🚀June NVTC News | Do YOU know what 'GPT' stands for?

Dear NVTC members,

The Tech Boom of 2024!

We are living in extraordinary times, with AI ushering in a new industrial revolution. Today, NVIDIA became the world's largest company, reaching a staggering $3.3 trillion valuation due to the high demand for their AI-enabling chips. WOW! As our world becomes increasingly AI-driven, GPUs have emerged as one of the most critical inventions of our time. I am excited to see how our region’s companies and higher education institutions lean in to embrace and integrate more AI systems.

What NVTC Has Been Up To

It’s been an exciting spring at NVTC! We have:

• Successfully advocated in the Commonwealth against the proposed digital goods sales tax.
• Educated 300+ tech community members about the latest AI advancements at the NVTC Impact AI Summit.
• Gathered 700+ professionals to celebrate this year’s CFO Award winners.
• Hosted and connected 200+ interns from nearly 50 member companies at our 3rd annual Summer Intern Networking Reception. See photos here.

And, we’re gearing up to finish our fiscal year stronger than ever!

Tech Talk with Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA)

Join us next Wednesday, June 26, for the NVTC Annual Membership Meeting. Connect with fellow members and get inspired by what’s next for NVTC.

Yes, and: I'm looking forward to hosting a fireside chat with special guest Sen. Warner. We’ll dive into pressing tech topics like the CHIPS Act, generative AI, space, and nuclear power, exploring their impact on our region, nation and world. Register today—it's free for all NVTC members, but spots are filling up fast!

Scroll down for exciting updates!

🚀Plus, do you really know what GPT stands for and why?

Sincerely,

Jennifer Taylor

🏆 Hey NOVA tech companies…apply for Deloitte's Fast500 awards

Is your company a tech disruptor? A big cheese?

• Deloitte's Technology Fast500 awards honor North America's most innovative companies.
• Join the ranks of Google, eBay and Tesla—previous winners that have transformed how we live, work and play.

Don't miss this amazing opportunity. We want to see NVTC members on the Deloitte Technology Fast500 list next November.

Winning this award is an honor and testament to how your company drives innovation.

What’s next? Apply today. Applications close soon!

NVTC is a proud sponsor of Deloitte’s Fast 500 Awards.

🚀 AI summit highlights how NOVA will be known as an “AI town”

We are witnessing an extraordinary era with AI in motion to revolutionize industries globally.

• This May, NVTC’s 6th annual Impact AI Summit showcased this.
• This year’s theme was “Realizing the Value of AI: Strategies, Challenges, and Opportunities” to help organizations shape the future of their AI initiatives.

What they're saying: Keynote speaker Anthony Robbins, NVIDIA's VP of Federal, electrified the audience with his enthusiastic endorsement of GPUs' pivotal role in shaping the future of AI!

• He underscored Northern Virginia's capacity to spearhead AI adoption, leveraging our track record as a thriving tech innovation hub.
• Robbins encouraged everyone to learn about and embrace AI, update tech systems, and use AI to make a big impact on industries by using data in new, profound ways.

Go deeper: Read Jennifer Taylor’s blog post for a summary of her takeaways from Robbins' keynote.

🌠🌟 George Mason to launch an artificial star

The big picture: Last week, George Mason University, in collaboration with NASA and other partners, announced plans to launch a pioneering space mission in 2029 that will send an "artificial star" into Earth's orbit.

Go deeper:

• The Fairfax campus will be home to the Landolt NASA Space Mission, a “first-of-its-kind project” for a university in our region.
• The mission will involve the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Colorado-based satellite company Blue Canyon Technologies.

What is an artificial star, you ask?

• It will allow scientists to calibrate telescopes and accurately measure the brightness of stars ranging from those nearby to the distant explosions of supernova in far-off galaxies.
• The mission will help address several challenges in astrophysics including the speed and acceleration of the universe expansion.

📚 What Jenn Taylor is reading

Here's a list of books Jennifer Taylor recommend. And yes, Jenn is one of those people who reads multiple books at once!

📗 Just Finished:

• Build the Life You Want, by Arthur Brooks
• Green Lights, by Matthew McConaughey (The audio version is great fun because Matthew has a incredible poetic voice.)

📙 In Progress:

• Table for Two, by Amor Towles (my favorite fiction author right now)

📘 Just Started:

• Just the Good Stuff, by Jim VandeHei (The entire NVTC staff is currently reading this.)
• Walk Ride Paddle, by U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), which chronicles Kaine’s adventurous journey through Virginia's wilderness, while reflecting on his political career and personal growth during pivotal national events. He celebrates Virginia's natural landscapes and waterways through stories of hiking, biking and kayaking, promoting environmental conservation and outdoor enjoyment. 🌄

📅 Hot off the press: NVTC’s 2024-2025 Signature Events lineup

Our thought bubble: NVTC’s signature events are scheduled through NEXT June!

What’s next?

• Mark your calendar now and watch your inbox for announcements about ticket sales.
• This just in: Cyber50 nominations now open! Nominate a cyber company or professional today.

Go deeper: Want to get your brand in front of thousands of the region’s top tech professionals? Email Tarin Horan at thoran@nvtc.org to learn about sponsorship opportunities!

How to win at work & strategies for success

Written by Andrew Deutscher , CEO and Founder of Regenerate

We all want to win. You didn’t get to your role as a business and tech leader without a deep desire to succeed, perform at a high level and win.  

Yes, but: What does it mean to win at work? It means we must:

1. Understand the challenges we’re up against. We can only win if we know our opponent. In this case, we’re often battling chronic stress, fatigue and a lack of purpose that comes from our rapidly changing and evolving business environment.  
2. Know the rules of engagement. The business world changes fast, and it can be dizzying to keep up. Give yourself, and your team, a fighting chance by ensuring everyone is playing by the same set of rules and in alignment with what success looks like for your team and organization.  
3. Commit the resources needed to succeed. If you want to win at work and in life, you need the energy and capacity to make it happen. To maintain the energy required for sustainable high performance, you also need a toolset for recovery.  

Go deeper: Here are ways you can make work winnable and achieve success. Start with sharing the why.

🎓 Celebrating the 2024 Bobbie Kilberg Scholarship awardees

The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia hosted its Scholar Impact Celebration this week, honoring 119 recent high school graduates, including the five 2024 Bobbie Kilberg Scholarship awardees. NVTC President and CEO Jennifer Taylor delivered the keynote remarks.

Why it matters: Established in 2021, the Kilberg Scholarship Fund supports exceptional women pursuing tech careers, awarding $5,000 to each recipient for higher education in STEM fields.

• Empowering women to pursue STEM careers resonates deeply with NVTC's mission.

Go deeper: Check out this year’s scholarship recipients and where they're headed for college.

One fun thing: What does GPT stand for?

By Jennifer Taylor

Last weekend on Father’s Day, I had a conversation with my Dad about how we each integrate generative AI in our daily routines. We both agreed that AI helps us work faster and smarter.

• Dad uses Perplexity.ai to assist with composing emails to the Board members of volunteer organizations he serves on.
• I use ChatGPT-4.0 to answer complex questions, seeking concise summaries or interpretations.

Then, Dad posed an intriguing question to me:

What do LLM and GPT stand for?

I confidently replied, "LLM stands for Large Language Model.”💡

🧩However, I was puzzled by GPT. While I knew 'G' stood for generative, I struggled to recall what 'P' and 'T' represented. 🙃

To clear up my confusion, I consulted ChatGPT. Here's what it said.

"GPT" stands for "Generative Pre-trained Transformer," a name carefully chosen for its precise description.

• Generative means the model is designed to generate text, producing human-like responses based on input it receives.
• Pre-trained means the model is pre-trained on a vast amount of text data from the internet. This pre-training phase allows it to learn grammar, facts, reasoning abilities and some level of world knowledge. Afterward, the model is fine-tuned for specific tasks with additional training.
• Transformer refers to the model’s architecture. Transformers are a type of neural network architecture introduced in a 2017 paper "Attention Is All You Need" by Vaswani et al. They handle sequential data and are the foundation for state-of-the-art language models, including GPT.

The bottom line: GPT describes how a model can create text, how it's trained, and the neural network it's built upon.

So now you know! 😁😉

NVTC member news

🤖 McKinsey recently announced a collaboration with NVIDIA to empower enterprises with the transformative capabilities of generative AI. Capital investments in AI will help clients tap into the technology’s estimated $4 trillion productivity potential.

👏 Congratulations NVTC Board member Mark Ellenbogen for recently being named BDO Chief Operating Officer.

If you would like to include your industry announcement in future NVTC newsletters, please email info@nvtc.org.

Welcome new NVTC members

Welcome new members that joined in May: Absolute EMC LLC | CV, Inc. | Enployable, Inc. | ESI Total Fuel Management | Fahl | Henkels & McCoy | M3 Advisors, LLC | Munters Corporation | Oxus Consulting Group, LLC | Platinum Edge | Rohirrim, Inc. | Valenta Consultants

What’s next?

• Attend the NVTC Member Orientation this summer.

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