Walking out of San Francisco airport, I hopped on a BART to downtown! – Note to self or any future traveller to San Fran – Those hills do not mess around! I’m pretty sure I burned a few pounds whilst walking up and down them for the week.

That being said, from San Fran to San Jose, I remembered WAYMO had arrived – If you do not know, these are the world’s first fully autonomous, public driverless taxi service. I stepped into a futuristic Jaguar, you can manually adjust settings all from the palm of your hand such as seat adjustment, Air-Con, the Top of the Taxi showing your own initials and even play your own Spotify as you get into the vehicle.

Once you get over the first 5 minutes of feeling very strange and hoping it doesn’t crash, it’s actually a great journey, a sense of calm in realizing this is what the future is going to be. Autonomy, AI Robotics at its finest. Are there improvements to be made, of course but to say this is where we are already is astronomical.

But arriving in San Francisco for the first time personally was met with excitement, producing an event, in an exquisite venue with a client I am excited to continue working with across the US and perhaps beyond. Hosting a Tech Intelligence Dinner, at Villons Restaurant, we had a full buyout for the space, from the drinks reception, panel discussion & dinner, we even had a private patio for the reception.

Upon arrival the guests were treated with a Mini Charcuterie Board each during the Champagne Drinks reception, meeting Marketing/IT individuals all keen and ready to understand in more depth the topic of Accelerating Digital Growth with Flexible Web Solutions and how to transform Mission-Critical Websites into a Growth-Engine.

A VP of Marketing, a CEO and a Director of Web Strategy enter Villon’s Restaurant, might sound like the start of one of those jokes, but no, they entered ready and raring to go, delivering an exceptionally genuine panel discussion, where questions from the room fired across.

Having the ability to sit behind and listen in to the conversation, a particular point struck me the most which was when you’re dealing with the website strategy, who should it fall with? IT or Marketing, well my thoughts as it did with the panel, is shouldn’t you have them both align – key insights from marketing will give IT more of a reason as to why a website might need to have a certain look or feel, but that’s my ten cents!

The topic went deep into elements, across the panel discussion & dinner allowing fantastic pocket conversations and learning from both perspective of the variety of attendees at the event. I had the added benefit of sitting outside the room with one of the clients for the evening, getting to know her and her own family and career proving these events help create truly great relationships. Which can lead to great work together, and I have always said these events, are about the relationships you build, when helping people learn and develop their understanding on issues that actually matter.

I even learned they actually have to continuously paint the bridge, not every 7 years that some say – CRAZY!

Jaden Carter
Head of Global Demand Generation
CxO Helix