04 Apr Thoughtlight CEO Christina Speaks at Mass Technology Leadership Council’s BUILD Conference

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BUILD Conference

On the first warm day of March, Thoughtlight was at the BUILD Your Business Conference at Microsoft NERD, hosted by MassTLC. The conference started bright and early to welcome a number of business professionals in various roles such as leadership, marketing, sales and human resources. Despite differences in job titles, every attendee shared same goal: to improve their organizations’ abilities to become truly cross-functional in all their operations.

Jackie Glenn, former VP/Chief Diversity Officer at Dell/EMC, kickstarted the day, bringing joy and inspiration to those who attended her keynote. She shared multiple growth and leadership lessons to enhance diversity and inclusion within the workplace, among which is an awareness of your own personality traits or ”œgems,” in her word. Jackie not only left the audience with smiles and laughter from her upbeat personality and great sense of humor, but also provided several important takeaways. One of her remarks was that success ought not to be achieved alone. You Shall Lift (others) As You Climb (the ladder to success) as well, like the name of her book.

The conference offered workshops and panels covering a wide range of topics, from launching a product to creating a growth mindset and understanding and utilizing cross-functional teams in your organization. Our founder and CEO, Christina Inge, teamed up with Tom Libretto, CMO of Pega, to provide strategic and tactical insights on how to determine the right customer base. They shared their opinions and advice on the widely-used customer discovery strategy, as well as creating personas, plus updates on the emerging trend of empathy-driven design. Their key takeaways: being ”œcustomer centric” is a process, one that the digital marketing world makes easier than ever. Marketing automation allows every customer to be treated as an individual. Mapping your customer journey is more important than using static personas when it comes to marketing tactics. In fact, personas may become passe in digital operations, as automation, journey mapping, and AI make it possible to meet each customer exactly where they are, with messaging, creative, and offers tailored to their real digital behavior, not an abstract persona. That said, personas will always have value in product development. In fact, their value in product management is growing as a tool to foster empathy for customers, building products centered on user needs first and foremost.

The session, set up as an informal fireside chat, allowed the audience who came packed with questions to share their thoughts and acquire all essential strategies they needed to pinpoint customer evangelists.

BUILD Conference was a good opportunity for Thoughtlight to share our expertise, as well as make new and meaningful connections with industry professionals. The day concluded with positive energy; all the attendees left the conference with fundamental knowledge in growing a technology company, new inspiration, and a valuable toolset for further growth.