Putting the geeky hat on - takeaways from ACS conference (1st December)

Had an honour to attend ACS 2016 Thought Leadership Conference #reimagination, I got inspired, met some interesting people and had a lot of takeaways.

I'm from a business and finance background, I deal with numbers. However, I'm amazed by the skills that a web developer and software engineer can do with the help of technology. I started to learn to code recently as I want to have a magic wand like a web developer or software engineer. And from time to time, I have seen some of my clients have been asking us to integrate their accounting and finance system, and with the help of technology, all the manual excel spread sheets can be integrated in a user-friendly platform and C suites can exact and control their workflow and finance at the same time.

The opening of this year's conference sent us an important message "You are not merely a thinking robot. A metal man. You are - life! A new kind of life. You are the first of your kind." Not long ago, IBM had invented a robot called Ross, who can helped U.S law firms to do research work, which saves lawyers a lot of time in researching and going through all the cases. Some people started to argue that robot would replace humans in the future workplace and more and more people will lose their jobs. However, as an old saying goes, technology is a double edged sword. The invention of robots can also bring in efficiency in workplace. In the case like Ross, Ross can help lawyers to learn fast and being creative rather than swimming through all the cases. Human is in the center of the system and we control the robots.

Straight after that, we had the first panel discussion: Entrepreneurship, innovation and new job creation. Entrepreneurs Bridget Loudon, Michael Dunworth and Tim Power talked about their path in startups and the difficulties they had went through. "Bunk bed and a tough mind" this is how Michael Dunworth described his experience in Silicon Valley when he started Snapcard "You have to be a cockroach, you have to be tough and don't be afraid to ask for funding". Also, Phiilip Dalidakis mentioned in VIC, government is there to help small business to succeed, the 457 visa is encouraging talented people to come to Australia, but at the meanwhile, as a hit of Silicon Valley/U.S for their entrepreneurship dreams, they are not stopping people to go out and learn something new. Phillip said "The government is there to help business and people to succeed, not there to stop people to move forward".

The second panel discussion is about Innovation and Commercialisation, with guest speakers of Karen Stocks, Adrian Turner, John Burgin and Alex Scandurra. It is not easy to turn a innovative idea into a commercial product/service. Alex Scandurra has pointed out in the panel discussion that, culture has been playing an important role in an organisation, especially startups. Talented always buy in with the culture of a company more than anything else. And Karen Stocks added that a new product/service must keep trying, testing and failing, and have to get up agin to go through all these steps to make product/service satisfy customer needs.

Shortly after that, as I was nominated as "Emerging leader", me and some young ICT professionals joined Jordan Duff, Benjamin Chong, Amanda Daff and Peter James for materclass session. In his speech, Benjamin Chong delivered a important message: IoT, AI, VR, blockchain, MeshApp etc will be the discruptors of our future. With more than 30 years experience in ICT, Peter James concludes some advices to us: stay relevant, stay broad, get on the business and get into the business. Surprisingly, Amanda Daff also mentioned about Ross the robot, and how the application of workplace in the future: we will be surrounded by all sorts of software, platforms and robots to enhance our efficiency and creativity, and the trends of 2020 skills critical skills would be:
- new media literacy
-design mindset
- virtual collaboration
- social intelligence

We have to be thirst for learning.

After a break from lunch, Andrew McAfee share his insights in ICT from an international perspective. He mentioned the qualities of a discruptor:

- Evidence driven (Go where the evidence exist and listen to the data)
- Geeky leadership (Bold - make no small plans; Iterative - frequent and rapid; Experimental - A/B test/control groups; Data dominated - instead of pitches and personalities; Open - less hierarchy)
- Outward looking (Using the crowd as an innovation partner)
- Platform builder

Following the concepts of discruptors, Dr Andrew McAfee also shared some examples as to how data based information, outward looking platform builder with geeky leadership in current business: self driven trucks and how goggle data can help to cut energy bills.

By listening to these inspiring and amazing speakers, I think there is a message has been sent: we need to find the problems in our day to day life, see what frustrates us, find out the solution by partnership with technology.