Around mid-June we held our second Build IT Together event in downtown Kalamazoo. Our CEO was the Keynote speaker, presenting on Chrome for business. Session 1 speakers included Jen Randall talking about mobile apps and businesses and Daniel Jefferies on innovation in the workplace. Session 2 speakers were Matt Mace presenting on using big data in businesses as well as Hans Erickson talking about developing an IT strategy.

With all of these quality speakers and opportunities to collaborate and network with others in the area, we were bound to have a great time! Here were some of our favorite moments.

“In my conversations with attendees, I was very impressed by the variety of ambitious, forward-thinking technologies that have been implemented by organizations in the Kalamazoo area. A focus on virtualization and cloud-based tools is bringing a lot of enterprise-class power to small and medium-sized organizations.” James

“It was great to see local companies willing to meet others to discuss and collaborate on ideas in making their own workplaces better and possibly change their IT department thinking for the better.” Steve

Our favorite moments from Build IT Together

“My favorite moment of Build IT was when Jen Randall said, ‘The question isn’t if the next frontier is mobile, it’s when.’ But then elaborated that you shouldn’t build an app just because it’s the next big thing; your company should have a specific niche that could be best filled with a mobile solution.” Tyler

“A highlight of Build IT Together was the wealth of knowledge shared by our guest speakers, experts in their field, Big Data, Mobile Apps and culture & innovation. I’m very glad we were able to record the talks to share with event attendees.” Dan P.

“I enjoyed hearing about having a data strategy knowing the amount of available data is going to be growing like crazy over the next few years. The fact that we are going to be moving into zettabytes of data is hard to imagine. Seeing the the visual of what a zettabyte looks like compared to a terabyte helps put it all into perspective.” Lance

Our favorite moments from Build IT Together

“It was great to see the excitement from IT guys that obviously do not have a lot of times where they can get together with peers to discuss their issues and current environments. In particular, when I was in the Hans’ session I could tell that a lot of the people were eager to talk about the issues that they have in their IT departments.” Ben

“I really enjoyed the quality of the speakers. I attended Jen Randall’s ‘Mobile Apps’ session and Hans Erickson’s ‘Approval from the C-Suite’ session. Both were engaging, informative, and enjoyable. I also loved the opportunity to meet lots of other IT professionals here in the Southwest Michigan area and learn more about how they ‘do’ technology at their respective organizations. I can’t wait for next year.” Michael

 

What do you like most about attending events?

Make sure to check out presentation summaries here:

Matt Mace: Big Data
Daniel Jefferies: Innovation
Hans Erickson: IT strategy
Jen Randall: Mobile Apps (coming soon!)