Category: Technology

Mehrdad, PITON’s president, provided an introduction on PITON and its mission. He explained how PITON creates an environment in which people become empowerd by assisting each other.

As a regular practice in PITON, all the attendees are given time to introduce themselves in a professional way to stand up and be noticed.

The first presentation was performed by Fatima Omar, Leadership and Business Consultant, and the topic was “3 Steps to Success”. The three pillars of success can be summarized as “CUBS”:

Commitment: Declare your ultimate goals and remain focused on it.

Un-Learn: Find your barriers. Put aside your logical brain, listen to your curiosity and expand your abilities, move on.

Believe in yourself: Be kind to yourself

It leads to “Success”.

Second presentation was on Phishing scams that was delivered by Mehrdad.

He introduced Phishingfree.com that has a free browser add-on that can help detecting suspicious URLs. You can install it on Chrome and IE browsers for free.

This free add-on is provided by Safetoopen.com company based on Auckland, New Zealand.

Safetoopen provides phishing detection and protection solutions.

We had two guest speakers:
Hard skills (technology) track guest speaker was Masih Omid who talked about micro services. Summary of key points:
Micro-service architecture characteristics

• Componentization via Services
• Self-contain
• Deployable independently
• Cloud-native
• Organized around business capabilities
• Smart endpoints and dumb pipes
• Decentralized Data Management
• Design for failure
• Infrastructure Automation

The Soft Skill track guest speaker was Fatima Omar who talked about 3 Steps To Writing A Book:

• What’s your why?
• Provide a SOLUTION for your ideal client.
• Open KDP Account, Enter Book Details and Upload your Book

Meeting started with 30 minutes delay due to the traffic issue.

We extended the networking session at the beginning followed by two presentations:
Elham talked about secure online shopping since we are approaching to holidays and people tend to buy online.
Few things to remember from this presentation are as follows:

• Make sure the entire traffic is encrypted using https
• Verify the URL and ensure the spelling is correct. Sometimes fake websites use a very similar URL to fool people
• Use a strong password for online accounts
• When possible use PayPal rather than credit card
• Don't trust public WiFi

The second presentation was about Emotions and Subconscious mind by Dr. Alireza Sharifi. In his presentation, Alireza mentioned that the 4 steps to learning:

1. Unconscious Incompetence which is when we are exposed to something we don't know,
2. Conscious Incompetence, which is when we start learning something new
3. Conscious Competence which is a level in which we are getting better at something we learn,
4. and finally, Unconscious Competence which is the level we do things automatically.

After the formal speeches, Mehrdad provided an update on community project about January 12th seminar on raising security awareness for the general public.

It was an enjoyable and informational session.
On behalf of PITON board members, we thank our participants who made it.

PITON is a networking group of IT professionals for IT professionals to advance in their business, career or professional life.