2012 Technology Summit Focuses on Partnership, Preparation, and People
API Digital is proud to have sponsored and participated in the Huntsville Chamber of Commerce first annual Technology Summit held this week at the Jackson Center in Cummings Research Park. The event attracted some of the brightest businesses and individuals who influence technology in Huntsville. The focus of this year’s conference was “Commercialization: Transitioning your business from Federal to commercial marketspace.”
Five speakers spoke candidly about their experiences of crossing this chasm -- sharing their stories of success & failure alike. Representatives from several notable Huntsville based businesses and federal programs lead two panel discussions from impromptu audience questions, moderated by Gary Tauss, CEO of BizTech and Stephen Hassell, President of Emerson. Panelist Jeff Gronberg, President of deciBel Research, discussed a partnership that his business has going with Baron Services that will improve weather prediction accuracy.
The Technology Summit showcased technologies developed by Huntsville companies. PeopleTech demonstrated a robotic simulator that leveraged off the shelf consumer-level components. Their robot used an XBox Kinect, among other consumer-level technologies, to navigate around obstacles. We also heard about a technology developed by Carina Technology, Inc. that promotes energy efficiency by programming your key appliances (dishwasher, washing machine, etc.) to run during hours of the day when consumers are using less energy.
Partnership was the overarching theme of the event along with people, preparation, and proactivity. Dr. Mark Bendickson noted in his presentation, “Partnerships are key to staying competitive. They offer fresh, expert insight on specialized areas of your project.” His reasoning was simple. All businesses have specific areas of expertise yet all projects require a wide range of skillsets, some of which are outside of the focus of your business. To remain competitive, companies should leverage the talents and expertise of partners that specialize in areas outside of their own core focus.
This message of leveraging partnerships to prevent being distracted from your company’s core initiatives is a key philosophy of API Digital. API Digital provides the operational IT support. Our support enables our partners to move forward to the next key technology; allowing them to focus on business results in real time. The idea is to leverage existing technologies and capabilities to help bring Information Technology under control freeing partners to learn, exploit, and implement new innovations to maximize customer impact.
API Digital applies simple, proven methods to get the job done; enabling partners to create an organization that masters innovation, rather than becoming a slave to technology.
