Minnesota High Tech Association Spring Conference: Notes

Yesterday I attended the Minnesota High Tech Association Spring Conference. Margaret Anderson Kelliher, current chair of the Minnesota Broadband Task Force hosted the event (as President of the MHTA) and former Task Force chair Rick King gave the keynote presentation. So it seemed as if there was a lot of broadband in the air.

The buzz about the conference was the announced relocation of the MHTA. They will be moving downtown to the Grain Exchange Building. In the sessions, folks were talking very specifically about how to use technology to improve business. Social Media, Cloud Computing and Security were hot topics.

Talking to attendees, it was good to hear that most folks feel business is good. From Involta to the Eagan Data Center, folks were talking about growth and building capacity – broadband, workforce and knowledge. Folks were telling stories of how technology has worked for them and what they are doing to make sure that it continues to work.

I took notes from the sessions I attended. They aren’t full notes – but I offer them for folks who weren’t able to attend….

Margaret Anderson Kelliher

Recent jobs report indicates that the computer sectors is reaching levels we haven’t seen in 10 years. The question is – are we producing enough quality people to meet that need? We will be looking into that with listening sessions with MNSCU today.

MHTA is moving this summer to downtown Mpls – the Grain Exchange Building

Gov Dayton

Rick King – what sets you apart matters

Will talk about how to work with and create a community & culture in a global company. Branding comes down to image – and those who control the image control the brand.

Do you want to define your brand or do you want someone else to define your brand personally and professionally? You don’t want to leave yourself with nothing.

If you don’t know anything about something – you will define it yourself and generally less complementary terms than a product would want.

Thompson Reuters focuses on: Authentic – Transparent – Courageous

My job is to make the company and the brand better than you found it. You need to be able to walk the talk. The Brand Becomes the Verb

How do you share what you want people to do? People get more involved if they make connection to leadership. It makes sense to define the brand and then use that to start conversations. How do you start conversations when you’re spread over 11 countries? Technology tools can help you put the goals and brand out there.

How do I use tools to communicate with people about what I want them to know about the business or me?

TR uses LinkedIn and Twitter as a tool to communicate in and out of the company. Rick started a blog internally. The goal was 3-4 posts a week, mostly on business. But the most interesting posts to readers were the personal posts. Personal posts start a conversation that professional posts can’t. They build a conversations; they build relationships.

7000 person office. We don’t know everyone. Mostly people don’t say hello if you’re the executive – unless you speak first. Now people start a conversation based on past blog posts. That’s a program that starts engagement with the folks we want to reach.

Social media can raise engagement.

Shared Drive is a video – we focus on product launch or other event to highlight individual and team achievement. It’s a great way to recognize and reward people. Surveys showed that people thought reward and recognition were low.

Webcasts of technology leaders like talk shows. We get 1000-12000 live viewers (and twice that view the archive). People can post questions in advance and/or send questions during the session. The feedback on this programs has been great.

You have to make sure these things are authentic and transparent. So people can ask anything they want – and we will answer every question.

Tell Me Something Good – send Rick an email if you see something good happen. He will call and talk to the do-gooder. Doesn’t cost anything aside from a little time. Get great stories. Make someone’s day. It’s nice to get the call – but it’s also nice to know that someone thought enough about what you’ve done to share the story.

Sometimes it’s important to recognize people who do the right things – but where they don’t work. We were going to call it Hit Me with Your Best Shot. The problem is that people don’t want to admit that something has failed. If we want innovation – we have to find a way to allow people to fail.

PUBLIC CLOUD STRATEGY

Sponsored by: Perficient

You can’t read a publication that doesn’t mention the Cloud as the most strategic platform that our industry is embracing. Come hear our panel of experts provide their perspectives on how they are incorporating the Cloud into their strategic plans. The lessons-learned and business results will surprise you — from new opportunities, competitive offerings, Service Level Agreements and deployment challenges to feeding the bottom-line, our experts will help guide you through this new and challenging landscape.

Moderator – Matt Russell, Perficient
Jeff Kubacki, Chief Information Officer, ATK
Casey Niemann, Microsoft
Narinder Singh, Chief Strategy Officer, Appirio

Cloud brings agility, virtualization, scalability, redundancy.

Need to work on compliance and security.

How is Aerospace approaching cloud computing given security concerns?

We have a hybrid approach. We have people trying to get into our system every day. We want to keep them out. We chose solutions based on that need. Only 6 percent of our inbound email gets through. Our biggest concern is malware.

On the inside – we’re Windows. We have 90% virtualization. That puts us in good shape.

Now we ask when we can take the next step. We’re trying to reduce costs. The cloud is a good fit. I belong to a council of CIOs. The feds are trying to move their infrastructure to the cloud. One other company in the council has move entirely to gmail.

We are waiting to see this work with other aerospace/defense companies before we go too far.

The government is pushing as aggressively in a pragmatic way to cloud computing. If the government can move – what’s everyone else’s excuse?

Businesses should be moving faster. Compare Instagram to Kodak. (Or Netflix and Blockbuster.)

You need to ask about what your competitors are doing – even the competitors they don’t know about. We’ve seen several companies lose traction as they held onto an all of nothing attitude.

Also have to look at core competency and what you need to do stay on track. Stick with those – but maybe there are other functions that you can look to do on the cloud. Portfolio rationalization.

Systems were used deal with customers for years – or maybe they were used to not deal directly with customers – but rise of social media has forced businesses to go back to customer.

Think about how to use the cloud to deal with customers.

How to you get CEOs and others on board?

I get to present to the board a couple times a years. I have been talking about the cloud. I tell them that we use it for selective tasks but due to security concerns we’re holding off on other – but we are getting ready for action.

I told our vendors that we were interested in moving to the cloud.

It’s important to set expectations. The CEO is reading about the cloud but not necessarily thinking of business strategy in terms of cloud computing.

Facebook IT is about 70% in the cloud. That approach will apply. Without a forward looking CEO the company can’t get full ROI on cloud computing.

Patterns in Cloud Computing?

Small companies can act big; yet big companies can act small. People in the company can feel as if they have the tools they need when they need them.

Small companies can afford the larger solutions / Large companies can become more nimble.

Some folks (even at Dept of Defense) seem to think that the Cloud Computing may be more secure than other options eventually. There are difficult issues; but also dumb perceptions.

How are you prepping for the Cloud?

We are simplifying the departments. We have shared services. We moved to more virtualization. We talk to our vendors about what we need.

Most people are not cloud providers. You need to figure out what piece you can have it that.

Why are people going to the cloud?

The biggest draw to Cloud Computing is SAS applications – especially SalesForce, Google…

Customer related functions is drawing people in because it’s often a point of pain for a business.

Anything that is social or mobile by nature

Any net-new project

Cloud storage has a great ROI

SEO MEETS SOCIAL MEDIA

Presenters – GiveMN, Webranking, SpiderTrap, Padilla Speer Beardsley

Blandin on Broadband

News and information on broadband use, policy, and trends

Minnesota High Tech Association Spring Conference: Notes

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