Advantech IoT Co-Creation Summit: Six Thousand Participants Co-create a Wonderful Life
When the number of participants at the 2018 Advantech IoT Co - Creation Summit, which was constantly updated on the screen, broke 6,000 people, Digital Marketing Manager Gary Lee couldn’t suppress the excitement in his heart. However, Gary started to get worried as the registration numbers continued to grow. Previously, Gary, who has participated in several digital marketing projects at Advantech Worldwide Partner Conferences in the past few years, never expected that his team would experience the huge pressure of reaching a large number of participants that exceeded, by several times, the historical records of past events.
This year, the team to which Gary belongs went beyond their duties to take over the job of registration and general affairs at the summit. This gave rise to huge challenges that Advantech had not encountered before. It was necessary to complete the registration of thousands of people in an orderly manner while planning for various emergencies that could occur during the course of the summit. Such a task would have been difficult even for a professional company that specializes in large events, not to mention the fact that Gary’s team didn’t have relevant experience with such large scale summits.
“By partaking in a summit with the scale of a 10,000-person concert, the challenges, learning, and transcendence we experienced during the course of participation not only expanded our horizon of career development, but also enhanced the personal growth that came along with it,” said Gary.
For Advantech, the summit heralded the arrival of a second phase in the Internet of Things (IoT). However, for the Advantech members who participated in the planning, organization, and implementation of the summit, it was a rare opportunity for personal growth.
Challenge the Unknown
Advantech Chairman KC Liu presided over the summit and set the target number of participants at 6000. It is widely understood that summit content and activities are the two key factors attracting participants. However, before important summits, it is often difficult to predict which content and activities will have the largest impact in terms of participation numbers.
IoT.Sense Manager Jill Tseng and Brand Development and Public Relations Manager Jennifer Huang, who were responsible for content and activity management at the summit, initially doubted whether they were capable of reaching the 6000 attendees goal set by CEO Liu. Nonetheless, after overcoming many difficulties and challenges, they came to realize that what can’t kill them makes them stronger.
In order to attract enough participants, Jill worked extra hard to plan the overall summit theme, devised interesting and relevant content, and invited speakers capable of attracting a wide audience. After that, in order to bring the best experiences and benefits to the participants, a summit map was put together in which Corporate Marketing Xiayu and Jill provided both Chinese and English translations. Since changes in conference programs affected the conference map, the closer to the conference registration day, the more frequently the conference plan and conference map needed to be modified. These last minute changes tested the organizers’ communication and coordination abilities.
For Jennifer, the difficulty of the summit project was not only to increase the number of participants but also to deal with the large number of invitations. Since the exhibitor invitation process was different than the process of sending regular invitations, the task not only required team members to coordinate and communicate with more exhibitors, suppliers, and other people and resources, but also required everyone to explore new ways of working through trial and error. “During the process of advancing the project, the communication, coordination, and activity management capabilities of the members participating in the project developed and evolved,” said Jennifer.
Xiayu was the “housekeeper” of this summit who arranged the room and board for participants. Having been with Advantech for 11 years, she’d worked in various positions addressing product and brand marketing. When it comes to the working experience at the summit, Xiayu revealed, “Here at Advantech, everyone has the opportunity to experience brand new work every once in a while. New work content not only brings challenges but also brings a lot of fun and enjoyment. Because Advantech’s senior members are always happy to share their skills and perspectives, newcomers can quickly master the working methods and apply them to new tasks.”
Co-create a Wonderful Life
Marketing Supervisor Jielei, who was responsible for the onsite implementation of the summit, said, “Everyone is taking on a professional attitude to specialize in what they do best, to take feedback seriously, and to achieve the best results in the end. Therefore, although the summit was an opportunity, whether the individual can grasp this opportunity depends on his or her professional attitude.”
Jielei also pointed out that, “When a company incorporates an individual’s goals into its vision, the realization of the individual’s value is kept in the same direction as the realization of the company’s value. Therefore, when the company successfully realizes a new phase of IoT, it will also bring the individuals to a new phase of their careers. As the company makes an even greater achievement, the individuals also grow accordingly which is a great joy as far as I am concerned.”
Jielei continued, “Since co-creation is the theme of the summit, the summit itself is also the result of the work of hundreds of ordinary Advantech employees and Advantech partners. For Advantech, a company is not only a business organization that contributes to the world but also a platform where employees, shareholders and all stakeholders co-create a wonderful life together. Therefore, Advantech must not only become an innovative technology company but also create new opportunities for self-development of those Advantech individuals who work hard in ordinary positions, just like Jielei, Xiayu, Jill, Jennifer, and Gary, so as to practice the core concept of work, learning, and love, to co-create a wonderful life for all Advantech members.”