As an industry leader in IT staffing, I get the opportunity to attend many industry events. I spent last week at the Vistage 2013 International Member & Chair Conference in Dallas, TX. I must say this was very profound experience with intriguing perspectives from industry professionals!
The conference had many excellent speakers! One of them, Simon Sinek, a young speaker who had great ideas about a company’s culture, spoke about the Pursuit of Something Greater Than Ourselves. His ideas focused on one’s behavior at home and at work. His principle stated that if an individual were to look after their family at home in a certain way, one must do the same at work. But, this can only happen if utmost precautions are taken while hiring. This will ensure that you don’t have to say “you are fired!” very often.
Another excellent speaker whose session I attended was Michael Milken and his topic of A New Global Perspective: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow. He offered a unique and amazing perspective because his topic was based on a purely analytical perspective. His data was simply jaw dropping and amazing, forcing you to really start thinking about tomorrow!
Another great speaker I heard was Daniel H. Pink discussing How Do you Keep Your Team Flexible and Adaptive in Times of Uncertainty. Mr. Pink was an impressive and great orator; a humorous and great storyteller. He summed up his life and posed an interesting thought of “whatever you do the most, that’s who you are.” So if you dance an entire day, you are a dancer; the same as if you write all day, you are a writer. It is important to analyze your life and what you spend your time doing. Then the decision will be so easy of who you want to be.
If you were asked to go to a stranger’s house with people you did not know, would you have gone? What would be your answer be? Yeah, yeah, yeah…I know your answer, but there are few brave people (not me – I didn’t know that the hosted dinner was at some member’s house) that said “yes, I’ll go.” That decision turned out to be not only a great decision, but a highlight of the conference as well. The dinner was AWESOME, the hosts, Jay Lopez and Jenny, were excellent and we all had a great time exchanging conversation over drinks. (Please note that this is not emphasis on drinks…only on the great conversation. For pictures –please contact Jay)
During the conference, I also had the opportunity to attend a few interesting workshops as well. One of the workshops was on social media and provided a very interesting perspective on the topic, and was well worth listening to.
Overall, the conference was a very successful event, run with seamless execution of the schedule that kept the curiosity piqued for next session, and with excellent food! Attendees could feel the positive energy in the air, and organizers were ready to answer your questions/concerns, which was a salute to the Vistage spirit.
Congratulations to the whole Vistage team for arranging such a great event! And special thanks to Mary for the wonderful hosted dinner and my chair, William Babcock, for introducing me to Vistage.
The BIG challenge is to execute what you learn from these conferences; so good luck fellow members -let’s THINK and EXECUTE!
Vedant Pathak