Featuring leading speakers from within and outside of the industry, the TechPoint General Sessions bring you the latest insights into trends of today and opportunities for the future, providing you with the means to inspire innovation, leadership and growth within your own organization.

Please visit frequently to see the exciting General Sessions as they are added.

KEYNOTE
Monday, April 26
6:00-7:00PM

TITLE:  Live a thousand years?  How is this possible?
Giovanni Livera

OVERVIEW:
Live a thousand years? How is this possible? This captivating Keynote teaches you how to live twelve times the life experience of the average person.

Most of us measure our time by clocks and calendars. Live a Thousand Years reveals the power of measuring your time and your success by moments and experiences.
Giovanni will share strategies for you to create a more meaningful life filled with abundant happiness.

BIOGRAPHY:
For many people, the past imposes limitations on who they are in the present. For Giovanni Livera, his heritage is the foundation for who he is today and the legacy he is creating for future generations.  Above all, he is a celebrator of human spirit and human potential - a creator of meaningful experiences that transform people’s lives through the understanding that anything is possible.  He is a revealer of secrets - the wizard who, if asked, will show you how it is possible to live a thousand years by living each hour of your life to its very fullest.

Giovanni is an entertainer who is both the messenger and the message. His passion for living is the medium through which he shares his passion for living.
He is an American entrepreneur whose achievements inspire others to achieve. Giovanni is at once a performer and a presenter, enthusiast and entertainer, magician and motivator.

It is only appropriate that Giovanni’s heritage is Italian, for during the Italian Renaissance of centuries ago mankind emerged from the Dark Ages and envisioned a world of limitless possibilities. Giovanni is emergence, enlightenment, inspiration and celebration. He invites you to see the world as never before. 

General Session
Tuesday, April 27
11:30AM -12:15PM

TITLE:  Enabling Change & Unleashing Great Performance
Sara M. Roberts

OVERVIEW:
To survive and gain a sustainable competitive advantage, your organization must be nimble and agile to respond to market changes. This drives efforts to decentralize, improve processes and redefine decisionmaking power. It calls for erasing boundaries and creating seamless and collaborative work environments. Efforts designed to give organizations this kind of speed are great- however, organizations can’t go fast if their employees go slow. Managing change successfully is the key to eliminating resistance, enabling employees and unleashing the great performance intended. Companies with the edge are consistently and proactively planning for enabling change, adopting a systematic approach, and providing the tools and environment for their employees to be successful.

Sara will address:

• Building a foundation of employee engagement to make change adoption easier
• Assessing your organizational “readiness” for systems and process improvement efforts
• Developing and communicating a compelling vision for change
• Change management best practices to consider

BIOGRAPHY:

Sara M. Roberts is the President and CEO of Roberts Golden Consulting headquartered in San Francisco,California.

A Seasoned leader, she and her team have led change management and performance improvement efforts for Fortune 500 companies as varied as AAA, Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco Systems, Fed Ex, Hilton Hotels, McKesson, Safeway, Macy's and Virgin Media.

Prior to starting Roberts Golden, six years ago, she held senior consulting positions within companies including Sprint, Andersen Consulting and Ketchum.

She and her team at Roberts Golden have led numerous large-scale change management and organizational effectiveness efforts for their clients undertaking mergers, corporate reorganizations, culture transformations, technology implementations and process improvement efforts.

Sara is also a widely recognized thought leader in inside/out marketing and branding solutions which help bridge the frequent gap between what customers expect in their experience with a brand versus what the companies employees actually deliver.

Sara is the co-author of the best-selling book, Light Their Fire: Using Internal Marketing to Ignite Employee Performance and Wow Your Customers (Kaplan 2005). She is a frequent keynote speaker at leading industry events and has been quoted in numerous publications including BusinessWeek, Inc. Magazine and Forbes.

She received her M.S. in Instructional Technology from the University of Nebraska. 

General Session
Wednesday, April 28
11:15AM -12:15PM

TITLE:  Understanding the Economic Valuation of Today's Customer-Centric Technologies
Michael Hiatt, President, Dynamic Retailing

OVERVIEW:
As consumers continue to embrace technology throughout their daily lives, expectations of retailers to create a more interactive, dynamic marketplace have increased. Technology providers have innovated at an aggressive pace, but have often delivered what was simple or lucrative rather than what retailers really needed. At the same time, retailers in general have not communicated clearly enough to these providers on what is truly necessary in their stores to create a more dynamic shopping environment.

This presentation, by Michael Hiatt, will help both retailers and technology firms better understand how to create a more integrated approach to customer-centric technologies, build a better ROI case for executive management, and improve the shopping experience for today's retail customer.

BIOGRAPHY:

Michael Hiatt, President, Dynamic Retailing, LLC, is the former business leader and strategist for the new Walmart Smart Network. This new network is changing the way people look at retail media and digital signage applications within the retail environment. Hiatt oversaw the design of the network and selected key suppliers to build and implement the new in-store system.

The Smart Network is improving the customer experience of Walmart and helping its customers shop smarter—saving money and time. It is also helping store managers more effectively set their merchandise and increase shopper baskets.

Prior to Walmart, Michael Hiatt was the vice president of media services at B/O/W/G Advertising in Salt Lake City, Utah. Mike started his media career at WordPerfect Corporation in 1992; he later became the director of media programs for Novell, Inc. In 1995, at Novell, he created one the first ‘extranets’ in the history of the World Wide Web.

While at B/O/W/G, Michael created the web site, mediadirector.com. The site was originally created to provide industry commentary on technology marketing and media. He wrote a monthly column on the hi-tech media industry that was posted on mediadirector.com. Later, he wrote a monthly column for Sam Whitmore’s Media Survey (www.mediasurvey.com).
In the middle of this decade, Michael built an online media channel for iPass, Inc. By leveraging a lucrative user base, Michael devised and designed a new media channel, creating a new revenue stream for iPass and improving the login experience for their users.

For Highlights of the 2008 General Sessions, please click here

For Highlights of the 2007 General Sessions, please click here.