CeBIT 2018 Wrap-up

CeBIT Australia was on this week at ICC Sydney, and what an amazing few days it was. I was lucky enough to attend to see a magnitude of companies, start-ups, and expert speakers.

This year, CeBIT featured over 300 B2B Exhibitors, 2 days of Keynotes & Strategic Panels, discussions on Future Tech (IoT, Fintech), AI, Machine Learning and more. Unfortunately, with so much to see, I didn’t get see everything.

I took a lot of out the Keynotes at CeBIT as the speakers provided a lot of insights and information. Here are the main points that I took out of it.

How A Bird Can Expose A Massive Security Weakness

Symantec’s Chief Technology Officer Hugh Thompson told a story about a bird that managed to run havoc on board a plane trip he was on. Hugh said there are two types of people – those that ask “Is the bird ok?” And those who see a weakness in security systems.

When Hugh told this to his security colleague, he said “I bet he could fly a robotic bird into an airplane with an explosive device embedded”. Hugh then explained that “The bird exposed some weakness in the system, that existed in the process”.

Anthony Caruana from Lifehacker has a great summary of Hugh’s Keynote presentation, which I strong recommend you read: What we can learn about security from a bird on a plane.

Shaping The Business Of The Future

With a Panel of executives from Twitter Australia, Yahoo7, Google Australia & New Zealand, and The Australian; there was a lot of talk about how Australian business’s can prepare themselves for the future.

I took a few key insights from this panel. These are:

  • Ask why the consumer is buying your product
  • Be sure your business is transparent and open with its consumers
  • Focus on the core of your business, but ensure you still test the market
  • Look after your employees as there is an immense cost and knowledge that is lost if they leave
  • Focus on what you are going to stop doing so you can have the time on what you should be doing
  • Idea’s come from everywhere – make sure you keep leaning and staying up to date with trends

The CeBIT Australia has more: Shaping the business of future.

The Future Of Jobs

Telstra COO Robyn Denholm; Professor Attila Brungs, Vice-Chancellor and President of University of Technology Sydney; Jordan Duffy, Co-Founder & Director of Strategy from Buckham and Duffy Consultants; Dr Jan Own, Chief Executive Officer and Foundation for Young Australians; and Fiona Rose Client Engagement Director of Jobs for NSW, discussed the future of jobs. Here’s a summary on what they have to say:

  • Comparing job descriptions from three years ago and today, there has been a 212% increase in organisations looking for employees with hard skill experience
  • Young people are no longer looking for the one dream job – they will work in a jungle gym of multiple jobs, working in many areas
  • Workplaces will work closely with Universities to train and educate staff. The concept of long postgraduate courses will decrease, and training will become more modular and target based
  • Australia needs to look at how we are going to employee the unemployed
  • Businesses need to let young people loose in their business – let them be free to take risks with the latest trends you don’t know about
  • 40% of students do not want a job after they complete their degree. They want to create their own job
  • Young people want to stay in a job for only 3-4 years. However, job security is still on number 1 on their priority list

The Future of Marketing

Tamara McCleary, CEO of Thulium (US) went through her vision of the future of marketing. Here are my takeout’s:

  • Listen to young people in the business and don’t be sceptical on what they are “in to”
  • Use global technology and outsource. You will now have a marketing stack of third party solutions for marketing, etc
  • Spend more time defining the problem and the detail of the goal. It’s not how, but when
  • Spend time defining your problem
  • Spend time defining the detail of the goal
  • Build your brand as a thought-leader. You need to guide the customer who is casted as the hero in their own journey
  • Large brands have an eco-system of partners (Salesforce, Zapier). By doing so, you are in the eco-system of the other brands
  • Irresistible Attractive: Pull customers towards you through designing rich experiences
  • What is your marketlogical stack? What tools do you use to:
    • Create opportunity (attract)
    • Eliminate Churn (Engage)
    • Increase Revenue (Analyse)

Talking with NSW Government

Members from NSW Department of Finance launched at CeBIT Australia the new NSW Procurement system buy.nsw.gov.au – which is a tool which enables SME’s to sell services to government, without going through all the red tape and RFP’s. With this, they provided a number of tips when dealing with the government:

  • Make sure you know the solution you are offering
  • Know the Government as a customer
  • Help the government map getting from here to there
  • The Government is outcome focused – it’s not always about the technology, but it’s about using the technology to get to the outcomes
  • The Government needs service providers help to move away from legacy systems

More information

Photo source: CeBIT Australia 2018 on Flickr.

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