On January 28th, three members of the High Potential Network had the chance to report from the com.sult 04 with key note speaker Bill Gates.
com.sult 04 was the first international and interactive consulting congress in Vienna; this event depicts an ideal platform for networking between representatives from the consulting industry, research, business and media to create new networks and connections.
Opening speeches were held by Lorenz Fritz (secretary-general of the Federation of Austrian Industry), Martin Bartenstein (Minister of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Labour), Benita Ferrero-Waldner (Minister of the Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs), Manfred Reichl (CEO Roland Berger Strategy Consultants), Georg Pölzl (Chairman T-Mobile Austria) and other well-known business people in top-management positions.
At 10:00 am, the special guest and key note speaker had his presentation: Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, Chairman and Chief Software Architect. Microsoft currently employs more than 55,000 people in 60 countries, generating 32.18 billion USD.
Before lunch time, Bill Gates's speech was followed by two roundtable discussions about the key note speech and about the requirements and trends in the consulting industry.
In the afternoon, the program went on with a third roundtable discussion about transparency in consulting and the finalists' presentation of the Golden Arrow Award, an international consulting award. The participants had just 60 seconds each to explain the benefits of their ideas and businesses to the audience and the jury.
The last points of the agenda were workshops to five different topics:
from strategy to implementation
through communication to success: ways to the customer
IT-projects: the border between consulting and implementation of technology
learning consulting: career perspectives for consultants
mergers & acquisitions: changes of growth
In the evening, the great program continued in the museum of applied and contemporary art of Vienna with the award of the "golden arrow", a networking buffet and the cigar-cognac-coffee bar, accompanied by live jazz music.
