[NSH-2026] Program and speaker updates (#41)

* Program and speaker updates

* Updates

* Photo update

* Updates

Author: GeoffCraig

assets/events/2026-nashville/speakers/brandon-hedge.png

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+Talk_date = ""
+Talk_start_time = ""
+Talk_end_time = ""
+Title = "AI Slop Wrangling: Reining In Control When Developers Are Armed With A.I. Slop Cannons"
+Type = "talk"
+Speakers = ["brandon-hedge"]
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+
+AI coding assistants have handed every developer on your team a firehose. Pull requests are bigger, faster, and more confident than ever — and a growing percentage of what lands in your repo is code that no human has fully read, let alone understood. The productivity gains are real, but so is the slop: plausible-looking code that passes a casual review, slips past weak tests, leaks abstractions, and quietly introduces security issues that won't surface until production.
+
+This talk is about how engineering leaders and senior ICs can reassert control without killing the velocity their teams have come to love. We'll cover the four gates that matter most when AI is writing a meaningful share of your code: quality gates that catch slop before it merges, test coverage strategies that actually verify behavior instead of rubber-stamping generated tests, abstractions that force AI output to conform to your architecture rather than warp it, and security gates designed for a world where secrets, injection flaws, and dependency risks can be generated at machine speed.
+Attendees will leave with a practical framework for auditing their current guardrails, concrete tooling recommendations, and a clearer picture of where human judgment still has to live in an AI-augmented SDLC.

content/events/2026-nashville/program/brandon-hedge.md

@@ -8,3 +8,4 @@ linktitle = "benv-savage"
 Website = ""
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+Ben Savage, serving as the visionary CEO of Veritas Automata, brings to the forefront an extensive background in revolutionizing autonomous transaction processing through the strategic integration of blockchain, smart contracts, and machine learning. His tenure at Veritas Automata is marked by an unwavering commitment to innovation, operational efficiency, and leveraging technology for transformative business solutions. Prior to leading Veritas Automata, Ben was instrumental in shaping the future of IoT solutions as the CTO and Chief Innovation Officer at Apex Supply Chain Technologies, where he pioneered the development of the groundbreaking Pizza Portal for Little Caesars among other complex IoT applications.

content/events/2026-nashville/speakers/benv-savage.md

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+Title = "Brandon Hedge"
+Twitter = ""
+linkedin = ""
+image = "brandon-hedge.png"
+type = "speaker"
+linktitle = "brandon-hedge"
+Website = ""
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+
+B. Hedge is a technologist with nearly 30 years of experience spanning infrastructure, distributed systems, and engineering leadership. He currently works at Neural Payments, where he focuses on Artificial Intelligence, data architecture and security in a PCI environment — including end-to-end PGP encryption of cardholder data and a quantum-proof KMS tokenization solution for PANs.
+
+Previously, he served as CTO of Lineage Bank, building out the technical foundation for both traditional banking and banking-as-a-service partnerships. Before that, he led cloud systems engineering at Elastic, managed the SRE team at npm, Inc., and held senior architecture and director-level roles at LeanKit and LifePoint Health.
+
+His work sits at the intersection of deep technical craft and team leadership, with a long track record of building highly available systems, resilient data pipelines, and cohesive remote teams.

content/events/2026-nashville/speakers/brandon-hedge.md

@@ -8,5 +8,5 @@ linktitle = "michael-anthony"
 Website = ""
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+Transitioning from the front lines to the frontier of technology, I am a Computer Science student with a diverse background in the Air Force and Fire/EMS. My experience in these demanding fields taught me to make critical decisions under pressure a skill I now leverage in programming and game development. I am particularly driven by the evolving landscape of Artificial Intelligence. I advocate for an educational approach to AI that emphasizes ethical responsibility and practical application for students, ensuring that we use emerging tools to enhance, rather than replace, human creativity
 

content/events/2026-nashville/speakers/michael-anthony.md

@@ -8,5 +8,5 @@ linktitle = "mike-noe"
 Website = ""
 +++
 
-
+Mike is a 20 year veteran of technology operations across a dozen industries. He's an international speaker/presenter having presented in Europe and across America. Today he provides various organizations with a deep insight through a variety of technical challenges while also volunteering to organize DevOpsDays Nashville. 
 

content/events/2026-nashville/speakers/mike-noe.md

@@ -238,7 +238,7 @@ program:
     date: 2026-05-15
     start_time: "09:10"
     end_time: "10:00"
-  - title: "reserved"
+  - title: "brandon-hedge"
     type: talk
     date: 2026-05-15
     start_time: "10:00"