If you're trying to figure out how to give your career a much-needed boost, just listen to that American sage Vanilla Ice: stop, collaborate, and listen.
It's wise advice, especially as pertains to field service management conferences.
You'll "stop" by leaving your usual routine to go to the field service management conference. You'll "collaborate" by networking with other field service professionals. And you'll "listen" to panels on the day's important issues. Best of all, following Vanilla Ice's advice will give you the information and skills you need to return to your job, rejuvenated.
1. Field Service
Planning's the name of the game in field service, and the Field Service conferences get that—they spend six months prior to each convention researching trends and influencers, making sure their content is relevant and worth the conference price. If it seems like there are a lot of these, there are, and they're put on by Worldwide Business Research. I'm focusing on the three offered in the U.S., but you can also search for conferences in Europe and Asia here.
Location/Date:
Field Service Medical 2018, La Jolla, California, Feb. 26-28, 2018
Field Service USA 2018, Palm Desert, California, April 17-20, 2018
Field Service Fall 2018, Amelia Island, Florida, Sept. 25-27, 2018
Cost:
Field Service Medical 2018: $2,399 for manufacturers and OEMs, $3,399 for solution providers and others
Field Service USA 2018: $2,899 for Gold Package, $2,299 for Silver Package 1, $2,299 for Silver Package 2 (all prices increase after 11/30/17)
Field Service Fall 2018: Prices TBA
2. Field Service Forum
The theme for this year's Field Service Forum is "The Future of Customer Engagement." The agenda for 2018 isn't out yet, but the list of 2017's topics and speakers is impressive. Visitors got to see panels about everything from field service exoskeletons to designing better business models to how to approach IoT data. Speakers included executives such as Coen Jenkins of Bosch, Mattias Ericsson of Kia, and Cees Bijl of Phillips.
Location/Date:
Amsterdam, May 30-31, 2018
Cost:
Essential Package (conference and one of two workshops): 1690 euros
Inspirational Package (conference only): 1390 euros
3. Field Service Management and Mobility Forum
The Field Service Management and Mobility Forum provides three days of best practices, new ideas, and well-proven insights in Sydney, Australia. The first two days are devoted to speakers and panels, including sessions on everything from "Moving from Reactive to Predictive Maintenance" to "Leveraging Real-time Data in the Field to Improve Field Service Performance." Speakers include Anthony Eid of Sydney Train, Kim Falster of Suez Water and Treatment Solutions, and Tony Michael Neil of Hewlett-Packard.
The workshops on Dec. 6 promise to combine cutting-edge knowledge with the tried-and-true: one workshop focuses on how to use drones in field service, and the other on ways to differentiate your company with service.
Location/Date:
Sydney, Australia, Dec. 4-6, 2017
Cost:
Conference only AUS $2,295
Conferences and workshops AUS $2,795
Workshops AUS $995
4. Field Service Management Expo
Field Service Management Expo offers visitors a few unique opportunity. The conference's Meetings Service, which gives visitors the chance to meet suppliers one-on-one and get personalized attention, is a great way to get your questions answered.
Field Service Management Expo also offers the usual seminars and guest speakers. 2017 offered seminars such as "Minimizing Downtime, IoT, and Proactive maintenance" and Driver Behaviour— Why It's So Important Within Your Business." The speakers at Field Service Management Expo provide inspirational, outsider perspectives on field service. Last year's speakers included Olympic athlete Dame Kelly Holmes, and Falklands War veteran Simon Weston, CBE.
Location/Date:
London, June 19-21, 2018
Cost:
TBA
5. Maximize 2018
Information for Maximize 2018 isn't up yet, but next year's conference will definitely be worth visiting if this year's was any indication. Maximize, the official conference of GE Digital's ServiceMax software, featured a wide lineup of speakers at this year's conference. Among them were ServiceMax CEO Dave Yarnold, ServiceMax Chief Strategy Offcer Athani Krishnaprasad, as well as Medivators VP Amos Schneller and Pitney Bowes VP Gary Johnson.
Maximize 2017 also held industry-specific tracks for the first time, for Oil and Gas, Power and Utilities, and Medical Device Manufacturing.
Location/Date:
TBA
Cost:
TBA
6. Technology Services World
Technology Services World is the annual conference for the Technology Services Industry Association. They haven't selected speakers yet for 2018, but the call is still open, if you're so inclined. This year's conference focuses on ten themes. Field service is only one of them, but the others are the sort of concerns—customer success, expanded selling, using data and analytics—that also interest field service managers.
As for the field service part of the conference, the topics slated to be covered focus on the expanding role of field service as a profit center, such as how field service can drive customer adoption.
Location/date:
San Diego, California, May 7-9, 2018
Cost:
Full conference: $1,607 for TSIA members, $1,887 for non-members
Day pass: $995
(note: all three prices good until 12/1/17)
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