CHICAGO � (February 23, 2010) � Hospitality technology leaders will
soon receive the benefit of a very powerful collection of speakers at Hotel
Technology Next Generation�s (HTNG) 6th annual North American meeting.
The final session and speaker list for its upcoming Members� Meeting in
Orlando Florida boasts internationally recognized authors, leading hospitality
technologists, and other industry experts that will engage and empower
every attendee with a wealth of new understanding while attendees will
also benefit from unparalleled opportunities to develop industry partnerships.
Some of the key sessions and speakers on the agenda include:
� Y-Size Your Business: Making Gen Y a Strategic Advantage
as Employees and Customers - Jason Ryan Dorsey is a bestselling author,
acclaimed speaker, and award-winning entrepreneur. Often referred to as
the �Gen Y Guy,� he has been featured on 60 Minutes, 20/20, NBC�s Today
Show, ABC�s The View, NPR�s On Point, and in The Wall Street Journal and
Fortune Magazine. His presentations have impacted diverse audiences across
the United States and across the globe. Jason has extensively researched
the almost 80 million strong, 18-32 year old demographic that is the powerful
and unique Generation Y. Along with a new definition of �business casual,�
and a need for instant gratification that makes text messaging outdated,
Gen Y will be a growing challenge or a competitive advantage depending
entirely on how business leaders respond. Jason will go �behind-the-scenes�
to explain Gen Y's workplace and consumer mindset.
� Evidence-Based IT and 5 Years of Data Breach Investigations -
An information security pioneer, Dr. Peter Tippett has led the computer
security industry for more than 20 years, initially as a vendor of security
products and, over the past 16 years, as a key strategist. He is widely
credited with creating the first commercial anti-virus product, which later
became Norton Antivirus. Dr. Tippett, who is now VP of Technology &
Innovation for Verizon Business, will show how economics, diminishing-returns
and risk-based models can be used to significantly improve IT decision-making.
Tippett will use actuarial data from numerous Verizon studies including
the six year data sets from Verizon�s ongoing Data Breach Investigations
Report series. This session will be an in-depth discussion of critical
trends in IT leadership, decision making, compliance and security and how
they affect organizations today.
� Clouds Are Looming: Are You Ready? - Bill Peer, Vice President
and Chief Enterprise Architect at Intercontinental Hotels Group (IHG),
will identify what vendors must think about if their technology is going
to exist in the future hotel landscape. In his usual irreverent manner,
using elements of IHG�s Cloud Computing and Virtualization strategy, Bill
will highlight the minimums that technology providers must achieve to be
a part of IHG�s roadmap and identify important considerations vendors must
make now. As author of IHG�s 1, 3, and 5 year strategic technology roadmaps,
he�ll also offer suggestions to companies that want to be a part of this
inevitable evolution of hospitality technology.
� Virtually There - Nick Price, CIO/CTO, Mandarin Oriental Hotel
Group, will speak on the business drivers behind his company�s strategy
to virtualize all applications, including those from third parties. At
Mandarin Oriental, Nick is responsible for a broad range of digital, or
soon-to-be digital technologies and services, including traditional hotel
IT, enterprise networks and infrastructure, Internet presence, telephony,
networks, in-room technologies, and audio visual systems. Based on lab
testing, and with the eye of the hotel technologist, Nick will highlight
measurable benefits of virtualization to IT organizations and especially
to hotels, and discuss some of the fears and challenges faced by vendors
considering virtualization.
� Legal Eagles of Technology � In this session we will seek to
demystify some of the many issues involved in developing contracts for
IT products and services and the issues and risks that need to be addressed
by hotels buying technology, and by vendors selling them. This lively session,
moderated by industry veteran Robert Bennett, will provide perspective
from both sides that can lead to more successful contracts and long-term
buyer-supplier relationships. Panelists will include John Krieger representing
the vendor perspective; Krieger is a partner with Lewis & Roca's Intellectual
Property and Technology Practice Group. Representing the buyer perspective
will be Harvey Kellman, Vice President and Senior Council, Information
Resources & eBusiness at Marriott International.
� Social Media - When guests consider a property, a friend�s
recommendation is more convincing than any travel agent proposal and user
generated content is better than brochures. Customer reviews can be more
effective than advertising, but all of these mean that hoteliers are no
longer in control of the reputation of their service. The travel industry
has to deal with Social Media, and deploy consistent strategies in marketing
and technology. Léon Benjamin, Social media and web 2.0 practitioner
and author of Winning by Sharing, will apply his vast knowledge of social
media to help hospitality strengthen its approach in this session that
we�ve brought over from our European meeting where is was a strong attendee
favorite.
� Is it Time to Pick a Fight with your GUI? - Geoff Cairns, Worldwide
Managing Director for Hospitality at Microsoft, will discuss trends
of younger, more technology dependent generations, and how their expectations
for interacting with their devices are changing. With the commercialization
of the GUI about 25 years ago, the mouse, touchpad, and trackball joined
the keyboard as primary interface devices. How much longer will it be before
the GUI is dethroned in favor of easier, more intuitive interfaces which
use natural interactions like speech, gestures, object recognition and
intent? Many of these control techniques exist today, but how long will
it be until they become a part of everyday devices and how will these controls
change operations with smaller form factors? Attendees will learn to identify
architectures and patterns to help make decisions today that will be relevant
tomorrow.
Registration is still open for Hotel technology professionals who are interested
in learning more about these topics as well as the work of the nearly 120
industry volunteers who are collaboratively redefining systems interoperability
for hospitality. The meeting starts the evening of March 1 and continues
through March 3 and will also feature the awarding of the first ever Most
Innovative Hospitality Technology Award. For more information visit
the event web site: http://www.htng.org/america.
About Hotel Technology Next Generation
The premier technology solutions association in the hospitality industry,
HTNG is a self-funded, non-profit organization with members from hotel
and hospitality companies, technology vendors to hospitality, and other
industry members including consultants, media, and academic experts.
HTNG�s members participate in focused workgroups to bring to market open
solution sets addressing specific business problems. HTNG fosters
the selection and adoption of existing open standards. Where necessary,
it also develops new open standards to meet the needs of the global hospitality
industry.
Membership in HTNG is open to hotel and hospitality companies, technology
vendors to hospitality, consultants, academics, press and others.
Currently, more than 400 corporate and individual members from across this
spectrum, including most of the world�s leading hotel companies and technology
vendors, are active HTNG participants. HTNG�s Board of Directors alone
represents more than 2.3 million guest rooms � with the total rooms impacted
by all of HTNG�s hotelier members surpasses 4.3 millions rooms worldwide.
Workgroup proceedings, drafts, and specifications are published for all
HTNG members as soon as they are created, encouraging rapid and broad adoption.
Specifications are released to the public domain as they are ratified by
the workgroup. For more information, visit www.htng.org.
|