Collaboration must put users first

Yesterday played host to Dennis Publishing's (IT Pro's parent company) second annual Collaboration and Communication event.

The day was jam packed with insightful sessions and debate in addition to audience participation and delegates appeared genuinely enthused by what they had learned.

And it wouldn't have been possible without the wonderful delegates, who turned out in force in spite of many train issues, and our sponsors Arkadin, IBM and Plantronics.

"Business success is made or broken by the relationships we establish. Such relationships are defined by the ways in which we communicate with one another so having an effective collaboration strategy in place is a business imperative rather than a nice to have," said Maggie Holland, group editor of Cloud Pro & IT Pro and editorial director of Dennis Publishing's B2B sites.

"We are incredibly proud to be holding this event again this year and I've been personally impressed by the amount of active collaboration going on before my very eyes in the form of audience participation via Slido and the many questions that have been both asked and answers during the official sessions and networking breaks. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive and that resonates with our research that people want to improve their collaborative workplace strategies but just need a little bit more insight or guidance."

The event featured a wide range of speakers spanning industry, analyst and end user and the stage even played home to our very own James Tye, CEO of Dennis Publishing, who talked about his views on collaboration and the need to take the lead and follow through on a vision rather than just paying lip service to a collaboration strategy.

Arkadin talked about the journey to the digital workplace and the need to have a hero in the business who is responsible for collaborative success (aided by a wonderful video that paid homage to Harry Potter and Back to the Future among other amazing cinematic greats).

While, IBM talked about collaborative in the cognitive era and how Watson is changing the nature of how we work and when and helping us avoid the multiple interruptions to workflow we all face each and every day.

Plantronics talked about the fact that we need to ensure we are providing tools that make users' working lives better not worse and also said such concerns need to go beyond the millennial vs generation X discussions and instead focuses on 'generation C' the connected generation.

ITPro

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