On the shores of Lake Monona Thursday, state business leaders packed into a room to hear a Google executive speak about developing innovative technology in a technological world.
The Business Best Practices and Emerging Technologies Conference was held at the Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center.
The University of Wisconsin’s E-Business Consortium, an organization with over 60 prominent Wisconsin companies, including Lands’ End, Harley Davidson and Kohler, in addition to the University of Wisconsin, hosted the conference.
“We hold more than 50 meetings a year where these companies come together and sort of wrestle through problems and work with each other,” Marketing and Communications Director for the UW E-Business Consortium Kyle Henderson said.
According to Henderson, only members of the consortium are allowed to attend these meetings. Thursday’s conference was open to the public in an effort to reach out to the community, Henderson said.
The conference provided information on quality business practices and emerging technologies to a larger business community.
Henderson said this year’s conference focused on innovation, which in an ever-changing world, all businesses have an interest in.
“We got Marissa Mayer to speak – who’s a rock star in the business technology community – to talk about innovation, including what they do to foster their innovative culture,” Henderson said.
Delivering the keynote address at the event, Mayer, vice president of search product and user experience at Google, spoke about the culmination of ideas and processes that go into the creations at Google, including Google News, Gmail and Google Maps.
Most people, even those with access to the Internet, had never seen an aerial picture of their house or even their neighborhood until the release of Google Earth and Google Maps.
She went further saying that addressing these types of situations, where people are unable to do or get something they might find particularly desirable, helps the staff at Google brainstorm innovative ways to fulfill those desires.
She also said the periodical changes to the Google logo, such as those celebrating holidays and noteworthy birthdays, add personality to the otherwise barren homepage and remind users that real people work at the Internet browser.
Going beyond Google, Mayer also addressed the recent exponential rise of mobile applications, leading the technology business to believe apps to be the second coming of the Internet. Despite the popularity of apps, Mayer said most are not even functional without web service and would never take the place of online activity.
Ryan Henning, vice president of marketing at Miles Cable Company, said the speech helped conceptualize the thought processes of the industry giant and their approach to business.
“Everyone knows what Google does, but you get that lens inside the business to see how they operate,” Henning said.
The main goal of the Consortium is to help companies contribute to Wisconsin’s economy.
“That’s the big idea of the consortium industry,” Henderson said. “Bring Wisconsin companies together, give them some information that’s gonna make them a little bit better at what they do and therefore more competitive.”
