Here we are again: Another Enterprise Connect is almost here! This year I’m excited for the opportunity to continue some of the conversations that we had at last year’s event and provide our audience with actionable guidance and insights. I am leading the following sessions:

In addition to those two, I am participating as a panelist on the Thursday General Session from 10:00am - 11:00am as we discuss: Have We Arrived at the Future of the Workplace Yet?

Preparing for NG911

The NG911 session is one that is especially near and dear to my heart as I have led this session for around a decade now. Each year we ask ourselves after the event if we’ve solved 911 challenges, and unfortunately each year the answer is a resounding “no.”

At this year’s session I’m joined by Robert Harris of Communications Advantage Inc, Jose Alvarado of Intrado, as well as long-time panelists Robin Erkkila from Bandwidth, Attorney Martha Buyer, and 911 icon Mark “Fletch” Fletcher from 911Inform. Our goal in this session is to help the audience grow its understanding of NG911: What it is, what it brings to the table, and perhaps most importantly, how to implement it to maximize workplace safety. We’ll provide guidance into building the right organizations, working with local emergency call centers and first responders, and overcoming challenges related to non-fixed employee work locations and the use of mobile devices for calling 911.

This session is an important one. As I’ve said repeatedly over the years no other topic in the communications space has life and death implications for getting strategy and technology implementation correct.

Overcoming Security and Compliance Challenges

This is another session of grave importance to achieving business success. Metrigy’s research has repeatedly shown that companies often struggle with security and compliance for generative AI. These struggles will only grow as the AI use cases expand, and as agents emerge that are capable of making decisions on their own, without human involvement.

On this panel I’m joined by Tabice Ward of ChoiceTel, Shawn Rolin from Zoom, Muhammad Muneer from Google, and Garth Landers from Theta Lake. These panelists all bring diverse opinions, perspectives, and opinions to the discussion. I’m sure that they will help audience members understand the core requirements for balancing governance and security needs with the ability to take full advantage of the benefits that AI brings to the table in terms of productivity improvements, better customer service, and potential increases in revenue from more intelligent conversations.

Where is the Workplace of the Future?

This final session is one that I’m also excited about as I’m joined by fellow analysts and consultants including David Maldow of LetsDoVideo, Robert Harris again, Dave Michels of TalkingPointz, and Jon Arnold of J. Arnold & Associates.

Future of Work, and more specifically workplace trends is a topic that I’ve spent an extensive amount of time researching over the last year. We’ve seen companies embrace return to the office, hot-desking, and increasing varieties of meeting spaces but many organizations still struggle with creating the ideal space to make in-office work more productive for knowledge workers than remote work.

Our recently published Employee Engagement 2025 global study of 400 companies found that more than half are not yet settled on a work location policy and expect a continued refinement of return to the office approaches this year. Furthermore, we found strong correlation between the use of hot-desking and low success of collaboration return on investment as employees generally prefer to have their own spaces that they can customize to their liking.

But Wait, There’s More!

While I won’t have any other sessions at the event, I am booking time to check out the many keynotes and general sessions, including the always anticipated announcement of the Best of Enterprise Connect winner. As usual the event team has done a wonderful job balancing end-user and IT perspectives with the latest announcements from leading communications, collaboration, and CX vendors. I’m especially looking forward to seeing Astronaut Mike Massimino’s talk on Monday, whom I got to see and very briefly meet at Zoomtopia several years ago. Be sure to check out his perspective as someone who overcame a great many challenges to get into space and who participated in multiple spacewalks across his two missions to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.

I look forward to seeing many of you at Enterprise Connect!

About Metrigy: Metrigy is an innovative research and advisory firm focusing on the rapidly changing areas of workplace collaboration, digital workplace, digital transformation, customer experience and employee experience—along with several related technologies. Metrigy delivers strategic guidance and informative content, backed by primary research metrics and analysis, for technology providers and enterprise organizations