The month that was: Rome, Beyond and more…

October saw the culmination of a couple of big initiatives that I was personally excited about; an executive team visit to our Italian operation that was also the forum to reflect on our key priorities and our internal leadership annual conference, Beyond.

“Tutte le strade portano a Roma"

What a fantastic week we had in Rome! It is difficult to even describe how impressive the progress of this operation has been in less than 2 years. From an idea born at the end of 2002, we now have a long-term concession in our hands, a meaningful deployment of a smart city project, and a new set of opportunities to fuel our growth beyond Roma5G with strong partners and customers.

If there was a need to demonstrate the importance of what we do, Roberto Gualtieri, Mayor of Rome, had a full 4-course dinner with us and our partners (see the LinkedIn post).

We went to see some of our deployments in 3 different city squares. Going down in the Metro at night in station Barberini, we realised how fast and well we have started to deliver on the Roma5G projects, but also the challenges, the innovation and relationships needed to make them happen. There is more ahead of us than behind us but great to see that we have started on time and budget. A special thanks to Stefano Paggi in Boldyn Italia for his time and passion.

What we do in Rome is difficult and meaningful, in one word: Special!

Talking about special, Andrew McGrath rath surprised us with a speech of close to 10 minutes, all in Italian and without notes at the start of our townhall in our newly opened Rome office. Hats off Mr. McGrath and a massive thank you to Antonio Ruggiero and his team for hosting us superbly.

During our visit to Rome as a leadership team, we also spent time on some key topics and decisions around our overall business. From long-term value creation to talent and employee engagement, and actions to put even more focus on the most critical matters. Lastly, I had the opportunity to sit down with Simona Pusceddu , finance director for Boldyn Italia, for our 5th One Boldyn internal podcast.  This time, I didn’t have to take a carriage across Central Park in NY or take a boat in Balboa Island, CA to speak to our colleagues, but to sit comfortably in our brand new office in Rome 😊.

Growing Above and Beyond 2024

This was the theme of our annual leadership conference where we had 120 leaders from around the world joining us in London (see the LinkedIn post).

From my standpoint, it was a perfect mix of important discussions and presentations, inspiring external and customer perspectives, and some fun and celebrations hosted across a few iconic venues of the London Southbank (Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Globe and Sea Containers). [pictures]

We spoke about our ambition, culture, leadership, and customer feedback. And the event also allowed us to get great perspectives from our new businesses: Private Networks Europe (PNE) and Higher Education, which, by the way, rebranded officially as Boldyn today.

We also presented for the first time our Boldyn Bus and spoke about financials, technology, security, ESG and many other topics that escaped my mind. [picture of bus]

We had perspectives from a wide range of world-class speakers such as Severin Lüthi (long-time tennis coach of Roger Federer) accompanied by Christian Marcolli , and Anne Sheehan an (GM Microsoft West Europe who spoke about AI).

We also had some of our customers and partners with us from Olympia, Orsted, CK Hutchinson, Hitachi and heard the perspective of our main shareholder, Maximilian Biagosch from CPP.

Finally, it was great to celebrate our successes and our ‘Boldies 2024’ with an awards session hosted by Brendan O'Reilly , recognising winners in multiple categories: Shanti Thomas , Colm Gallagher , Paolo Sala , Jason Caliento , Dana Tardelli , Renee Everspaugh , Rebecca Lewis , Rick Ruff , Jen Ruthven , Claire Venners , Gearoid Collins , Crystal Cooper (Poncsak) , Gytis Radzevicius , Lilian Vallejo , Jan-Harald Fuchs , Gianpaolo Porchiazzo and Sharon Peters , who also last month was recognised in the top 100 UK CIOs (14th place, far too low in my opinion). 

What a great week we had! A significant investment for our leaders to align on our ambitious plans for the years to come and make sure we are all highly prepared, motivated and inspired to drive Boldyn into even bigger successes!

I can't end without thanking the amazing Sarah Roberts and the whole team, especially Danielle Cohen , Alex Mason-Chilton , Emily Kirk , Jen Ruthven , Jeremy Spencer and Katy Daniels-Scott for putting a world-class event together ... again!  

…a Book

To end my note, this time I’ll go ahead and recommend a book that came up during my podcast conversation with Simona. The book title is “Surrounded by Idiots”. She categorised it as interesting because it’s about how different types of people communicate with each other in different ways, and the keys to understanding others’ points of view. I bought it this past weekend on my way to a long weekend in Paris with my family. And on that note, my favorite picture of the weekend from the river Seine, which could be called “From NY to Paris”.

Thank you for continuing to read my monthly updates and for your comments. Until next time, stay curious and keep leading boldly!