demand. “We can’t find enough people for our open jobs,” he said.
• Daniel Murphy, Chief Operating Officer of Slamdot, a local web design firm, described a technology integration solution that the 17-year old company had developed for its own use and will begin rolling out to other companies in 2023.
• Andrew Dougherty, Director of Market Development at RDI Technologies, said the company’s Motion Amplification^® technology is in use in 58 countries in 38 different industries. He also described the unique combination of the company’s IrisM^TM technology with Spot^® that provides flexibility, repeatability and accessibility, and efficiency.
• Trevin Huff, Sales Development Representative with Check Point, previewed its patented technology that includes Check Point Harmony. Billed as the industry’s first unified security solution for users’ devices and access, it protects devices and internet connections from the most sophisticated attacks while ensuring zero-trust access to corporate applications.
• Vivek Mongolu, a JTV Software Architect, discussed a “customization offering” using AWS technology that allows the company to “generate assets on the fly.”
• Stuart O’Neill, Service Delivery Lead for Accenture, described an initiative from the consulting firm called “Mindful Performance.” Noting that a person’s health is determined by physical, mental and overall wellness, “The most important and least discussed is mental,” he said.
• Two Covenant Health System-affiliated individuals – Aaron Sherrill, Chief Technology Officer at TenHats, and Mark Maples, Director of Enterprise Integration and Development for the parent – previewed their work. We spotlighted TenHats and its unique name in this September 2022 biz article. Maples described several actions that Covenant had introduced to improve communication with patients including electronically sending a packet of forms that need to be completed before a visit or procedure and providing a tool for electronic co-pay.

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