I attended the Winning is Everything conference in Vegas in January. It was my fourth time attending and it didn’t disappoint. It’s always thought provoking and challenging. Technology was a common theme. Many sessions focused on the technology itself, but one focused on the fact that technology without people is useless. I unintentionally went on to prove this during day two.
Keep in mind that this transpired in front of a group of people at breakfast on day two, but the first full day of the conference. One of the promoters mentioned that there were still a fair number of no shows (it was 7:30 am…). I proceeded to mention that he shouldn’t be concerned as the system was down when I checked in the day before. Anyone that checked in during that time frame might not have been reflected in the attendance records. He mentioned that he looked at the table and saw that several name badges were still on it.
We did get a laugh out of that. Unfortunately, at my expense. The moral of the story – We can’t take our eye off the ball (or table) or take the human element out of the picture because we have a technology solution. Both are needed.