Opticon 24 San Antonio - Day 2

As yesterday was focussed on AI productivity and Business Outcomes, this day had it's focus on Change. The one can't go without the other, so it made a lot of sense to focus on this. Maybe Optimizely is showing this change most definitely itself, aligning their roadmap ever more to the changing world.

Day 2 started off great with an OMVP breakfast. Being part of the Optimizely Most Valuable Professionals (OMVP) community, we had the pleasure to align the best Optimizely developers and strategists together with the leadership team to ask questions and provide feedback. Next to that, the community has grown for many years and promotes the sharing of thoughts between its members.

One of the general challenges seen by the OMVP members is getting the right AI use-cases on the table. It feels like the chicken and the egg problem; clients need to define use-cases that solve business challenges and promote business outcomes, but on the other hand needs their partners to inspire them with what's possible. This asks for a different partnership between the technology companies and its clients, where alignment should not only be on the technological side, but also on the organizational and business side. Technology companies will need to earn their client's trust to be able to get into that position and help their clients even better. Not a simpe job, but exciting when you get to that stage non the less.

After the inspiring breakfast session it was time for this day's keynote, provided by General Stan McChrystal well known from his 2015 best-seller Team of Teams. Next to the technological insights, it is these keynotes that makes visiting Opticon a no-brainer. The General talked about the fact of difficult choices and how to handle them. They will come no matter what. As life has been quite simple for thousands of year, we now seem to live in the Complex and Complicated stages. The Complex stage is possible to predict, the Complicated stage is not. And we're heading into an ever more Complicated geo-political and technological stage.

The Complex stage is best managed by structure, the Complicated stage by teams. This requires a vastly different approach on how to handle them and how to structure your organization for success.

"Be a Team of Teams, not a Tribe of Tribes." -- Stanley A. McChrystal

Where Scale, Control, Efficiency and Expertise have been levers of success for the current way of organizing things, they do not handle well a fast-paced and ever changing environment. For the coming years we will need a collective effort at the speed of change. Focus on the war, not the battle to win as there will be a lot of battles to lose when you adopt change.

An organization adapt for rapid change should have a shared consciousness, a single mind with shared goals. There are roles, but no traditional chain of command to tell others what to do. You will need bright individuals in your team that figure it out in a way that management could not. The organization we need is based on leadership, speed, agility and execution. As mentioned in Day 1 individuals will need to own their business outcomes for a company to thrive the coming years.

My faourite quote came near the end of the keynote:

"You can't steer anything until it's moving." -- Stanley A. McChrystal

And that about sums it up. There are so many organizations out there that see the risk of change, but not the risk of not changing. Ask yourself: "What can go right?". But change is hard and leaders and organizations need to become more transparent and open for this. Throw away years of structured processes that might have brought success for so many years. Business leaders need to become gardeners instead of robber tycoons. Plant the seeds, water the plants and throw out the weeds. And that advice came from a U.S. army general...

Fail Fast, Learn Fast

Next up after the break there were some breakout sessions, focussed on technology again. First up was Jordan Hiller from Ahold Delhaize which I had to attend, growing up near the Dutch windmills where their brand Albert Heijn first store still stands. The talk was about how to become a data-driven organization through experimentation. Did you know the median company runs about 34 experiments per year? Less than 1 per week, but 1 more than every competitor which is does not have a culture of experimentation.

Following up on this was an Experimentation Panel of some seasoned veterans in the business, sharing their experiences. Rikesh S. Shah , Jessica Lee , Muqtadaa Miandara and Dani Olean provided their takes on experimentation. Their basic message: fail fast, learn fast and trade opinions for outcomes. You just have to prove ROI and be transparent about your results. Use gamification to make things fun and experiment on innovation, not on the product owner's roadmap.

Meet your new AI Assistant

Finally, we got to see some of the new Opal AI in action. As already 85% of marketers use AI it is no secret they would love to have this power within a contextualized and compliant environment. Enter Opal which can help Optimizely marketers move faster and stay within the platform to do this. Define your brand guidelines and other settings together with the knowledge base of assets within the platform to create this contextualized AI.

Seeing the live demo it was great to actually see what it is doing. No, it's not perfect yet and yes it's still early development, but its feature seems bright and makes a lot of sense when you see business struggle with their AI use-cases as often the data you need is not interconnected or the compliance just isn't there. It would be very interesting to see all possible use-cases it can offer so marketers get a better understanding where the ROI is.

Experimentation is good, but a culture of experimentation is great.

We ended the day with the Closing Keynote, again on experimentation. Bryan Hopkins , Kelly Jenkins and Sabrina Ho took the stage and shared their learnings in a panel discussion. Here, again, it was about the value of experimentation and providing valuable insights to the company through experimentation. With a business at scale, tie these business goals together in compound metrics to keep grips on your holistic view on changes. Don't let a winner result in a loser somewhere else on your platform.

Howdy!

The closing party was at Knibbe Ranch and yes, it was Texas. Longhorns, check. Live country band, check. Rodeo, check. Line dancing... eh, check. With hundreds of people attending the final night it was great to meet up with some people and talk about other things than business. This year also had a more diverse group of attendants, which was good and provided for a great vibe.

Want to know more about the latest Optimizely and Opticon? Read my blog on Day 1.

Up next? New York City here we come! Stay tuned for Opticon 2025 in the Big Apple.

#opticon #opticon24 #optimizely #conclusion #artificialintelligence #ai

🎩 I am Paul de Metter, strategic entrepreneur & human technologist.

🧠 What do I mean by that? I just love the progress of technology, but am equally interested in the human side and impact. Follow me if you are interested or feel the same.

💡 Sometimes you need to put in the hard work yourself. This article has been NOT been written in co-creating with AI.

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