DemoHop

Here's some highlights from Target's Innovation Week session & the CIO panel at Tech Connect. There were excellent sessions all day, but these were 2 that we got to attend. Nathan Smith Jonny Thompson Mike Weispfenning shared more on Target's innovation week. Target is a leader in demo days to drive innovation and they recently added a week long hackathon week to their quarterly demo days. The event has been super successful and led to: ✅ 15-20 innovative projects completed per year that weren't on the roadmap and where the ideas came out of the innovation week / demo days ✅ 50+ NPS swing for employees -- personal growth, people finding increased purpose and meaning in their day to day ✅ Connection -- people met others outside their normal teams; as well as learning, confidence, and renewed personal fulfillment from the work Here are their 8 key elements of success for bringing something similar to your own company. 1) Know your purpose -- what are you trying to get out of this, why are you doing this? 2) Motivate the teams by giving: --> Autonomy - giving flexibility --> Mastery - building on current skills and developing new ones --> Purpose -- letting innovators work on things that matter to them 3) Invest -- this was the primary activity for the week and not just a secondary thing; the week was open to many teams including engineering, UX, product, and business stakeholders; plus their leadership was fully invested 4) Share ideas in the open --> Any idea, every idea --> Connect people and ideas and try things out to see what it leads to 5) Work differently - and have everyone present at the end with learnings 6) Exploration --> permission to fail and to take leaps --> remove the guardrails --> Encourage creativity and research 7) Inject hype and make the hackathon approach and exciting at the same time 8) Take things forward --> take the ideas into production ----- Then a fantastic CIO panel from Jennifer Hartsock Mark Murphy Cris Ross Darrin Hebert. Our companies and orgs are in good hands. Cris talked about the Mayo Clinic's focus on data and making it transparent, visible, usable, and secure for both patients and providers and doing it on a scale of millions of patients. Jennifer shared the importance of attracting tech talent and developing strong internal tech capabilities. Plus great points on allocating her time between 1) Vision & strategy, 2) Getting things done, and 3) Building a legacy for the future of the org Darrin shared about balancing the needs of operational excellence and future innovation in a high business + regulatory demands environment. It has to be an 'AND' and it's always a balance. Then Mark shared insights into keeping the institutional knowledge and enterprise productivity high and how to balance priorities; indexing into certain areas and out of others Thank you to everyone who made it another great Tech Connect! Minnesota Technology Association #techconnect2024

Wow, what an event!  It was inspiring to meet and learn from so many builders, innovators, and technology leaders in our community. There’s a ton to be excited about.  Thank you to the Minnesota Technology Association and for the team Jeff Tollefson Molly Doyle Aleah Vinick Ismail Ali who helped us and the group put on #techconnect2024. 🚀 It was great to share more about DemoHop and how we're powering online employee events for any team, and especially for product and tech teams. We shared some use cases like demo days, dev days, hackathons, and more and had lots of great conversations and product demos yesterday.  In addition, it was wonderful to talk to leaders developing our next generation in tech Andrea Wilson Vazquez Jennifer Rosato Shannon Seaver NBCT Plus, all of the sessions were power-packed and insightful.  Here are a few notes from yesterday: We started off with Jake Krings and Mikey Vu sharing about GenAI uses at Target. Many great takeaways with  1) Educate and immerse your team in the tech -- getting the tools in the hands of your teams and to think of AI as the world’s most genius intern. Then to look for the eureka moments. Also to ask questions like --> How might I do things differently? --> How can I do my job differently? --> What can my teams do with it? 2) Start small  Target did a simple 2x2 matrix with impact on one axis and feasibility on the other; the ideas that fell in the high impact and high feasibility were the first wave of ideas to work on; it's hard to do everything, but starting small and prioritizing is the way forward. 3) Design an implementation approach that acknowledges risk, but doesn’t fear it  --> Goal is to not have perfection; just focus on making it a little better than now 4) Scaling is the challenge and have a plan for change management Then do: Proof of concept – test the tech  MVP – human in the loop validation  Scale– gain confidence 5) Measure and reward the value -- this is around change management and acknowledging that change is hard; to baseline existing performance to see how AI is helping. Plus celebrate wins. Summary:  “This is a journey, there really isn’t a playbook, look at principles and just get started” Then another fantastic morning session from Michelle Hermanson at Land O'Lakes about their project to product transformation. Lesson 1) Know your why -- including aligned outcomes and goals between the business and tech teams; culture of learning and growth; higher engagement; and value delivery commitment like a MVP Lesson 2) Progress over perfection -- with increased engagement (structure), people focused (practices), and outcome driven rather than outputs driven (culture) Sometimes transitions are hard and you may get stuck in the "valley of despair" but to give yourself grace and to celebrate wins. Then keep pushing forward. Experiment and learn. So much content that this will be a two part post! Stay tuned for the afternoon wrap-up tomorrow.

We're looking forward to Tech Connect this week on Wed May 8th! Stop by and see us in booth #10 if you'll be there. We're excited to show how DemoHop powers online employee events, done right. It's pretty crazy to think about that since Tech Connect started (about 20 years ago), we've seen the invention of the smartphone, rise of video, 3D printing, driverless cars, reusable rockets, and so much more. Innovation is only accelerating and Tech Connect will be great to celebrate and discuss current technology and trends -- with sessions on AI, machine learning, cybersecurity, connected devices, CIO leadership, and more. Tech Connect 2024 Wed May 8th, St. Paul RiverCentre 8am - 5pm DemoHop --> Booth #10 Minnesota Technology Association #TechConnect2024

We're excited to be exhibiting next week at Tech Connect! Tech Connect celebrates Minnesota's long history of tech innovation. There's a fantastic lineup of speakers + many sessions for networking and learning. Come stop by our booth if you'll be there. Tech Connect 2024 Wed May 8th, St. Paul RiverCentre 8am - 5pm DemoHop --> Booth #10 Here's the link to register--> https://lnkd.in/gbTGmr-j Minnesota Technology Association

I'm thrilled to share that DemoHop is hopping on the GenAI bandwagon—because why not? Everyone else is doing it! Our new GenAI-powered features are already making waves, enabling product teams to effortlessly set up their demo day booths. And guess what? The adoption has been great! Deploying GenAI was a breeze—big shoutout to Google for their slick API. In fact, setting this up took less time than figuring out a marketing conversion pixel (yes, really!) While most GenAI integrations might not warrant a parade or a festival, the ease of implementation and the immediate boost in productivity it brings to our platform is worth a mention. So here's to making tech less about the fluff and more about the value.

With distributed workforces, it is super valuable to find ways that create connection. Come join us on Tuesday April 30th as we talk to Monica Georgieff from AgileSherpas about the challenges and opportunities with remote / hybrid teams, ways of building connection, and tools to make online events productive. See post below to RSVP. We're looking forward to seeing you there! ✔️Tuesday April 30th, 11am EST - 12pm EST ✔️Online with LinkedIn Live

Shout out to our Running Remote neighbors Native Teams Hoogly Upflex and Gatheround!

We're looking forward to the conference next week and happy to be a partner of the Running Remote community!

We're looking forward to Tech Connect coming up on May 8th. It's a great event to learn about the latest technology and celebrate innovation. We hope to see you there!

We're excited for our co-founder & CEO, Sean Murphy to talk with Monica Georgieff from AgileSherpas! We'll be discussing distributed work, ways to build connection across your large teams, sparking serendipity, and more. Check out the full details below. Join us on Tuesday April 30th at 11am EST for the LinkedIn Live event. RSVP to get notified when the event is live and receive a recording. Looking forward to seeing you there! https://lnkd.in/gQcNfT_W