Wisdom North America: “One of the best online conferences”

ITAM News & Analysis

Wisdom North America: “One of the best online conferences”

05 November 2020

6 minute read

Wisdom Online North America took place September 29th – October 1st and it was absolutely fantastic! Originally planned for March 2020 in St Petersburg, Florida, it was a pleasure to host and really showed us that a virtual conference can be a strong, worthwhile event. In fact, it was described by one attendee as “One of the best online virtual conferences ever”!

If you want to get straight to the on-demand sessions – head here, otherwise read on to get a view of the highlights.

Reach

Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay

While Florida weather in March is pretty good, and I did miss my annual trip to the Dali Museum (!), running the conference online did mean we were able to reach so many more people – which was fantastic. We had over 600 registrations from all over North America (and the world in fact) – and were also able to have some fantastic speakers who probably couldn’t have made it to an in-person event. Being able to have so many people involved all at once helps us with our mission “to empower every ITAM professional throughout their career”.

The lack of face-to-face conversation and socialising after and around the event is certainly a loss and I think most of us are looking forward to that coming back. However, while it’s not the same, I do think that – as we all become more accustomed to the virtual world – it is still possible to build and continue relationships this way. Through a combination of chat boxes, private messages, and LinkedIn I was able to chat with several people…and get a good overview of people’s favourite computer games!

Agenda highlights

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

We had so many fantastic sessions but some of my highlights included:

We also had some really great panel session at the end of each day where we discussed:

And everyone involved – both vendors, partners, and customers -shared some fantastic insights into ITAM skills and the general industry direction. The day 2 discussion in particular raised some points around the importance of adding skills to your repertoire to keep improving and some of the areas included:

- Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
- Business Intelligence dashboarding
- Programming languages like Python
- Cloud cost management
- HAM & ITAD

To get a good intro to RPA – what it is, how it all works etc. – you could do worse than checking out the UiPath Academy. They are one of the leading RPA vendors out there and, having been through some of the courses myself, their training gives a great starting point.
I’d recommend checking out the sessions to see the conversations and discussion points in full and, bonus, you’ll also be able to see the questions in the chat too – helping give you the full picture!

Attendee feedback

Image by mcmurryjulie from Pixabay

I’ve told you it was good but hey, I would say that wouldn’t it?! 😂 If you’ve not attended one of our conferences before or you’re unsure as to the value of a virtual conference, here’s some of the feedback we received from attendees:

“I received great education for myself and also information that I may share with my organization. I also felt included in the ITAM World”

“I was concerned that I would not get the same level of value from a virtual event and I am proud to admit that I was wrong. This was fantastic. The networking was great, the courses were great. What I love is how approachable everyone is and how eager to help”

“This was the best virtual conference I’ve attended this year… it has been very helpful and a boost to my confidence and direction as an ITAM manager trying to implement a ITAM program in a company that never had one. I can’t say thank you enough and look forward to the next one”

“The quality and depth of information gets better each year. This year’s conference has been exceptionally good.”

“This was the BEST ITAM conference I’ve been to. I loved it, learned so much, am already planning my time so I can go back and re-watch some of the sessions. Great information, great people, lovely job. I’m excited for future conferences! Thank you so much”

It’s great to hear this feedback – thank you to all our speakers and attendees for helping us make Wisdom Online such a success!

Thanks as well to all our sponsors who helped us put on such a great event and offered some fantastic insights:

In summary

Another benefit of a virtual conference is that all the wonderful content – from ITAM Review, our sponsors, and all the awesome end-user speakers – is all available to watch on-demand. Whether or not you attended originally, you can go back and re-watch the sessions and share them with colleagues – it’s the gift that keep on giving!

We’re currently planning our 2021 events schedule and we hope that the COVID-19 scenario will improve over the next few months – perhaps allowing in-person events with reduced numbers etc. Whether in-person or online, we’re confident that we – and the wonderful people that make up the ITAM community – can make next year’s events just as awesome (if not better) than this one 😁

Wisdom North America: “One of the best online conferences”