Steve’s Thoughts on IndieTech 2024

Transcript:

I enjoyed attending the IndieTech 2024 Showcase Experience last week in Indianapolis along with Catalyit’s Director of Consulting, Casey Nelson. IndieTech is an independent conference attended by agents looking for ideas and the latest technology to help them improve their agencies. Also in attendance were several solution providers—some you know and others new—that have created solutions to some of agencies’ biggest problems.

The daily general sessions featured presentations about expected technology topics—artificial intelligence, marketing and sales, leadership development, and others. There were also several breakout sessions so agents could explore various issues more deeply. Gaya CEO Carl Ziade led one of the sessions I attended, which got me thinking.

He led a discussion on what an independent agency will look like in 2040.

He asked us to consider two questions:

1. What will change? and
2. What will not change?

2040 is 16 years away. While it may seem like a long time in the future, I can say from experience that it’ll be here sooner than you think.

I realized one way to approach an answer to these questions is to look back 16 years to 2008 to understand what we thought we knew and what actually happened. I went into my archives and looked at what the industry (and myself) were talking about in 2008.

I looked at old issues of TAAR (The Automated Agency Report Newsletter) and the agenda from High-TECC. A few of you might remember these, but many don’t.

I had been involved with TAAR and High-TECC since the late 1990s. I purchased both in 2001 and produced them for the next ten years.

High-TECC was designed as a gathering where agency owners could learn how technology would impact their organizations. It was called High because each event was held in various places in the mountains of Colorado, and TECC for The Executive Computer Camp. Many of the topics we discussed then are now standard tools in many independent agencies today.

Here are a few of the topics from 2008:

• Taming Your Outlook Inbox
• On-line Meetings—Start Preparing Now
• Winning E-Mail Marketing Campaigns
• Hiring the Right Hands to Redesign Your Site
• Content Management – The Next Generation Document Management
• Wikis at Work
• Single Purpose Web Sites—A New Marketing Tool

• The Status of Comparative Rating

The takeaway from IndieTech is that agencies that want to plan for the future should ask themselves –and their staff –the same two questions. When you look forward to 2040,

1. What will change? and
2. What will stay the same?

The answers you come up with will help you plan and direct your journey as an agency into the next 16 years.

Catalyit is here to help you on that journey by providing you with information and tools to maximize the technology you already have and help you discover, evaluate, select, and implement what you might want to add that allows your agency to continue to thrive.

Let us know how we can help you on this journey.