On May 24, 2018, we hosted the fifth annual Tech Edge. This year brought a few firsts with a lot of talk of innovation and transformation. With over 200 attendees, we started the day with the largest IT crowd we have ever had. The keynote speaker Michael George, CEO of Continuum, set the stage for a day of transformation and innovation as he described how we are in the middle of the technology revolution and how change has already arrived and will continue to be inevitable.
How to deal with that change in our businesses every day was a big question in many of the sessions, whether it was organizational change, or simply how these new technologies continue to change the way we run our business. The marketing sessions gave an overview on how your consumers interact differently with you and how to find touching points with existing and new clients. The main takeaway: it is getting more digital and visual.
That could also be said for our booths where attendees for the first time could have a virtual reality (VR) experience, either fighting the Sith as a Jedi master, running around with dinosaurs, or exploring many other worlds. Seeing people swinging their lightsaber was definitely a lot of fun! It may just be games and leisure for now, but it is only a question of time when VR will penetrate other aspects of our lives, such as education and business.
Our lunch keynote, Lee Rozboom from Great America Financial, truly embodied innovation and his company is exemplary in how it helps them stay at the top. He shared how they have moved their company culture to the core of everything they do and how it drives their business in every way. In a time where generations seem to struggle to effectively collaborate (yes, it’s Millennials I’m talking about), they may have found a way to transcend these through a strong company culture.
Finally, as usual, there were great sessions packed with knowledge around IT and our vendors who brought the latest in firewalls, infrastructure, wireless networks, virtualization, video surveillance, and much more. Many sessions, of course, were dominated by concerns about cybersecurity and new approaches on how to deal with that every-changing environment.
If you missed Tech Edge this year and are kicking yourself now, we’d love to chat, catch you up and connect you with the key people to help you move forward. And, the VR glasses are also still around.
