Wow—What a great experience!
The location for the 2013 Advantech iAutomation World Partner Conference was Dubai from October 7-9. I had never been to Dubai but I was on my way with L-Tron’s CEO RAD DeRose. It was a whirlwind — total travel time of 36 hours with approx. 50 hours on the ground!
Were we crazy? Not at all…there was much to learn and experience at the conference, as well as a sharing of ideas by like-minded people from all over the world.
The theme of the event was centered on Advantech’s iAutomation solutions (Intelligent Automation for Manufacturing), as well as a celebration of Advantech’s 30th anniversary.
Let’s start with a few key points focused on Advantech’s 30 years of innovation:
- Advantech engaged in industrial computing from the beginning (1983).
- In 1987, Advantech went global with a new office set up in the U.S. followed by locations in Beijing and then continuing to open new locations all over the world.
- Advantech brand marketing took off!
- Advantech was quickly becoming a global leader in industrial computing.
- Always focused on the future and innovation, Advantech’s corporate vision evolved and today is well known as “Enabling an Intelligent Planet”
What does an Intelligent Planet look like?
Well as cloud computing and IoT (Internet of Things) become the major trend globally, smart industries navigate accordingly and new lifestyles gradually take shape. Technologies such as automatic control, information sensing and radio frequency identification (RFID) will be the goal of future scientific development and best practice.
The conference offered many great seminar workshops focused on Advantech’s smart solutions. As the world becomes more interconnected, hardware and integrated cloud-based solutions are the future and Advantech is well positioned to meet the challenges and deliver!
To cap off the celebration of Advantech’s 30th anniversary, a cycling event on the wharf in Dubai was scheduled for everyone in attendance. I must say I was mysteriously absent from that one. Temperatures close to 100 degrees at mid-day I was afraid I might be returning home on a stretcher. However—many others chose to participate in the event, survived it and even said it was great fun sweating and sightseeing in Dubai!
Besides the learning opportunities, for me the best part of any global event like this one is the networking. And by that I mean meeting so many interesting, genuine people from all over the world! We are not so different, we work hard, we play hard, we are ethical in our businesses, and we were able to share ideas and best practices. I walked away from the conference with some new friends to whom I immediately sent LinkedIn invites to. I am still waiting for responses…..Hmm, we may have to wait and see how many new friends I truly have!
Stay tuned to L-Tron’s blog, as I plan to share in more detail Advantech’s smart solutions for an Intelligent Planet. It is pretty cool stuff!
Gayle DeRose
L-Tron Corporation
