Lenovo’s flagship event in Singapore – Experiential Day made a comeback in Singapore with its first in-person event in almost two years at JW Marriott Hotel South Beach. This was my first time attending Lenovo Experiential Day, it was an eye-opener for me to know more about Lenovo, the directions that they are heading in a new future of work and living, as well as the return of physical attendance events, it’s been some time.
Lenovo Experiential Day themes are on making digital transformation 2.0 front and centre, as the world is entering into new future of work, demonstrating how organisations can adapt to the changes and demands of work, how they can evolve their workplaces with smarter, more integrated, and personalised experiences. This Experiential Day underlines the Lenovo’s mission to deliver smarter technology to all, at a crucial period as more organisations face multiple headwinds.
Future of work, hybrid working arrangements, the changes are already here, both organisations and workers are finding common ground to make hybrid work a permanent configuration. At Lenovo Experiential Day, we were able to view and understand Lenovo’s vision fro end-to-end, service-led solutions featuring Lenovo’s extensive suite of devices, services and solutions through six immersive experience zones. Lenovo’s experts were on hand to share their expertise, experiences and how they could be applied in a new future of work.
This event provided its audience a peek into the smart workplace fo the future to demonstrate how CIOs can re-examine their IT infrastructure, while keeping in mind aspects of areas such as employee experience and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG).
Panel Discussion – “Reimagining A Smarter Future Together”
A robust panel discussion and conversation – “Reimagining A Smarter Future Together” was featured at Lenovo Experiential Day, it’s informative and insightful on a wide range of topics and discussions.
Moderated by award winning actress and serial entrepreneur Irene Ang, the panel featured Nigel Lee, General Manager, Intelligent Devices Group, Lenovo Singapore, Clara Chen, Founding Managing Partner of Singapore Deep-Tech Alliance (SDTA) and Dr. Dennis Khoo, Managing Partner at allDigitalfuture, Bain External Advisor Singapore and author of Driving Digital Transformation.
“Lenovo Experiential Day 2022 is a great opportunity for us to showcase our solutions, from devices to software and services, all tightly integrated and presented in a narrative that highlights the impact that we are making to organizations and industries in Singapore,” said Nigel Lee. “We are putting a spotlight on our efforts as a service-led company in how we are bringing all these incredible technologies – Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality–into the world, and transforming experiences in the workplace and the classrooms of the future. And we are very proud that we are achieving this in a way that’s sustainable.
“In many ways, our goals are also made more impactful through our partnerships with like-minded organizations like Singapore Deep-Tech Alliance, to help Industry 4.0 startups bring advanced technologies to market at scale to solve some of the world’s biggest problems. We are also honored to be joined by Dr Dennis Khoo, a strategic partner, who is working with us to elevate organizations’ digital transformation here in Singapore. ”
How these technologies fit in the workplace of the future
How do all these technologies fit into the workplace of the future that businesses are moving towards into? Through an underlying workplace narrative play developed by Lenovo, featuring local actors from FLY Entertainment – Amy J Cheng, Andrew Marko, and Alan Wan.
Titled “Smarter Work at Play”, the actors brought to life the possibility of a brighter and smarter workplace with breakthrough technologies, aligning purpose with user-centricity to drive more positive experiences in everyday life.
Even though we may be from different industries, we were able to relate some of the work experiences and challenges we faced in the workplace, through the “Smarter Work at Play” experiences.
There are six zones to learn more about those experiences:
Lenovo Building & Workplace Solutions
This is showcased to the Singapore audience for the first time, featuring the launch of Lenovo’s new suite of building and workplace solutions to address a core challenge in the workplace today – the increasingly complex needs of a hybrid workplace.
Lenovo’s Workplace Solutions zone showed how solutions like simplified workspace booking, utilisation analytics, and smart facilities management coupled with professional services can help businesses provide employees with enhanced flexible working options, offering the benefits of both in-office interactions and remote work.
The Lenovo Workplace Solutions portfolio helps businesses and CIOs adapt to the hybrid work era with several workplace solutions, including:
- Workspace Booking: Scheduling software offering real-time visibility on workspace occupancy enabling employers to manage capacity better, helps employees book facilities quickly to save time, and improves contact tracing with automated post-event reporting.
- Workplace Analytics: Delivered via a dashboard providing real-time insights on space usage, based on non-invasive data from heat and motion sensors.
- Digital Signage: Content management system that turns traditionally static displays and signages at high-traffic locales and touch points into visually-rich multimedia screens that is dynamically updated to convey important updates in a timely manner.
- Smart Locker: Flexible self-service storage service enabling employees to store, pick up and drop off assets securely 24×7 with minimal fuss and reduced waiting time.
- Smart Collaboration: All-in-one meeting room solution with video conferencing software and integrated devices that are easy to use and scale according to meeting sizes, protected by ThinkShield, a suite of security solutions to safeguard users’ privacy and data.
Lenovo Smarter Learning
In this zone, the highlight is Lenovo Aware, this is a software that provides users with health care solutions to help them better use of their PCs. They also provide an “Attention Function” to help users stay focused and motivated (we all can relate to this when using our PCs), while improving their hybrid working and learning experience.
Whether it’s for working parents managing their children learning remotely or professionals working on the go, Lenovo Aware addresses the challenge of excessive screen time, ensuing body posture and vision issues by using the PC’s built-in camera to detect the user’s body language and eye contact with the device. Activated within Lenovo Vantage, it is a manual opt-in service that reminds users to sit back from the screen, straighten their posture, or simply take a break from their PC to rest their eyes.
Smart Distance Learning
Not only do we have remote working, the world has also adopted remote/distance learning, from young children to adults, there is little doubt, no thanks to COVID-19 that brought about the changes in the way we work, study and live. Not just applicable for teachers who need to prepare their remote learning materials, professionals as well, may need to prepare for trainings, workshops, and seminars virtually.
In this Smart Distance Learning zone, Lenovo demonstrated how devices, software, and services are being integrated to make it easy for attendees and presenters, and showed that setting up an engaging session virtually need not be a hassle.
“In many ways, Lenovo Experiential Day 2022 highlights that Lenovo is no longer just a device-centric company,” said Nigel Lee, “but an end-to-end solutions provider that is helping customers embark on their journey to digital transformation 2.0 in an era filled with increasing challenges but also tremendous opportunities.”
Lenovo ThinkReality
In 2020, the global pandemic situation COVID-19 became a catalyst for technology sectors such as extended reality (XR) technologies (both AR and VR) to help enterprises maintain business continuity and enable people to collaborate and work remotely more efficiently.
In this Lenovo ThinkReality zone, attendees were able to get a view of Lenovo’s ThinkReality A3 Smart Glasses. These augmented reality (AR) smart glasses are conceived for today’s world, it’s powered by Lenovo’s flexible XR software platform, they have a vital role to play across industries. In the manufacturing industry for example, Lenovo ThinkReality powered by holo|one software is giving Micron’s engineers the ability to keep production facilities running while helping the company meet growing demand for its products.
ThinkReality also lets business teams connect existing XR devices and add advanced new devices as they become available. The platform allows customers to develop and deploy apps and content remotely throughout the enterprise while managing devices and applications from a single interface.
Lenovo TGX Remote Workstation Software / Lenovo Self-Checkout Kiosk
In this zone, Lenovo demonstrated the flexibility and ease by which organisations can deploy high performance computing to their teams no matter where they are, allowing anyone in an organization to access their powerful workstations anytime, anywhere, securely. For example, with Lenovo’s ThinkStation P520 and ThinkPad P1 , organizations can harness the power of NVIDIA Quadro and TGX Remote Workstation software to decode and encode large databases and process graphically intense applications to bring greater responsiveness and performance to users for the best experience.
This zone also featured Lenovo’s Self-Checkout kiosks, retail solutions that seamlessly integrates offline and online channels to connect an organization’s front and back office for optimal efficiency.
Lenovo Future of Work
What does the Future of Work looks like? In this Lenovo Future of Work zone, it featured Lenovo’s Device-as-a-Service (DaaS) to help businesses arrive at more sustainable IT solutions, reflecting Lenovo’s goal of cutting the brand’s emissions in half by 2030. DaaS reduces the total cost of ownership for employee technology by carefully assessing an organization’s transformation initiatives and providing the right devices to the right users. It also offers organizations greater flexibility by giving them the option to incorporate hardware from other technology vendors to meet specific business needs. Ultimately, the lease-like model ensures organizations are keeping abreast with technology updates to provide the best experience to the workforce, while minimizing impact to the environment.
The showcase demonstrated how Lenovo Asset Recovery Services (ARS) and CO2 Offset Services mitigate security and environmental risks associated with new device procurement and end-of-life asset disposal. These services ensure organizations are procuring, managing, and disposing their technology hardware in a responsible and sustainable manner, while making sure that the entire process is legally compliant, secure, and consistently applied globally.
Lenovo Experiential Day 2022 – Digital Transformation 2.0 and beyond
Lenovo Experiential Day 2022 showcased digital transformation 2.0 and beyond, in a new hybrid future of work. Lenovo is more than just gadgets and devices company, they are into IT services, solutions and sustainability for their clients and consumers. Although the Experiential Day might seem more of a B2B / Enterprise technology solutions for business/organisations, they are just as applicable, catering to the end consumers too.
Digital Transformation 2.0 coupled with hybrid future of work and living are going to make technology (in both enterprise and consumer sectors) dynamic and interesting. How fast, how slow, how big and wide would all these digital transformations be, at this current juncture and beyond? Lenovo Experiential Day 2022 gave insights on the digital transformation 2.0, the forefront and directions that they are leading into the new future.
On a personal note, it’s been quite some time since I last attended an enterprise technology event, it’s good for the economy, technology, and MICE sectors to be back in action again.
* Information courtesy of Lenovo and WE Communications *