Tomorrow is now

It is really interesting to see how the concept of technology exhibitions and summits is changing. The past weeks were filled with all sorts of technology events from the ICT Summit to Webit. After the industry’s major events, Turkcell, on Nov. 12 and 13, organized an event called Turkcell Technology Summit. It came as a surprise to me that the content and the attendance were far superior in Turkcell’s event than the independent summits. It is a surprise because Turkcell’s main line of business is not to hold events. However, they command a network of both technology providers and customers in many different industries as mobile and broadband technologies diffused all others permanently. For example, in Yiğit Kulabaş’s (VP of Corporate Marking) presentation, he mentioned a connected tree, which is capable of sending tweets on its own, along with all other sorts of M2M technologies that will change the way every industry does business. 

However, I still feel a bit uneasy about the fact that Turkey’s best technology event is an event designed and implemented by one firm. Either the independent event organizers have a lot to learn from Turkcell, or maybe Turkcell does such a good job that no one cares about independent events anymore. 

In the good old days, we were going to events to see new technology. Now, we don’t need to be physically present at an event to see the latest. All major innovations and products can be learned via the internet because, usually, Turkey is not the first place where major technology firms launch anything. 

Therefore, these days, it is all about tomorrow and networking. How technology will affect business is the main question on everyone’s mind. Who is around to meet, is the next thing we think about after we understand the main idea of the event. Because Turkcell’s technology day can provide both, people find it worthwhile to attend. 

This year’s main speaker was Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired. He is one of my hero’s, as he does what I do, but much better and on a global scale for the past 30 years. He talked about disruptive technologies. He said disruptions always come from business areas that are not mature yet. He said Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and Apple are actually Google’s competitors more than anything and guessed the end of Google might come from peer-to-peer networks, such as Dropbox. He then talked about how we will measure and record everything about ourselves and called it the quantified self.
More and more, people are using some form of technology to record the level of their activities. Soon, the market will be flooded with devices to monitor heart beats, insulin levels, brain waves, everything…
This will enable you to have full knowledge about how your body works; and everyone’s metabolism is different than others. The vast data about ourselves will enable us to have personalized medicine. We will collect this data with wearable technologies or with chips under our skin. 

All these technologies are currently available but they are not distributed widely yet. So, embrace yourselves, a big wave of innovation is about to hit the market.