Tom Howe is Director of Field Engineering at Hydrolix, where he focuses on customer facing engineering and technical strategy for real-time data analytics and observability. With more than 25 years of experience in software engineering, distributed systems, and technical leadership, Tom has built and scaled platforms that power some of the world's largest digital experiences.

Before joining Hydrolix, Tom served as Director of Software Engineering at Disney, where he led the automation and intelligent management of the global media distribution mesh behind Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+, and Star+. His earlier career includes work as a computational social scientist  at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory, where he developed large-scale simulation and modeling systems for domains ranging from electric grids to biosecurity.

Tom lives in the Sierra Nevada foothills of Northern California with his partner, Melissa, and their son, Michael. As a founding member of the Mucca Pazza  experimental marching band, Tom has performed at events including Lollapalooza and the Montreal Jazz Festival. When not working with data or customers, he enjoys tackling home projects and loving the frequent wildlife like turkeys and bats in his backyard.

Presentations

23x

How AI is Accelerating the Pace of Innovation (And Why Humans Still Matter)

The innovation cycle is compressing dramatically. At Hydrolix, a real-time analytics platform company, we're witnessing this transformation firsthand within our product development team. What once took months now takes days.

AI enables rapid experimentation, faster customer feedback loops, and dramatically shortened time-to-market for proofs of concept. However, this speed doesn't eliminate the need for human expertise—it transforms it. 

In this session, Director of Field Engineering Tom Howe will explore how AI is reshaping the innovation timeline, the competitive advantages this speed creates, and why human judgment and oversight have become more critical than ever—just in fundamentally different ways.

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