Thanks to scholarships from the good folks at Intuit, ABQid staffers Kathleen Gardenswartz and Trisha Terhar were able to attend the Lean Startup Conference in San Francisco last week. The conference was co-hosted by Eric Ries, the author of ‘The Lean Startup,’ and proved to be an invaluable learning experience for Kathleen and Trisha.
“It was eye opening to see lean startup principles being utilized in so many different sectors,” explained Trisha Terhar. “I even attended a session at the conference in which we applied the principles to the development of compelling marketing videos,” she added. That session, led by Golden Globe winning writer/producer Bill Grundfest, illustrates the diversity of content available to conference attendees.
Kathleen had the chance to hear Bill Gross, CEO of Idealab, talk about his long and successful history creating and operating technology companies. Idealab has an infrastructure that allows for testing out multiple business ideas at once and then building the best of them into large-scale enterprises. “His rapid prototyping processes deliver critical metrics that reveal whether a business will scale. If it doesn’t meet their requirements the idea is shelved for the moment,” explained Kathleen.
Mother nature played a role at the conference, causing a power outage for several hours on Thursday morning. The conference organizers were quick to pivot and organized ‘impromptu interactive sessions’ to keep attendees engaged. “That was my favorite part!” Kathleen exclaimed. These sessions allowed for greater interaction between thought leaders and attendees, which was extremely valuable.
Both Kathleen and Trisha took detailed notes during their time at the conference, so we look forward to incorporating what they learned into our services moving forward. ABQid is committed to continuous innovation and we understand that investing in our employees’ professional development is critical to that process. Look for more updates on how our employees stay up to date on industry best practices ahead. For more information on the Lean Startup Conference visit: http://2014.leanstartup.co
