Conference News: Brainstorm Bounces; Speaking of Education; Winning the Cloud Wars

GSMA Opens Up about New Event: Mobile World Live is the GSMA’s own media outlet which has recently launched a new series of digital events starting this fall, called MWL Unwrapped. The GSMA Mobile World Live Unwrapped event series will offer a full week of “exclusive live content, featuring daily keynote interviews, panel discussions, and webinars – in partnership with the expert analysts at GSMA Intelligence.” They plan to host executives and experts on key topics concerning technology and trends shaping connectivity in our lives and work. These include enterprise XR & the metaverse, smart cities, smart manufacturing, private networks & edge, and security. MWL Unwrapped will be a digital event held live on 14-18 November 2022 and streamed to a global audience.  The theme of the November edition is Making Money from the Mobile Enterprise.

Another Day Another Mountain: Fortune Media has decided to relocate its flagship tech conference, Brainstorm: Tech, after years of calling Aspen home. Hotels and travel to the ski town have become very expensive over the past few years. In 2023, this top tech event will be held in Park City, UT at the Montage Deer Valley.

Speaking Opportunity: As its name suggests, the International Society for Technology in Education – or ISTE for short – is one of the most influential edtech events in the world. And now through 30 September, edtech innovators and practitioners can apply to contribute in new ways at ISTELive 23, which will be held 25-28 June in Philly. New this year, would-be speakers can submit for additional presentation formats, including Playgrounds (multi-presenter, hands-on learning experiences at demonstration stations), Campfires (conversational experiences where educators share best practices and innovative ideas in a casual “unconference” format), and Tours (off-site excursions with a cultural, educational or historical focus that allow attendees to experience Philadelphia). Another option: Presenters can offer to share their expertise online or live at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.

Conference Manager Q&A: The inaugural Cloud Wars Expo was produced this past June by the Acceleration Economy Network, reaching 3,000 IT decision markers in person & virtually. We sat down with organizer Aaron Back, the group’s VP & Principal Analyst, to learn how he identified and filled a void in the conference landscape and what the impetus was to equip CXOs as they reimagine business models, optimize their digital futures, and accelerate critical decisions.  

Speaker Strategies: Why did you decide to start Cloud Wars Expo?

We realized that other technology events, media, and analyst firms were focused on the “waves and quadrants” which revolved around the “what and who” in the decision-making process. Instead, Cloud Wars Expo – which is scheduled in 2023 for 2-4 April at the Westin Kierland in Scottsdale – is focused on first-person perspectives centered on the “why and how” within the healthcare, manufacturing, retail, public sector, hospitality, and financial services industries. This provides strategic guidance for decisions based on real-world experience, not stats and figures to rationalize a decision that has already been made.

Speaker Strategies: What is the most important trait of a good speaker?

Know your topic, your audience, and yourself. A good speaker will know the core points of their topic and use a slide deck only as a quick reference or to amplify the message. They also fine tune topics over time; things in the world change all the time and if you don’t adjust your topic, it will become stale. A good speaker needs to resonate with the audience to challenge, question, surprise, or force deeper thought. For example, a CXO audience is vastly different than, say, a developer or project manager. Going into the “technical weeds” would lose your CXO audience in a split second – versus a developer that needs those “weedy” details – which means outlining WHY a technology matters or HOW to evaluate technology solutions is most important. A good speaker will be authentic and understand their strengths and weaknesses to bring out the best in themselves to present the topic to their audience. Being authentic means that your words won’t be perfect. You may stumble on them. You may switch them around. Lastly, be passionate about what you are doing. If you aren’t passionate, then your words will fall flat and the audience will know it.

Coming Up Next Week: Back live in person, the 2022 Fast Company Innovation Festival will run 19-22 September and take place in workplaces and other innovative spaces across NYC, unified under the theme “Innovation Unbound.” At AnitaB.org’s Grace Hopper Celebration/GHC (20-23 September; Orlando & online), thousands at all levels of their careers convene to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront. (You can even catch Amy & Gail speaking here on Wednesday!) At the hybrid Forbes Sustainability Leaders’ Summit on 20 September, attendees can either join in-person at Forbes On Fifth or tune in virtually to explore why the global economy is built on a backbone of once-innovative technologies and practices that no longer work, and where we must go from here. Dreamforce kicks off another year of what they dub the “world’s largest software conference,” offering content and networking for the Salesforce ecosystem, when it’s held 20-22 September in San Francisco and online. Finally, DMEXCO – which stands for the Digital Marketing Exposition & Conference – kicks off 21 September in the German city of Cologne. DMEXCO’s mission is to create the world’s leading ecosystem for digital marketing, a kind of “digiconomy” intended to facilitate networking, interaction, and business among its members.