What's Up in 2018? Pittsburgh Tech and Business Leaders' 100 Words of Wisdom
We are barely two weeks deep into 2018, and PGHTechFuse was curious to see what Pittsburgh Technology Council members are thinking about for the coming year. Our diverse membership base reflects some very unique mindsets on what will drive the coming year. Here's what they had to say:
Mark DeSantis, CEO of Roadbotics
Is Stanley Kubrick’s film, The Shining, just a horror film or is it also about the horror the Holocaust, the decimation of native Americans or something else? Is 2001: A Space Odyssey about guys flying around in space or a cautionary statement about our over reliance on technology. Entrepreneurship is like a Kubrick film: sometimes hard to understand but less so once you have context. The problem is where we go for that context. We’re tempted to go to Techcrunch or a blog post. But there are no substitutes for a regular face-to-face back-and-forth between you and someone whose been there, done that.
Connect: https://twitter.com/roadbotics?lang=en | https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-desantis-21480/ | https://www.facebook.com/roadbotics/ | https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/roadbotics-inc
Meg Huwar, Brand Accelerator
I’ve been thinking a lot about how important the customer experience is when interacting with our brands. As technology continues to evolve it’s more important than ever, that we share every step in our customer’s journey. If we want to keep them from going to our competitors, we need to give them an experience that makes it really easy for them to work with us. We need to make our process quick and easy to understand. Whether it’s visiting our website, store, or office, the customer experience needs to be in the forefront of everything we do in 2018. This is something I am working on for my business in the new year.
Connect: www.thebrandaccelerator.com
Jim Jordan, President and CEO, The Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse
Focused solely on health care and life sciences, our 2018 thoughts turn to the health outcomes formula: Outcomes = Access + Quality + Absolute Cost. Although health care consumes almost 18% of our economy, our outcomes ranking is below that of the top 10 industrialized countries. Our product companies must perform at a higher level to favorably impact the Outcomes Formula. Our region offers incredible IT talent – if they understand the complex business of health care and its complex delivery process, they can design winning software. Combining knowledge and connection will be a surefire startup formula for our region.
Connect: www.plsg.com
Priya Amin, Flexable
This year, I'm thinking about one thing: how do we continue providing access - access for parents to childcare whenever/wherever they need it, access for companies to an affordable, tangible benefit that drives retention and inclusivity, access for caregivers to more money and better schedules, and access for our company to new markets and new opportunities. I know there will challenges along the way - but we learned in 2017 that for every challenge we faced, there were multiple supporters who helped us continue through our challenges. We're optimistic that 2018 will bring access to even bigger and better opportunities to help parents everywhere!
Connect: https://www.facebook.com/FlexableCare/?ref=bookmarks | https://twitter.com/flexablecare | https://www.linkedin.com/in/priyaamin/ | https://www.instagram.com/flexablecare/ | http://flexablecare.com/
Christopher Evans, Savvior
For 2018, Savvior is focused on helping organizations of all sizes address the imperative of website optimization, and ensure ADA Website Compliance.
Many companies invest heavily in a web experience but fail to realize that the website load times heavily effect user retention and search engine rankings! A recent Akamai survey showed alarmingly that 47% of people expect a web page to load in two seconds or less, and 40% will abandon a web page if it takes more than three seconds to load. The Americans with Disabilities Act extends to websites, to ensure that all Americans have fair access to important information. If your organization’s site isn’t compliant, you could be opening your company up to steep penalties and lawsuits, not to mention alienating potential customers. There’s a lot of confusion in the market around the latest guidelines, but Savvior is on top of the latest guidelines, and with our experience integrating alternative keyboards, text-to-speech software and screen magnifiers can help your organization make the right enhancements to ensure you are compliant!
Connect: https://savvior.com/website-optimization