It was a great privilege to attend the Georgia Technology Summit, Wednesday, March 24, 2010.  Forty innovative companies in Georgia were showcased and the top ten were featured and given three minutes of special time in between the keynote speakers.  The keynote speakers were outstanding:  Tom Koulopoulos, Carlos Dominguez, and Bert Ellis.  In addition, an informative update was presented on the State of the Technology Industry in Georgia by Technology Association of Georgia President, Tino Mantella.  Lastly, Kenneth Byers of Byers Engineering Company was inducted into the Technology Hall of Fame.  While the entire event was exceptional with hundreds in attendance, each of the keynote speakers captivated the audience.

Tom Koulopoulos, President and founder of The Delphi Group, and also a known author, futurist, and leader in the technology industry, centered his speech on building connections.  He defined an invention as an idea, while innovation creates value.  He also pointed out that technology used to be what we did not grow up with and now it is what we do.  Technology has become a behavior used for collaboration.  It has become an experience about sharing.  One major example he explained was the evolving avatars, specifically he demonstrated the Land’s End Avatar used to tailor and order clothes.  In light of the technology evolution and the unpredictability in behaviors, he emphasized that leaders have to learn to adapt to the changing behaviors.  Leaders must provide latitude for failure and even architect disruption into the organization for early changes.  It is important to embrace and accept failure fast to sustain growth and survival as a business, company, and organization.

Carlos Dominguez, Senior Vice President at Cisco, continued to emphasize how to leverage change for a competitive advantage as someone called a “nowist” he termed as a person that embraces change.  The most vivid demonstration he gave was of the changing world of the magazine to fit the tablet revolution.  He presented the new Sports Illustrated with point click and customizable features with varying viewpoints.  He explained how the camera has evolved to change how we interact from creating movies to cards to trainings.  A whole new way of sharing and doing things has opened.  The usage of YouTube has skyrocketed in the past two months along with the social media changes of Facebook and Twitter.  An interesting fact of Twitter is that 90% of Twitters never post but just capture the information.  With the provisions of HDTV and other means of online collaboration, virtual meetings and presentations are also up decreasing the needs to travel.  Mobile internet users now outnumber home internet users.  We are also experiencing the beginning of gaming like commands through voice command features.  Like Koulopoulos, Dominguez stated the importance of establishing guidelines for acceptable behavior to utilize and leverage contributions.

The third major keynote speaker, Bert Ellis, active entrepreneur in the media and technology industries, discussed the transformations of the avatar in game development.  Avatars are becoming increasingly popular in other platforms of buying virtual goods.  He also explained an innovation he calls “stupidity insurance” through TigerText.  TigerText is an impermanent text message that creates an expiration date to automatically delete from the recipient’s inbox.

This was an exciting event as new energy was in the atmosphere.  Start ups and emerging trends are being explored in this desperate economy.  Leaders are opening up to new ideas and new ways of conducting business like never in previous history.  I am thankful for the opportunity I had to attend and to listen these outstanding speakers and top innovations in Georgia.