LiveRamp’s biggest event, RampUp, took place on March 2nd and 3rd in San Francisco, at the Fairmont Hotel, the InterContinental Mark Hopkins Hotel, and the Masonic Center. This year, for the first time, during what was formerly known as Pre-Conference, during Day 1 of RampUp, participants could take part in the Innovation Studio, before the keynotes and other regular RampUp conference sessions. Innovation Studio is a set of special sessions, organized by different topic tracks, that focus more on the LiveRamp products and offerings than the rest of RampUp, which is more focused on industry issues at large. This year, RampUp for Developers was introduced as a track in the Innovation Studio.
RampUp for Developers was created as a track for engineers, integration managers, data and product leads to learn more about LiveRamp behind the scenes, and to hear about the latest technology trends in big data. Topics covered included managing a multiyear migration to the Google Cloud Platform, the current state of APIs, building privacy-first products, and many more:
- RampUp 2020: RampUp for Developers Recap
- Migration to Google Cloud Platform (GCP): Overview, Benefits, and Lessons Learned
- The Architecture and Future Direction of the LiveRamp Platform
- The Mechanics Systems behind Lookalike Modeling
- How LiveRamp Addresses GDPR, CCPA, and Future Data Regulations
- Enabling Programmatic Integrations and Flexibility through APIs
- The New TV Landscape: Technical Challenges and Rewards
Clicking on the links above or below (to be posted on an ongoing basis) will take you to the individual posts for each of the sessions where you can watch videos, read the full transcript of each session, as well as download the slides presented. Read on for more information about the RampUp for Developers track overall:
RampUp for Developers – Track Titles and Descriptions:
9:00 – 9:30 AM: Migration to Google Cloud Platform (GCP): Overview, Benefits, and Lessons Learned
Speakers:
- Kelsey Hightower – Principal Developer Advocate at Google Cloud Platform
- Sasha Kipervarg – Head of Global Cloud Operations at LiveRamp
- Joshua Kwan – Engineering Lead, DevOps at LiveRamp
- Patrick Raymond – Sr. Product Manager Infrastructure at LiveRamp
Learn from one of the largest migrations to the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) where LiveRamp engineers moved a 79,800 core cluster with 90 PB of disk space and 256 TB of RAM necessary to power our systems. Hear how the team overcame many obstacles, yielding multiple benefits, including: redundant Google data centers and built-in capabilities that replicate our data, cloud native architecture and security technology within Google’s cloud, and many others.
9:40 – 10:10 AM: The Architecture and Future Direction of the LiveRamp Platform
Speaker:
- Andrew McVeigh – Chief Architect at LiveRamp
LiveRamp’s platform processes many trillions of graph edges in order to deliver segments to hundreds of destination platforms. Powered by over 600 million unique online authentication events per month across our match network, our deterministic identity graph is the largest on the open internet, enabling us to build robust customer profiles and reach those customers with the highest degree of accuracy. In this session, we’ll show how this is performed in an efficient manner whilst preserving privacy and security and explain where the architecture is evolving to.
10:20 – 10:50 AM: The Mechanics Systems Behind Lookalike Modeling
Speakers:
- Joe Hsy – Head of Engineering – Data Science and Innovation at LiveRamp
- Ope Banwo – Software Engineer, Data Science at LiveRamp
Built on LiveRamp’s RampID, a consistent and pseudonymous person-based ID, our lookalike modeling solution is channel and device agnostic, meaning we can ingest virtually any ID types and produce modeled audiences for a different ID space, such as display channels using cookies. This opens up inventory, such as TV, that are often inaccessible by other modeling providers. Learn the mechanics behind LiveRamp’s RampID and how it can enable lookalike modeling.
11:00 – 11:30 AM: How LiveRamp Addresses GDPR, CCPA, and Future Data Regulations
Speakers:
- Quinn Stearns – Software Engineer at LiveRamp
- Tara Aida – Product Manager for Privacy at LiveRamp
Since innovation typically outpaces legislation, an ethical approach to data requires safeguards, policies, and engineering that go beyond what is required by the law to protect consumer privacy. GDPR and CCPA are some recent examples of data ethics challenges businesses face. In this session, learn how LiveRamp addresses recent legislation and the ethical treatment of data from a development and engineering perspective.
11:30 AM – 12:10 PM: Enabling Programmatic Integrations and Flexibility Through APIs
Speaker:
- Davin Chia – Senior Software Engineer at LiveRamp
LiveRamp’s underlying technology platform is based on four subsystems: Identity, Connectivity, Data Stewardship, and Data Access. When decoupled, each of these subsystems can be made valuable to a wide set of customers and customer use cases. Our API strategy enables customers and partners to integrate with us and use each subsystem in a programmatic way, similar to the automated methods of programmatic buying). Once these APIs are created, users will be able to select different areas of the platform to match their needs. Our speakers will share our API strategy, the core capabilities of our platform, and the process of creating RESTful APIs.
12:30 – 12:50 PM: The New TV Landscape: Technical Challenges and Rewards
Speaker:
- Randall Kelley – Vice President, Research at LiveRamp
Streaming, data, and other advancements in technology have transformed the relationship brands can have with audiences via TV, creating tremendous opportunities to improve how TV inventory is bought, sold, and measured. LiveRamp acquired Data Plus Math earlier this year, to accelerate LiveRamp’s TV capabilities and offerings. In this session, attendees will learn how the technical and developmental challenges presented by the new TV landscape are solved by LiveRamp and Data Plus Math engineers, allowing advertisers to better connect with their audiences and networks and TV programmers to offer them better intelligence.
Following RampUp for Developers, participants were welcomed to the conference with opening remarks from LiveRamp CEO Scott Howe, and then keynotes from speakers including:
- Why Make the Investment in Mar Tech?
- Speakers:
- Bob Rupczynksi – SVP at McDonald’s
- Laura Desmond – Founder at Eagle Vista Partners and Senior Advisor at LiveRamp
- Speakers:
- Preparing for Post-Cookie Advertising
- Speakers:
- Scott Howe – CEO at LiveRamp
- Jason Wagenheim – President and Chief Revenue Officer at Bustle Digital Group
- Nancy Hall – SVP, Programmatic at Cadreon
- John Genry – CEO at OpenX
- Michelle Zatlyn – COO and Co-Founder at Cloudflare
- Speakers:
At 4 PM, RampUp for Developers were treated to a special happy hour at the Cirque Bar at the Fairmont Hotel. The Cirque Bar has been open since 1933 (and was the first bar to open in San Francisco following Prohibition’s repeal). Attendees were able to mingle and talk with the RampUp for Developers speakers and attendees, were served drinks and appetizers at the bar, and could play VR games set up to play in the French Room. Following the happy hour, attendees attended the welcome reception for RampUp as well as RampUp After Dark in the Tonga Room at the Fairmont Hotel. RampUp for Developers attendees were also able to attend any of the additional, RampUp conference and additional activities starting on Day 2 of the conference.
RampUp for Developers’ inaugural run was a great success and was well attended by a variety of attendees. Many interactions and open discussions were spurred from the conference tracks and discussions, and we are looking forward to making a greater impact with engineers and developers at future events, including during our RampUp on the Road series (which take place throughout the year virtually and at a variety of locations), as well during next year’s RampUp 2021 in San Francisco. If you are interested in more information or would like to get involved as a sponsor or speaker at a future event, please reach out to Randall Grilli, Tech Evangelist at LiveRamp, by email: [email protected].