The constantly shifting and evolving IT landscape requires the industry and its professionals to co-create, connect and collaborate on new and emerging trends every day. While training and upskilling are woven into the very fabric of the Emirates Group, its IT division recently took it up several notches.

At the packed IT Transformation Summit held exclusively for its employees recently, four celebrated global speakers with varied tech backgrounds took the audience by storm. The event was also live streamed to its 2,700 professionals based in various Group facilities around Dubai. Employees listened raptly to disruptive theories, learnt from speakers’ personal experiences, and asked thought-provoking questions.

After the presentations, employees joined interactive workshops: Game mechanics and digital transformation; Smarter tools to solve bigger issues – an inside view on a Silicon Valley inspired toolbox; and Agile transformations, how do you make them successful?

Alex Alexander, the Emirates Group’s Chief Technology Officer said: “The Emirates Group is an employer of choice – not just in this region, but globally. We wear that mantle with pride, but also with a huge sense of responsibility. Our team of professionals come from a wide swathe of expertise, specialisms and job profiles. They are brave tech warriors and hungry scholars, and every once in a while, they have to reboot so that they learn new and unlearn old skills, create new habits, develop new ways of working, and manage futuristic technologies.

“We owe it to our employees and to the organisation to ensure we are always on-trend and at the cutting edge of technology and innovation, so that we can fully contribute to the success of our business. We see this summit growing to a regional annual enterprise IT innovation event.”

Arie van Bennekum, co-author of Agile Manifesto and a thought leader, is an ‘agile anarchist’ and an expert in the field of business transformations. In his talk, Arie shared his experience with agile transformations, its pitfalls and success factors. He spoke about the importance of valuing individuals and interactions over processes and tools; working solutions over comprehensive documentation; customer collaboration over contract negotiation; and responding to change over following a fixed plan.

Patrick Comboeuf is a digital thought leader who wears multiple hats as an ideas merchant, innovation shaper and an extrapreneur. Patrick presented on the age of digital co-creation and what every company should learn from big tech, on unleashing the power of agile relevance, and the importance and the complexity of keeping things simple.

Bart Hufen is a prolific author on gamification and a steady force on the Global Gamification Gurus top 100. He is widely considered as one of the founders of gamification and game thinking in Europe. Bart shared the power of game mechanics, how they can be applied within organisations to give employees a sense of purpose, autonomy and mastery, and help change behaviour.

Werner Vogels, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Amazon, drives the company’s customer-centric technology vision and helps young businesses reach global scale. Werner shared the story of Amazon Web Services’ transformation and best practices in cloud adoption.

The Emirates Group regularly hosts experts across industries, sports personalities and renowned global speakers to engage with employees. The IT team’s recently launched Tech Academy focusses on upskilling employees, enabling a holistic learning culture, and organising initiatives such as hackathons, codefests and larger summits.