Last week, at our annual Summer Conference in the picturesque Rocky Mountains, 350 cable operators representing North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Australia gathered together to explore cutting edge technology products. From VR to AI to autonomous vehicles, President and CEO Phil McKinney introduced several ways CableLabs is set to enhance our quality of life through broadband networks and wireless connectivity.
Not only did we witness the world premiere of our groundbreaking vision video The Near Future. A Better Place, we made some new connections and learned plenty along the way. So, without further ado, here are some of our biggest takeaways from our best Summer Conference yet…
- Innovation requires dedication every day.
- Creativity is important. Making time to think creatively can pay large dividends. Just as a person would strengthen their physical muscles, we must also tone our creativity “muscles”. We do this by abandoning the status-quo and pushing ourselves out of our comfort zones.
- Make a fool of yourself, work with the unexpected, give things away, realize you can’t do it alone and ask the unasked.
- Don’t be afraid to fail. Perfection is overrated and often holds you back from innovating something truly amazing.
- Share your innovation early. You will inspire others and they will inspire you to improve in unusual and meaningful ways.
- Try to be conscious of your biases. They might keep you from listening to someone with a good idea (or a critical warning).
- Artificial intelligence will soon power everything in our home from robots to mobile devices to holograms. AI will know everything when it comes to the details of a patient’s treatments so that people can remain in the comfort of their own home.
- There’s been nearly 100 years of history with wireless technology starting in 1918 with Germany’s wireless telephony experiments on military trains.
- Not all innovation comes from Silicon Valley. UpRamp announced 4 new fiterator companies featuring technology in AI, IoT, P2P CDN, and Cybersecurity from places including Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Alexandria, Virginia and Madrid, Spain.
- AI capabilities should not be outsourced and should live close to the business units. It’s not simply a problem of the technology stack, but how AI can be paired with intuition to make better business and product decisions.
- It’s an amazing time to rethink wireless. The Internet of Things will force us to reimagine what a wireless network could and should be.
- Rain doesn’t stop a Kyrio BBQ!
CableLabs is the innovation lab for the global cable industry focused on innovation with purpose. Watch our video here and check out our Buzzfeed article “10 Ways Tech will Change your Life in the Near Future” to learn more.
Leave a comment below to let us know how the technology of the future inspires you and what you learned from our 2017 Summer Conference.