The BIAP IT Leadership summit went off without a hitch at the Westin in Perth on the 15th-16th of September 2020.
Firstly, I must acknowledge how lucky we are to be in a place where we can still gather in groups, continuing to share knowledge, given the state of many places in Australia and the rest of the world. There has never been a better time for Perth’s IT community to connect with each other and realise the potential and strength of our community in isolation from the rest of the country.
Day 1 kicked off with Andy Weir from Bankwest sharing an insightful presentation on ‘Transforming the Enterprise – lessons from the Bankwest technology transformation journey’. Andy certainly delivered on his promise as lessons is what we got! My favourite lesson was “fail fast and learn quickly”, something that Andy said allowed his team to iterate quickly – a key to their success.
Throughout the day there was obvious mention of the fact that 2020 has been a challenging year for a lot of businesses, something that resonated strongly throughout the event. With these challenges many companies have been forced to adapt through innovation. Innovation was a big topic at this year’s event!
We had the privilege of having the innovation leaders panel at the end of day one, taking a deep dive into the current state of innovation in their respective businesses and how other businesses can leverage their teams and encourage innovation. The panel consisted of some great names including Nicole O’Connor from the department of Research and Systems at Curtin University, Arnold Wong who is the National Treasurer at ACS (Australian Computer Society) and Cettina Raccuia, Innovation and Transformation Leader at RAC, and Advisory Board Member at WA Innovation Hub. An extremely interesting and insightful lineup!
Day 2 kicked off with Chris Eriksen, the General Manager of Innovation and Technology at Roy Hill. I think I speak for the whole room when I say, this was such a fascinating presentation! Watching an automated truck commute around a mine site was so futuristic and quite incredible. What an amazing achievement from the team at Roy Hill.
The other huge topics of the day included, cyber security, apps and cloud technology. Apps and cloud technology are the driving force behind TOKN’s platform and what we talk about on a daily basis, so it was great to see some focus on this topic.
We managed to have some really good conversations with businesses looking for a low code platform solution to fully integrate their existing systems and create functional mobile app solutions for their remote workforces.
Day 2 concluded with the Technology Leader panel, again, with some great panel members including Jane Michell, head of Information and Technology Services at Water Corp, Mike Kavacevic, CTO, Catholic Education WA and moderator Dr Liz Dallimore, Director of WA Data science Innovation Hub. Some really interesting discussion on this panel about technological transformation.
All-in-all this was a fantastic event run by the Business Insights Asia Pacific! We are certainly looking forward to next year’s event, sharing our success and spending more time with some the tech leaders in WA.