ISC West has announced their keynote speakers. Getting back from the Barnes Buchanan Conference where ADT CEO Tim Whall spoke, it showed quite a contrast.
Here's ISC West 2017 keynoters:
The problem is neither organization is that important to the integrators and manufacturers that dominate ISC West and neither of these people is well known.
Not 'All Star'
As an example, if we did a post on either of these people, it would almost certainly be in the bottom 25% of readership, simply because most integrators and manufacturers will conclude that the FBI has little impact on their businesses and that while Intel makes chips in their computers, it does not make a material difference to their companies.
By contrast, ADT is a big player, and the biggest in the market that Barnes Buchanan covers (alarm monitoring). Hearing from the head guy at ADT is useful because lots of people compete with ADT and want to get a sense of how they operate / think. Here's a clip of ADT CEO's speaking:
I found him to be quite forthright and entertaining but even if he was terrible, it still would have been insightful and useful to know that about ADT's CEO.
Recommendations For ISC West
The metric should be companies and people who most impact the ISC West audience.
For example, 10 years ago, Cisco's CTO was the keynoter and that was great. It was highly relevant pick and it helped people learn more about Cisco's approach / process (which of course failed and could be seen in what he presented at the keynote).
Likewise, pick executives from today's big companies, e.g.:
- Hikvision Chairman and Communist Party Secretary Chen Zognian talk about dominating the global market
- Axis CEO Ray Mauritsson talk about the Canon acquisition, the move to solution sales, etc.
- Genetec CEO Pierre Racz about kicking Hikvision out, etc.
Whether they do a good or bad job speaking, it would be an almost unprecedented look inside these big organizations.
So what do you think? Who would you like to see?