Our Mission...
We believe in repeatable and scaleable architectures represent the highest quality and best ROI for our practice. This extends to all branches of architecture, but especially to AI. Our mission is to bring forth AI architectures which can be implemented by organizations of all sizes, adaptable to their specific needs, and help them maintain a competitive as well as legally and ethically step ahead of the competition.
Our Vision
Repeatability
AI should not be treated as a "build it and forget it" solution. Architectures in AI are a holistic fusion between what an organization does well, and how probabilistic technical solutions can benefit their end users and customers. We have accomplished our vision if organizations of all sizes and various industries are able to adapt the same frameworks to their particular needs successfully.
Scalability
Organizations should be able to build off of small, iterative successes in AI architectures with more projects that fit an unfilled niche. Only if these architectures are seen as a sustainable and intrinsic advantage to the Enterprise Architecture will their true potential be realized.
Our Events
February 2025 AI Working Group
We will be discussing RAGs, specifically how to "unlearn" data from a RAG. This could be due to compliance issues or a right to forget request under GDPR. RAGs are typically "learn once, always remember" models, so the technique of unlearning is relatively novel and requires more maturity within the broader RAG community.
Scheduled for 20 February, 2025 at 12 PM Pacific.
January 2025 AI Working Group
Agentic AI was the primary focus of the talk. We covered different frameworks for Agentic AI adoption, as well as pitfalls that we learned from Microservices.
December 2024 AI Working Group
We discussed GenAI for code completion tooling, both pros as well as cons. Members from the sustainability board joined in to give their take on the benefits of AI within the context of long term carbon emission goals. We also talked about practical implementations of RAGs.
We are building the worlds largest community of AI Architecture Contributors to create the most repeatable results in AI Value.
Training and Certification
Become an AI architect and join the global AI architecture leaders. The course is based completely on the learning in AI Architectures.
Lectures
12, in person or virtual lectures, followed by a lab to reinforce topics of discussion.
Areas of Focus:
AI Foundation - aligning to business objectives
Regulatory - US and EU focused
ESG - AI's carbon footprint
Tooling - for EAs, devs, etc
And more...
Labs
Each lab is designed to reinforce what was taught in the lecture through a Miro presentation. These labs can be done as a group in person or individually in a virtual setting, and presented back to the group.
Examples:
AI Center of Excellence
Monthly transfer limit: 50GB
Access level: User
Dedicated resources: No
Final Exam
Solidify your knowledge of AI delivery and strategy through a self paced final exam, covering aspects of all 12 lectures and labs in the course.
Criteria:
Self directed, with transparent evaluation measures
Practical and applicable to all industries
Forward-thinking
Useful for technical and non-technical participants
Leadership
Zach Gardner
Zach is the Chief Architect at Keyhole Software. He has over a decade of professional software development experience, and is the author if the AI Delivery & Strategy course for IASA. Zach has worked in healthcare, construction, finance, logistics, and other industries, and enjoys bridging the gap between business needs and technological possibilities.
Stephen Kaufman
Stephen has worked for Microsoft for almost 25 years in various roles, most recently as Chief Architect in the Office of the CTO for the Americas, dedicated to spearheading our strategic initiatives and working directly with customers to shape projects that drive innovation and growth.
He works in close collaboration with Product Engineering to amplify the voice of the customer and ensure that our company's outcomes are aligned with their needs and expectations while helping drive excellence internally for the entire organization.
IASA Global
IASA is a leader in the training, certification, and continuing education of IT architects around the world. IASA is the sponsor of communities like the Chief Architect Forum, WIA (Women In Architecture), etc. They are the driving force behind innovation and repeatable standardization of IT architecture best practices, and help guide this AI community to its fullest potential.
Interested?
Enroll Now
Enrollment opens up for the four sessions in 2025 soon.
Want more information?
Contact us, feedback is key to success.
Our CAF Working Group
AI Architecture Framework
There is unfortunately no one size fits all approach to implementing AI within a small, medium, or large organization. That said, we as architects take a broad ranging view of what works, what doesn't work, and how to transliterate what does work into a repeatable system and pattern. To that end, we are focused on developing an AI Architecture Framework that can scale with the needs, size, and complexity of the organizations for which architects that implement the framework at their unique organizations.
Our CAF (Chief Architect Forum) AI Working Group meets monthly to discuss considerations and implications of what AI implementation truly means as a Chief Architect. This then feeds into the monthly AI Focus Group discussions that are open to individuals of all skill levels and interests to validate, vet, and verify against real world examples and use cases.
Rather than being a collection of talking heads that stop short of actual real world advice, our AI Working and Focus groups exist only to provide tangible takeaways that guide board, EA, and AppDev discussions around the world.
Our Public Working Groups
Community Voices
We firmly believe that successful architecture are not built in ivory towers but as a community driven initiative. With AI architecture touching so many different disciplines, including sustainability, cloud native, legal/ethical, etc. it is simply not feasible for a single type of individual to have all of the knowledge and skills necessary to develop successful AI architectures.
To that end we have a public AI Architecture working group to discuss issues and solutions, share experiences as well as setbacks, and provide insights to the rest of the community as to what works and what doesn't.
Who Should Participate?
Chief Architects
Help guide your organization's EA and business units to effective, ethical, and forward thinking AI initiatives.
CTOs/CIOs
As a leading executive in tech, it's our responsibility to look into the future to determine what our company needs to put in place today to be successful tomorrow.
VP of Engineering, Architects, Etc
Practitioners of AI solutions have an important voice that needs to be in the mix to ground which ideas can be fully and effectively implemented.