The Next Silicon Beach

The OGM recently sat down with Kent Speakman, managing partner of Engageia, to learn more about his latest move from Calgary to Los Angeles. He calls it, “My move to the the next Silicon Beach.” Kent shares insights of the TECH industry as he ­experienced them, through his trials, tribulations, and celebrations. Kent also provides useful tips into an industry we hear so much about, but may not necessarily understand. Here is a glimpse into the TECH industry through someone who lives and breathes it every day.

The tech industry is one of the most exciting areas to be in. It’s creative in the sense that you are building something—many times taking an idea or concept and turning it into something real, tangible, and concrete. This is very exciting and personally rewarding. Building things for clients has been a lot of fun, but participating as a partner in something you are part of from the very beginning of the idea is something that is hard to describe with words. It keeps you up at night, because you are excited about making something that will help people be more effective, better communicators, or better at their jobs. When the “better at their jobs” means more money for a charity, awareness for a cause, or provides value to society—it feels pretty worthwhile!

THE OGM: Tell me about some of the challenges you have encountered within the TECH industry?
Kent Speakman: Anytime you are doing things that have never been done before—innovating—you are going to run into many challenges … Not understanding another system to integrate with, or the ­complexity of the business processes that the technology must support can be interesting. In the oil and gas sector in particular, many of the big ­companies have fantastic, talented people internally. The challenge these ­organizations can face is having everyone too inside their own boxes or making ­decisions based on their divisional agendas. ­Coming in as an outsider to help solve these challenges is something that I have really enjoyed, and managing the politics [is] sometimes part of the ride. In smaller ­organizations, the challenges can be different; lack of resources or a buy-in to digital programs sometimes holds things up—either way, there are fun problems to solve!

THE OGM: What advice in three short points would you give to a startup in the TECH industry?
Kent Speakman: (1) It’s going to take longer than you think, (2) you will need more money than you think, and (3) surround yourself with people smarter than you and that you like to work with.

THE OGM: What are some of the fears you hear from companies that you can help overcome by education when it comes to social media?
Kent Speakman: There are a few real fears when it comes to ­public ­companies and the sharing of information via social media. The ­regulations are different between the USA and Canada, but everyone seems to be afraid of the regulators. We ran a program for a public company, only sharing content that had been approved and vetted prior to social ­posting. If you were to look at the start and end dates of the campaign and the price of the stock, there were some interesting results—it worked. I believe that more serious regulation has come into effect in Canada since, so do your research!

Secondly, people are going to be having conversations about your brand, company, or organization with or without you. If you are afraid people will have bad things to say, change what you are doing, or participate in educating them on what you are doing right. I wrote an article a few years ago, called “Why oil and gas companies should drink beer with oysters and tweet about it.” You can read the full article on my blog, but essentially I think social media [is] a great way for companies in the oil and gas sector to change negative perceptions about their brands. Blogs can be used to talk about what these organizations are doing to be proactive in the environmental stewardship and sustainability realms. Organizations using green technology, or proactively taking additional steps to reduce the environmental footprint, can use things like Facebook fan pages to connect with a younger more cynical audience. This is one side of the equation; the blog post I shared covers this more in detail and could be its own topic for an article.

THE OGM: What intrigues you to play and grow in the digital space?
Kent Speakman: I love what I am doing. I love people getting excited about something that our team has created. I don’t know any other industry where you can take $2 million and find so many successes of turning it into $100M, $200M, $500M, or 1BN within a few years.