ALK Technology Summit: Making Molehills Out of Mountains
May 31, 2011I was lucky enough to attend the ALK Transportation Technology Summit in early May 2011. The event is held in beautiful Princeton NJ and brings together some of the greatest minds in the trucking and trucking technology world for a half week of learning. Videos off the speakers can be found at the summit’s website.
I encourage you to check them out!
Christian Schenk (left) presents at ALK summit. Credit: ALK Technologies
A few things emerged from the conference that reinforced where XATA is right now and where we are heading:
- Compliance is driving fleets today. Every presentation made some mention of CSA, EOBRs, or hours-of-service changes. We are in a regulatory storm and must do our best to aid our clients in surviving and thriving in this environment.
- Mobile technology is taking off, and if you’re not on board, you’ll be left behind. During a panel session with Qualcomm, XATA Corporation, Cadec, and Renault Trucks, handheld devices were mentioned in nearly every response. Using the power of a handheld solution is where this industry is heading.
- You can combine a killer system with a few applications. Pair Xata Turnpike’s electronic driver logs on an Android Tablet with ALK’s CoPilot Live and you quickly have a compliance and navigation package that’s basically ready to go out of the box. And we’ll continue to see more apps hit the mobile-device trucking marketplace.
- We need to do a great job helping trucking firms profit from their enterprises. Paul Will from the Celadon Group gave an amazing presentation on the state of the trucking industry. While thing are looking up, we can harness technology to make operations more efficient and help firms deal with razor thin margins.
- Vendors are really positive on the outlook for our industry. As Jeff Sibio from Intermec (a Xata partner) noted: pure technology has surpassed the needs of today–any function that can be dreamt up is possible. We all have an opportunity to utilize devices like Intermec’s rugged platform to bring applications to market.
I must say that a huge bonus of attending the ALK summit was a round of golf at Princeton’s prestigious Tournament Players Club at Jasna Polana. My luck really struck, as I was paired with a Xata customer in the process of rolling out electronic logs to their fleet.
There are few events that offer that kind of interaction between parties. I really thank ALK for that opportunity – and a heck of a nice round of golf!
Golfing at Tournament Players Club. Credit: ALK Technologies
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