Sunday, May 1st
10:30am
I just made my flight in ATX, Austin Texas that is, where the stars at night are big and bright if you can drive 30 miles out into the Hill Country. I can see the city sprawl of the Austin-San Antonio corridor filling every direction with hotels, tollways, chic taquerias, tourists lining up for BBQ, and tech business.
Me? I am here for the latter — tech business. Don’t get me wrong, I’d fly halfway across the nation and stand in line for smoky sweet brisket with a slice of white bread, eat from breakfast taco trucks all day, or float the river to Don’s fish camp any day. This time, my trip is for one reason only: to see what’s new in the Insurance Industry. I am here to attend the Insurance Networking News’ event of the year, the Digital Future of Insurance Conference.
Our agenda is to discuss the innovations and strategies that are shaping the future of our insurance industry. This includes the impact of drones, autopilot cars, smart homes, big data, and my favorite buzz term of the year, “internet of things”. Every time I hear this word I picture an Ethernet cable plugged into a little box that says “e-widgets”.
All joking aside, the insurance industry has a strong interest on learning how our cars, homes, and appliances will all communicate and what type of data will be collected. This type of data can improve our everyday lives by reducing the risks and costs of our industry. With an impressive spread of speakers including top execs from Progressive to Tesla, all of our industry hot topics will be covered. Now, the real problem: which sessions do I choose?
Monday, May 2nd
3:30pm
Today’s session included a talk with Jon McNeill from Tesla. He talked about electric cars and autopilot. It was extremely eye-opening!
Tuesday, May 3rd
7:03 pm
The conference just closed and it was such a great experience! I ended up choosing sessions on big data, digital innovation, and talks on autonomous cars by Tesla because I think we all need a KITT car in the near future.
So, what did I learn? This conference spurred some great ideas and confirmed that LegalNet’s focus on innovation is headed down the right path. Reports and analytics are still the hottest topic of the Insurance Industry. The big data movement is barely warming up and so far it has taken a position that was traditionally bottom of the developer food-chain, Database Programmer, and made it one of the hottest jobs of today.
A great statistic presented by USAA shows that people are using mobile apps to file claims at an increasing rate and phones will soon be the major source. This really was no surprise. If you walk the streets and count how many people are staring down at their phone, it all makes sense. In fact, the problem of these “face down walkers” is so rampant that cities are installing signs on the surface of sidewalks because nobody has the time to look up anymore!
Anyway, I truly enjoyed being back in the ATX and all the thanks goes to Insurance Networking News for putting on a great event. We can’t wait for next year!
