The Summit at AT&T: Learning on the fly when technology moves faster than humans

Technology is transforming everything in our worlds. And it's happening faster than humans can adapt.

In the words of journalist and author Thomas Friedman, how do we lift our adaptation line to meet where technology is going?

That was my personal theme in the first day I spent at The Summit, the inaugural event and technology extravaganza for business customers at AT&T. (This is where I remind readers that opinions expressed in this article are my own.)

A diverse group of speakers talked about artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), cybersecurity, collaboration, networking, the Internet of Things and connected everything: transportation, retail, healthcare, finance, farms and cities.

At an innovation showcase, I got to personally experience these technologies, from a connected truck to virtual reality.

Taking it all in, I started to wonder.

What good is all of this technology for business, if we as humans can't learn fast enough to know how to best deploy it?

And, in the words of analyst Patrick Moorhead, if we can't use our learnings to predict where technology is going in the future and intuit what our customers will want.

Peter Sondergaard of Gartner talked about the critical importance of culture and talent in speeding through what he calls "a coming digital trough of disillusionment." Artificial intelligence is just one of the tech-enabled ways we may be able to increase our capacity.

John Donovan, CEO of AT&T Communications, and Glenn Hutchins, an AT&T Board of Directors member, explored how tech leaders can learn quickly and create cultures of speed and agility. Being "technical optimists" emerged as a key predictor of success.

And in a panel on the future of work, AT&T tech leader Jenifer Robertson looked to the film Hidden Figures for clues on how we can effectively learn in the future. Using the example of NASA's Dorothy Vaughan, Jenifer recounted how Dorothy recognized how the environment was changing with automated computing, motivated herself and her team to transform and learn new skills, and led her team through change.

All of this reminded me of a conversation last week with Karie Willyerd, head of global customer education and learning at SAP. Karie wrote a book called Stretch: How to Future-Proof Yourself for Tomorrow's Workplace. She and I were talking about her coming to speak at an upcoming marketing event at AT&T. Her learning framework has come to life for me during The Summit.

Be greedy about experiences. Karie says "experiences are the ways we obtain knowledge and skills." She says the best way to future-proof yourself is "to be voracious in seeking out as many opportunities as you can."

She identifies several strategies to do this: approach work with a developmental stance, get global, find a need and solve a problem, stretch your limits, look sideways and stay educated.

Ten days ago, I got a note from a colleague with an invitation to "look sideways" – essentially to volunteer inside our organization on a social media team, but outside my normal goals as a marketing leader focusing on research and analytics.

Sarah Groves on the AT&T Business social media team asked if I'd join a group of employees to help drive social engagement and foster conversations about The Summit.

It was an opportunity I immediately jumped on. I was already planning to attend the event. And now I'd have several even more compelling reasons for being here: contribute to the event's success, broaden my network with those on the social team, and learn a lot in the process.

That brings me to the second point about learning.

Learn on the fly. Karie says you don't necessarily have to go back to school to learn new skills. You can "stretch every day" and learn on the fly.

Here she advocates adopting a growth mindset, mindfully observing, cultivating curiosity, setting aside time to reflect and knowing when to unlearn.

On the social team for The Summit, I've had a chance to try many of these strategies in just one day.

Our virtual team is using Slack, a cloud-based collaboration tool. While I've heard about Slack, I hadn't had a chance to use it until now. It was as simple as downloading the app, setting up a profile and starting to read and respond to the various discussion threads.

There was a quick learning curve. Which threads were for which people? How to manage to deluge of notifications that began appearing on my iPhone? Was it possible to copy and paste my note-taking thread directly into a tweet?

And then there was the learning curve on Twitter. In the last several months, my social media activity has focused on how corporate professionals can use LinkedIn to build their personal brands, advance their careers and embrace their futures. I've still been on Twitter, but I haven't been as focused on how the platform is changing and evolving.

So it took me a beat or two to realize that tagging people in photos, even when they aren't in them, is a great way to "@mention" people in Twitter and notify them of the tweet. And that the "quote tweet" feature for retweeting now works best to specifically type "RT" for "retweet" and @mention the person who did the original tweet.

This reminds me of Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick writing in their book The Art of Social Media that a "social media guru" is an oxymoron. Why? Because "no one really knows how social media works." They go on to say that, "No matter how smart you are, best practices always change, because platforms change how their sites work. Therefore, everyone needs to keep experimenting."

This brings me to my final point.

Be bad first. Here I'm inspired by Erika Andersen and her book Be Bad First: Get Good at Things Fast to Stay Ready for the Future.

She sets forth a learning framework called ANEW: the aspiration to learn, a neutral self-awareness, endless curiosity and the willingness to be bad first.

In working through the bad phase to get to the good, she advocates a mindset shift from, “I’m terrible at this” to “I’m making beginner mistakes but I’ll get better.”

And that was a shift I had to make as I got up to speed on Slack. Halfway through the day I noticed that Melanie Neal had set up a #carolinesummit thread. I was supposed to take notes on the sessions there and upload photos and videos. She then synthesized the material in everyone's individual threads and put it into an #everyonemerged thread for broader use by the team.

But, oops, I missed noticing the thread and the directions at the beginning of the day. So I belatedly began taking notes in my thread. That entailed a switch from my process of using the "notes" app on my other mobile device, which was great because I could take notes on one device and have it side by side to look at as I tweeted on my other device.

Taking notes in Slack, though, I couldn't figure out how to copy and paste text into Twitter. Tapping on text the usual way didn't initially work.

It's still on my list to figure out from colleagues (here's looking at you John Starkweather, Michelle Smith, Knox Keith, Jason Dunn, Kasia Johnson, Eisaiah Engel and Brennen Anderson). It will be a good question for today's breakfast touch-base meeting to share learnings.

And I can't wait for what I'll learn today. I'm even more excited about what the 2,500 customers and partners at The Summit will learn to accelerate their own businesses.

What are you learning? And how are you accelerating your learning curve?