It started as an idea. Then it picked up momentum. Finally, it happened. Just yesterday, CHS held its first-ever internal technology conference. We called it CHS TechKnowledge 2018 and it was awesome.

While the term, Digital Transformation, is over-used, it is a relevant impetus for this event. As an IT organization, we realized that simply being great technologists isn’t going to do it. As much as we need to continuously improve as a department, that still won’t cut it. For CHS to digitally transform, the CHS business people need to embrace and understand technology and use data in new and innovative ways.

As the technologists in the organization, we play an important leadership role in digital transformation. In small ways, we lead the greater organization every day, but we wanted to do something big and make an event out of it.

We decided to create a one-day event, led by IT for the CHS business audience. We wanted it to be both educational and collaborative. We wanted to impart practical knowledge and create an environment where we could form new relationships. Finally, we wanted to grow in two ways: IT’s leadership and communication skills, and the business’s technology and data skills.

Once the vision was set, we looked for volunteers. I put the call out to see who wanted to make this happen. Conferences are a lot of work. We formed a small team of bright and motivated IT employees from various teams and various levels of the organization. We defined TechKnowledge and made it happen.

We put out a “call for papers” to all of IT for session abstracts. By submitting, people were not only pitching an idea for a great break-out session, but were also volunteering to get on stage and present it. I was afraid that no one would respond. I knew people are busy and were already over committed.  I thought, “If no one submits, then we won’t have much of a conference. Maybe this whole conference idea was dumb.”

To my delight, we received 48 session submissions. My fears subsided. I now realized that IT was full of leaders at all levels and teams that were excited to impart their knowledge to the business, where it can be truly used to create a market advantage. The session submissions were all grass-roots. The IT leaders at the top of the organization didn’t tell people what sessions to submit. We used the vision as the guardrails and the IT organization responded.

After looking at the session submissions, some themes emerged, so we decided to organize the content into tracks:

• We had a Productivity track dedicated to getting the most out of collaboration and productivity technologies.
• We had a Security track dedicated to improving security awareness and demystifying policies.
• We had an SAP track dedicated to showcasing the power of our newest and most significant enterprise technology investments.
• We had an IT Solutions track dedicated to raising business awareness of newer IT service offerings that are underleveraged.
• We had a General track dedicated to broader topics such as top technology trends.
• We also offered Data Center tours during the event to showcase our state-of-the-art-colocation facilities and the modern technology within.

I can’t stress the point enough that all of the conference content was created from the bottom-up, not the top-down. If there was a secret-sauce to TechKnowledge, that was it.

Next, the conference team got busy working on the event details and getting the word out. I coached the speakers on how to prepare and deliver excellent presentations. I also spoke with the senior leaders of the company to share the vision and gather their support for the event.

Finally, the day arrived. Another set of fears welled-up inside me. What if no one shows up? What if everything goes wrong? What if too many people come, and we cannot accommodate them? I have a tendency to build things up in my mind. I really wanted this to be an awesome conference.

What actually happened? Well, a little bit of everything. Some sessions were poorly attended. Others were overflowing and spilling out into the hallways. Most of our logistics executed perfectly. Other parts of the planning failed and we had to make it up on the fly. Do you ever feel like you are simultaneously failing and succeeding at the same time? It’s a wild ride.

We have yet to analyze the feedback and fully reflect on what worked and what didn’t. That’ll come next. As of now, I’m glad we did it. It was a lot of work, but it was work worth doing. The people that came and engaged really benefited from the event.

This is the first time something like this has ever been attempted at CHS. I think we are on to something. We certainly answered one question: Can a bunch of IT people put on professional-quality internal technology conference? Yes, we can.