12/05/2019

Daily Buzz: Smart Insights From ASAE’s #TEC19

Many smart tech ideas came out of D.C. this week

This year’s ASAE Technology Exploration Conference (TEC) was held at the convention center in downtown Washington, D.C., a shift from its recent stint in National Harbor, Maryland—which means that it was a little easier to get to with public transit.

But even if you weren’t able to make it this year with the easier commute, you should know that we made it and have been picking up on some of the key threads. Among them:

Social media has shifted the power dynamics between organizations and individuals. Speaking Wednesday during his keynote presentation, Wired editor-in-chief Nicholas Thompson explained a lot about the modern technology landscape, big and small. But of the many thoughts he shared in his 40-minute presentation (which ended with an interview with Associations Now editor-in-chief Julie Shoop), one of the most insightful was the idea that individuals have more authority in a social media world. “One trend that I think is very important in your world is that one thing that social media has done is it’s moved power a little bit out of organizations,” he said. He cited the NFL, media brands, and Hollywood studios as institutions where individual voices have begun to overtake organizations in terms of power and influence.

The risks of lingering technical costs. A major thread that ran through the conference on Tuesday was the risks posed by technical debt. But organizations struggle to solve it, said Matrix Group Product Manager and Chief Maxximizer Tanya Kennedy Luminati, who described the pressure to go with “the devil you know vs. the devil you don’t know.” But properly managing technical debt can lead to new opportunities, she said.

E-commerce is increasingly moving to mobile. In a Tuesday session, Innovexa Solutions founder Yousif Hassan noted that by 2021, 55 percent of all e-commerce transactions will take place on smartphones. Hassan said this creates a perfect engagement opportunity. “When you think about that,” he said, “you can picture how your members are basically going to be engaged with that platform.”

Please select this link to read the original article from Associations Now.