Bagels, Brainpower, and Big Questions: Kicking Off DTECH the Right Way
What’s the antidote to Monday night happy hours run late at DTECH? Morning coffee and conversation to charge up for the conversation in day two of the conference!
With today being the first day of the DTech floor is finally open, Energy Central was honored to be stop 1 on the way to the conference center for so many of our friends in the industry as well as new connections who trusted us to kick off their day.
As we looked around the room, there were dozens of conversations taking place simultaneously over coffee and bagels so it’s impossible for me to distill down what the themes of EVERYONE’S conversation was, but here are some nuggets I heard as I bounced around and connected:
- People in the industry are eager to learn and debate, but what’s the value of doing that until we define the terms (what is digitalization? Can we agree on those terms before we keep hammering them to the ground?)
- Wildfires are clearly a topic that’s top of mind to so many of us—it’s not just a California issue anymore, it’s an every utility area of focus and it’s taking an all-hands-on-deck approach to make it happen
- Data, data, data. I heard conversations about how we need to collect more, how we need to clean it better, and how we need to finally and actually use the data to its fullest extent.
- We all see AI coming and we all want to embrace it, but we can’t just do it to do it. Let’s make sure we think about and focus on the real business case.
- And not for nothing, but no matter what corner of the country people were from, a common sentiment was how happy we were to be in sunny San Diego and escape the cold that seems to be encasing…everywhere
