Thank you Seattle SIM members, guests, and sponsors for making the 2018 Seattle SIM Tech Leadership summit a great success.
Our day began with Gary Garfield, former President & CEO of Bridgestone Americas, delivering the opening keynote on principles centered leadership. I have listened to a lot of presentations on leadership and Gary’s was one of the best I have seen. His wide-ranging presentation included leadership lessons from Babe Ruth, Aristotle, Peter Drucker, Alan Mulally, Paul O’Neil, Lou Gerstner, and other well known figures.
I especially liked his story about Babe Ruth, inarguably the greatest baseball player of all time, who was famously denied the privilege of managing a major league team. As the then general manager of the New York Yankees explained to Ruth; "You can't lead yourself [Babe Ruth's personal life was a mess]. How can you lead other people?".
After the opening keynote we broke for technical session tracks with Seattle SIM members leading sessions and participating on panel discussions. We reconvened after lunch for the afternoon Keynote where Christine Putur shared with us her personal leadership journey to her current role as CIO at REI.
After more afternoon breakout sessions and a very thought provoking closing keynote by Steve Brown “The Bald Futurist” we ended with a great post-event reception on the waterfront deck of the Bell Harbor Convention Center.
I believe that this year’s Seattle SIM Tech Leadership Summit (our 9thannual Seattle SIM conference) was our best Seattle SIM conference yet. We had great speakers, great sponsors, and great attendees. We made a larger effort this year to involve Seattle SIM members in the conference program and I think this worked out well. Two other changes that worked well this year were the new venue and shorter conference schedule. Bell Harbor is a fantastic venue right on the Seattle Waterfront. It was a perfect size for Seattle SIM and we were able to rent out the entire facility which created a great environment for hallway conversations and networking. We also shortened the conference schedule to allow more time for people to socialize over cocktails at the post-event reception on Bell Harbor’s waterfront deck. I saw more people stick around this year for the reception than in previous years. I saw many attendees engaged in deep conversations and many people making new connections. Making great professional connections is what Seattle SIM is all about so this was great to see.
Next year will be our 10thannual Seattle SIM conference. We have already booked Bell Harbor for May 19th, 2019 so start making your plans to attend now!
Paul Farrall
Chapter President, Seattle SIM