Connected Business Expo, Imago Techmedia’s business and collaboration technology event, has announced its initial keynote speaker line-up. Experts from across the industry will be presenting at this year’s event taking place on 4-5 March at London Olympia, and include Steve Blood from Gartner Research, Dave Coplin from Microsoft and Dr Nicola Millard from BT Global Services.

Connected Business Expo is targeted at assisting its 5,000 visitors in understanding the changing technology landscape and associated trends, as well as the effects and opportunities that they present. The key issues under scrutiny include social business, mobilisation of the workforce, moving contact centres to the cloud, content collaboration, vertical specialisation, SaaS, workspace tablet adoption, mobile apps and WebRTC. Keynote speakers will be tackling these topics by delving into contentious issues and highlighting current and emerging trends.
Steve Blood, research vice president, Gartner Research, specialises in VoIP, unified communications and collaboration, contact centres and the emerging theme of communications-enabled business processes. As an acknowledged expert in his field, Blood acts as an advisor to the industry on trends, adoption and business value of technology.

In her capacity as customer experience futurologist at BT Global Services Dr Nicola Millard is responsible for leading innovation and thought leadership on customer experience with a focus on psychology, technology and futurology. Mallard has extensive experience across various sectors, including telecoms, utilities, government and finance and uses a practical approach to ensure that both the customer and the service-orientated organisation benefit from better experiences.

Dave Coplin, chief envisioning officer, Microsoft, is an established thought leader in the UK and provides strategic advice and guidance on the influence of technology on society. Coplin advises on key technology issues such as cloud, privacy, big and open data, social media, open government, advertising, the consumerisation of IT, and how to gain the full benefit from employing associated technologies.

Duncan Kirk, chief operating officer, Imago Techmedia says: “This is just a small teaser of the breadth of expertise we have in our exciting speaker line-up. The event and show have been designed to bring both technical and business audiences an in-depth view of how technology trends can be used to deliver benefits to organisations and assist in achieving the ever-important objectives of increasing growth, reducing costs and attracting and retaining customers. Our experts will deliver priceless insight into these issues, building on their practical experiences and vast knowledge.”