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Tech Summit Draws Industry
Technology Professionals For
High-Energy, High-Tech Education
More than 100 industry technology professionals gathered in San
Francisco, California, in August to share best practices and case studies,
and discuss critical issues and solutions at the third annual PPAI
Technology Summit. Introduced
in conjunction with Expo East
2014, this was the second year the
summit has followed the PPAI North
American Leadership Conference.
The two-day education event
was developed to bring together
the industry’s IT professionals in a
forum that allows them to bond and
collaborate on finding solutions to
the technology challenges faced
by the industry. It is also the
site of the second annual Tech
Summit Awards presentation.
These awards showcase and
celebrate technology advances
that bring success to individual
companies and the industry as a
whole. Essent Corporation’s vice
president of research, Stephen
Lussier, was recognized with
the Internal Innovator Award,
while DistributorCentral’s IT
director, Chris Schlemmer, and
vice president of operations,
David Shultz, took home the
Industry Collaborator Award.
Through speaker
presentations and panel
discussions, Tech Summit’s
education lineup focused on issues, concerns and developments
relevant to industry IT professionals and staff, including cybersecurity,
data communication standards, big data, search engine optimization,
legal issues, enterprise resource planning, project management and
more. The Summit’s first day ended with its Technology Tips session, a
popular part of the program in 2014 and 2015 that invited every attendee
to highlight one thing they do well in
their technology organizations. For 90
minutes, more than 50 attendees shared
single-slide, 90-second presentations on
success stories at their companies.
“The audience included a strong mix
of business and technical leaders and
the content managed to meet each of
their needs,” says Dale Denham, MAS+,
Geiger CTO and leader of the Tech Summit
workgroup, one of the guiding hands behind
the event. “I heard from at least a dozen
people how happy they were with the event
and its content. The focus on distributor
and supplier integration through SAGE and
PromoStandards was very well received and
will contribute to business success in 2017.
And, as always, the Tech Tips session, where
attendees shared their best tip was a favorite
for everyone and encapsulates the power
of the event as an ongoing collaboration,
is one of its most valuable aspects.”
Joe Kane, director of application development with supplier
alphabroder and first-time Tech Summit attendee, says, “Going to
a promotional products conference, you get to see all the different
technologies that folks use, and hear about their challenges.
It’s great to connect with some of the customers’ IT folks, hear
The industry and PPAI staff members in the Technology Summit Work Group guided the development of the summit’s agenda, speaker lineup and message.
Gus Anagnos with cybersecurity firm
Synack, speaking on stage with colleague
Anne Marie Chun, opened Tech Summit’s
session lineup with an exploration of
cybersecurity, an area many companies
wrestle with.
IBM’s Sherry Yazdi and Kunal Jain
spoke on big data—extremely large data
sets—and its potential to be a powerful
disruption that could change long-standing
business practices and interactions.
Dale Denham, MAS+, CIO of
Geiger (standing at right) and
leader of the Tech Summit
Work Group, led a panel
discussion with Ajay Kaul of
SanMar, Eric Alessi of Essent
Corporation, Eric Shonebarger
of Hit Promotional Products
and Irwin Goldstein of
HALO Branded Solutions
on PromoStandands, a data
communication standard for
configurable product data,
pricing and decoration.
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OCTOBER 2016
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