Last week I attended and presented at the Esri Geo Business conference. My presentation was on the risk and challenges of IoT and GIS in retail. 
Here are my key takeaways from the event and also who had my favorite presentation and why.
+ The big trend in geointelligence in retail is being able to cater to digital natives.
+ This group is empowered by data and has no patience for noise or bad experience
So the challenge is how are you going to present relevant content based on personal taste and point of interaction
+ I know people are obsessing over apps at the moment but here is a fun fact I learnt at the conference. Straight out of Gardner research:
On average a customer keeps a retail app on their phone only 3 days.... that’s it. So if your strategy’s is App first, annoying promo sms and weekly newsletters no one reads you may want to rethink your strategy.
+ Several presenters were in the real estate business and focus on helping retailers use geo intelligence to find the best spots. Here is a surprising info from them: most mall owners and of course small store owners do not monetize their customers data properly.
+ Of course amidst all the talk of thinking of the customers in terms of profile-predict-persuade I could not help wonder how the field is once again going to change now that people are going to think twice about sharing their social profiles with advertisers or installing apps that access way too much information on their phone.
+ Finally my favorite talk: Valentina Guatelli from Pirelli. It was my favorite because not only did I learn that Pirelli is now selling tires for bicycles, which is horrible news for my wallet, it was also an eye opener on how a company that sells in a b2b2C mode can leverage GIS to improve their business and gain market shares.
If you are in retail I highly recommend you check out the decks from the presentations.
Next week we are heading out to the SIdO conference to showcase our SmartTrans project and we will publish an update.
We have many conferences and workshops coming up so make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel to get some unfiltered reviews and news.