I’m sitting in Boston airport waiting for my flight back to Vancouver, pondering if technology has become a crutch for organizations. I came down to speak at a conference on data and my talk was focused on how to generate more insights. The overall conference is heavily focused on tools so you have lots of talks on databases, CDPs, AI and anything else that can be categorized as technology.
I personally found the conference difficult as my talk wasn’t focused on technology. In fact, my main argument is that technology is not an issue but companies should spend more time on the human challenges of data. I did the opposite of preaching to the choir. In actuality, the choir wasn’t interested in anything that wasn’t technology.
One of the speakers shared a fantastic image on how Gartner, the research firm, measures the hype of any given trend. They update the image regularly showing how certain ideas are hyped up until they fall into obscurity.
Shortly after the speaker shared the image, an attendee asked about the latest tools and what the speaker thought about them. His question capture the interest of the entire room.
It seems the hype cycle image went completely unnoticed. After all, there’s always the possibility that the Next Big Thing™ will be different.