September Quarterly Dinner
Please join us for our September Quarterly Dinner. We will be featuring our Leadership Initiative Award winners who will put on two workshops for you to choose from, beginning at 4:30pm, and then we will move into cocktails at 6pm and dinner at 7pm. A new format, great learnings, and lots of networking.
Workshop One: Join Elizabeth Caley, VP Product Management for Firmex as she shares a workshop on
"Innovation, Collaboration, & Employee Engagement through Competition"
Almost 9 in 10 Canadian executives report innovation is a strategic priority for their business,
and 96% believe that small and medium enterprises can be as innovative as large companies.
However, in its most recent assessment, the Conference Board of Canada gave our country a
“D” grade, saying Canada remains below average in its capacity to innovate and there are no
Canadian organizations on the world’s top 50 most innovative companies list.
Based on the belief that good ideas can come from anyone, Firmex has introduced a new
internal initiative that is inspiring innovation, collaboration between teams, and increased
employee engagement. Drawing from the Global X Prize (“Revolution through Competition”)
and initiatives like Google & Apple’s “20% Time”, in 2012 Firmex introduced the EX Prize.
The EX Prize is an internal competition driven by employees bringing their own product & process ideas to the table. The ideas are vetted and voted on by the entire company. Green lighted projects get an approved “time budget” to contribute to the project at work and help in bringing it to market. Teams make quarterly presentations in front of the entire company and coaching from an Executive Sponsor. Developers learn more about Firmex users, markets and competition. Finance is encouraged to talk to customers about what would make the invoicing process easier. Salespeople and Marketers team up with Developers to learn about what it takes to design and develop new product and features. The winning teams not only get prizes like a trip to NYC, but most importantly, the chance to drive their idea from inception to market with the support of the entire company and executive team.
Attend this workshop to hear all about the results and successes Firmex has had with this program, and ways that you can implememnt this type of program in your own business
Workshop Two: Join Ray Payette, SVP, Engineering and Operations for Blueprint Software Solutions as he shares a workshop on " Agile speak for CEO’s – Understanding a hybrid-agile process for software development. "
There have always been processes for building software. Blueprint has evolved a hybrid-agile approach to developing software that provides the risk reductions and flexibility of agile, but with the discipline needed to deliver predictable business value to our Enterprise Customers.
Blueprint specializes in the requirements aspect of software development, and as a software company we are fortunate enough to be able to use our own software to develop our product. The session will center on general process and terms for executives and how Blueprint has reconciled an agile development process with the predictability and accountability demanded by modern-day business, using Blueprint’s internal approach as a model.
This will be a fun but informative look into the software development process.
CEO members can attend either workshop - please indicate which you would like to sign up for when you register. HR members can attend Workshop 1 with Elizabeth Caley. Looking forward to seeing you there!