Agendas get you in the door. The people in the room are why you come back. Our first look at Prodacity 2026 covered the program. This covers who you’ll spend three days with.
Prodacity is Rise8’s three-day training event, August 25-27 in Nashville, where GovTech leaders learn to ship mission-critical software faster. The draw is what you can take home: tangible learnings you can put to work the week you’re back, and the peer connections that tend to outlast the event.
You’ll learn alongside Government decision-makers, practitioners and industry partners who are working on the same problems you are. AI is the throughline in every session as an accelerant of the delivery work. The conversations focus on how to get software into production and into the hands of the people who depend on it for the nation’s most critical missions.
Who’s Teaching at Prodacity 2026
General Stephen N. Whiting, Commander of U.S. Space Command, headlines the 2026 stage. The roster spans leaders from Government agencies and industry with expertise in acquisitions, AI, cybersecurity, software engineering and organizational transformation.
Newly announced speakers include:
- Shannon Pallone, Portfolio Acquisition Executive at Battle Management, Command, Control, Communications, and Space Intelligence, U.S. Space Force, Space Systems Command
- Ryan Connell, Deputy, Rapid Acquisition Cell, Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO)
- Josh Marcuse, Director of Defense Strategy & Growth, Google
- Paul Rayner, Author of The EventStorming Handbook
- Thomas Roderick, PhD, Founder and Chief Technology & AI Officer, Flamelit
- Steve Pereira, Creator of Flow Engineering
- Lori-Ann Rissler, Founder, LASR Ops and former U.S. Air Force contracting officer
- Chris Hughes, Vice President of Security Strategy, Zenity and U.S. Air Force Veteran
- Russ Miles, AI and Platform Engineering Expert
- Dr. Dolores Kuchina-Musina, Founder and CEO, REXOTA Solutions, specializing in Other Transaction Authorities and acquisition reform
- Dan Ward, Co-Founder, SparkLit Group and U.S. Air Force Veteran
- Bryan Guinn, Chief Growth Officer, SBIR Advisors
- Dr. Patti Fletcher, Author of Disrupters, Strategic Advisor and Machine Learning Pioneer
- Nick Setterberg, Staff Engagement Manager, Skylight and U.S. Air Force Reservist
- Bharat Patel, Managing Director, AI & Data Lead for Defense, Accenture Federal Services
They join previously announced speakers including Kent Beck, Mina Hsiang, Suzette Kent, Jonathan Mostowski, Bryon Kroger and Lloyd Evans. More names are still landing.
Special Offer for Eligible Veterans
Prodacity is also investing in the next generation of GovTech leaders with complimentary passes for eligible Veterans.
You’ll attend all three days. On Day 3, you’ll join Impact Lab for Leaders where you will use AI-native tools to build working software. No coding experience is required, just a desire to keep serving in a new way. Apply here.
Prodacity Days Are for Building. Prodacity Nights Are for Music
The conversations don’t stop when the sessions end.
Rise8 has partnered with Operation Encore, a nonprofit collective of Veteran and military singer-songwriters, to bring live music to the Tuesday and Wednesday happy hours. Veterans Brooks Herring and Derek Stoner will perform, so you get a little Nashville between sessions and more time with the people you spent the day learning with.
Thank You to the Partners Making Prodacity Possible
Prodacity runs on a community of sponsors advancing Government technology: Palantir, Red Hat, Spectro Cloud, Infusion Points, Accenture, Coder, Security Compass, SBIR Advisors and Improvix.
Several of them are members of the Carahsoft partner ecosystem, and that overlap is what makes Prodacity different. Government, industry and technology leaders sit in the same room and trade what’s working and what’s still stuck.
The problems aren’t getting easier. Mandates are landing faster than most agencies can absorb them, and fixed-price contracting is the default now. Everyone is still working out where AI belongs in a compliance-heavy pipeline.
The leaders making real progress are the ones comparing notes with peers under the same constraints. That’s the room. Three days of it, plus a set of people you can call in October when something breaks.
Join Rise8 at Prodacity 2026: Uncharted in Nashville, August 25–27. Register here.
Carahsoft Technology Corp. is The Trusted Government IT Solutions Provider, supporting Public Sector organizations across Federal, State and Local Government agencies and Education and Healthcare markets. As the Master Government Aggregator for our vendor partners, including Rise8, we deliver solutions for Geospatial, Cybersecurity, MultiCloud, DevSecOps, Artificial Intelligence, Customer Experience and Engagement, Open Source and more. Working with resellers, systems integrators and consultants, our sales and marketing teams provide industry leading IT products, services and training through hundreds of contract vehicles. Explore the Carahsoft Blog to learn more about the latest trends in Government technology markets and solutions, as well as Carahsoft’s ecosystem of partner thought-leaders.
