CFO West – San Diego #FlashbackFriday

Russ DeVeau CFO San Diego Russell DeVeauI came cross this name badge buried in an old laptop bag.

The photo makes for a good #FlashbackFriday post given this CFO conference took place in San Diego just about seven years ago.

This is when I was supporting Client Savers Computing Initiative (CSCI), a global technology consortium focused largely on advancing the wide scale adoption of PC power management.

CSCI board members were experts in sustainability and Green IT issues and included senior executives and spokespersons from Cisco, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Samsung and World Wildlife Fund.

I managed many editorial, news and proactive positioning programs for CSCI including industry analyst, media and social media relations. I had the opportunity to attend the CFO event with George Goodman, who at the time, was CSCI’s executive director.

I really liked the roundtable concept CFO had implemented for this event. Sponsors – such as CSCI – paid for a table, or multiple tables, and established a topic that would be discussed at each table purchased. Conference attendees signed up to sit at tables where they were interested in discussing the established topic.

The tables George and I manned were among the most popular at the conference. This is likely because we had a great Green IT and money savings story to tell. At the time, CSCI  had calculated that households, businesses and organizations could save up to 60 dollars a year in energy costs simply by turning PC power management on.

That number was for one computer. The savings could add up quickly if a household, business or organization had multiple – or even hundreds or thousands – of PCs using power management. That cost saving message was very well received by CFO attendees. – Russ DeVeau

#IoT in #NYC, an open standards approach

russ-deveau-iot-in-nyc

I attended the IoT Central meetup in Manhattan last week. The meeting was held at Grand Central Tech – a great space at 335 Madison Avenue where Facebook once had NYC offices – and featured a presentation by Cisco’s IoT innovator, Maciej Kranz.

Kranz gave a top-notch overview of the history and current state of the IoT industry. He highlighted some use cases and early success stories and reviewed a few extremely interesting ROI scenarios.  He also discussed some of the pain points the market has been experiencing and identified a couple areas that need to be addressed if the industry is to move IoT initiatives forward more quickly.

While I found the entire presentation both interesting and informative, given my background in positioning proven interoperable technologies in the digital identity, security and privacy sectors – and my proactive work with global technology consortia and standards bodies – I was very interested in what Kranz had to say about open standards in the IoT sector – and he said quite a bit.

I appreciated hearing Kranz state so clearly – and pretty much right after he began his open standards discussion – that he believes companies embracing open standards will be the ultimate winners in the IoT space.  This is an important message for any developer or organization looking to begin – or expand on – IoT initiatives.

I also appreciated hearing Kranz’s dive down into what he sees as some of the IoT priorities tech consortia and standards bodies need to address. Those priorities included standardizing interfaces and standardizing the way sensors share data. Kranz went on to say that he felt it was important to have one agreed upon standard for solving common cross-industry IoT issues.

Kranz noted that there are many – in fact, dozens and dozens – of consortia working on a wide range of IoT challenges. I’ll highlight some of those organizations in upcoming articles. In the meantime, take a look at the Open Fog Consortium, an organization Kranz gave a shout-out to during his presentation. – Russ DeVeau

Related:

Nokia, Alcatel and Here Maps – proactive storytelling, industry trends and top-notch spokespersons

Russ DeVeau on communications and marketing for global standards bodies and technology consortia