In May 2004, I designed and sponsored the First Digital Home Leadership Conference. This was a vehicle for us to manifest Whirlpool's leadership position in the Digital Home space. This was a "strike the iron while it is hot" move after the sucess of MEALTIME.

The intention for this conference was to:

• publicly position Whirlpool as the thought and action leader, especially against the electronics-heavy competitors LGE and Samsung, who launched "internet refrigerator" a few years earlier, with little commercial success but a lot of press
• present out vision to trade partners, who we invited (a move very much appreciated by sales, which are a great resource of what is really happening in the market place right now)
• harvest thinking and ideas from the particpants
• develop new avenues of collaboration, which was important to fill the pipeline after MEALTIME

I had asked a good friend, Julie Meyer from Ariadne Capital, to speak. She added a lot of international flair and the VC perspective to the otherwise rather corporate discussions. May 24-25

Another presentation still available online is the one Jonathan Cluts gave.

Read more about the conference at the internal Whirlpool Portal announcement.