TMA holds inaugural Technology Summit

SALT LAKE CITY—The Monitoring Association held its inaugural Technology Summit here, March 19-21, covering technologies directly related to monitoring centers in today's industry.

“The two gentlemen that made this happen were Sascha Kylau, [VP of central station solutions and services] from OneTel, and Steve Butkovich, the CTO of CPI. They are the co-chairs of our technology committee. They envisioned this and managed all of the content and speakers. We initiated the effort in January and they pulled this off in less than three months,” Jay Hauhn, CEO and executive director of TMA, told Security Systems News.

Hauhn pointed to a few good signs for the event; only one registered attendee did not show—and that was weather related, most attendees stayed through the last session on the last day, and “The survey feedback that we got from attendees—as well as the ones I spoke to on breaks—was phenomenal. Those three metrics were really satisfying.”

“What we did was focus on technologies relevant to monitoring centers,” Hauhn said. He highlighted topics the event addressed, including cloud data management, massive data back-up for monitoring centers, cyberattacks and ransomware attacks—all as they apply to monitoring centers.

The summit purposely featured technology leaders from outside the industry as speakers to differentiate the event, Hauhn said. “Steve and Sascha were very good at finding fresh speakers.”

The conference's program included sessions like a keynote address from Jeffrey Freeman, vice president, Worldwide Systems Engineering, Rubrik, on “Understanding Cloud Data Management Solutions,” and Todd Neilson, Secuvant cofounder and COO, and Kevin Howard, VP security engineering for Secuvant, presenting “What the Dark Web Can Teach Us about Cybersecurity.”

The event received a net promoter score of 8.88 out of 10 from attendees. “We were very, very pleased with that,” Elizabeth Lasko, TMA's vice president of communications and marketing, told SSN.

The technology summit featured roundtable discussions to cap off each day of educational sessions, which went well due to the high participation of attendees, Hauhn said.

“The success of the event means we are really looking forward to how we do it next year,” said Hauhn.