STC

Saudi Telecom Company (STC) is the leading provider of telecommunications services in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and it is among the largest operators in the Middle East. The company provides mobile and xed telephone services, along with Internet and other data services, to residential and business customers. They are a world-class digital leader providing innovative services and platforms to their customers and enabling the digital transformation of the MENA region.

As part of Cisco’s partnership with Saudi Telecoms Company (stc) a virtual CISCO STC Innovation Summit was held. At this summit Cisco unveiled their latest suite of technologies, enabling attendees to get an in-depth look at how trends like increasing complexity and new customer demands are putting stress on the network. Various key topics such as Automation, Mobility, Cloud, Transport and Fixed Services were also showcased during the day by Cisco experts. Cisco and stc, through event production partner Marcom Arabia, invited James Taylor to give the opening motivational keynote. Attendees included managing directors, senior directors, telecoms and software engineers from stc, Cisco and partners.

The objective of James’ session was to accelerate innovation by sparking creativity, boosting team morale, and getting attendees excited about the future. The theme of the event was ‘Lead The Future’ so in consultation with the client James designed a motivational keynote that focused on the four keys to leading the future. Those were creativity, adaptability, resilience and collaboration. As part of James’ preparation for the keynote he took part in a number of pre-event calls with stc, Cisco and Marcom Arabia executives. In addition to this James undertook detailed research on the challenges and opportunities the event attendees were facing in the current market. A comment by one of the team that “when the going gets tough, the tough gets going” inspired James to start his keynote with a story about his last visit to Riyadh. The story focused around James’ Arabic translator Mohammed, the optimism and resilience of this young man, and the lessons attendees could take from his mindset.

As the time for James’ presentation was relatively short (45min) it was decided not to do any breakout sessions but rather focus on the key messages and emotion that the client wanted James to communicate to the attendees. The nal virtual keynote presentation blended big picture narrative storytelling around creativity and leadership with the latest innovations in the worlds of articial intelligence, customer experience and telecoms. James’ motivational keynote was highly rated by the client.