Many Happy Returns
Among those who has made the BLC a fixture on his schedule in recent years is Bradford Caron of Signet Electronic Systems. This will be Caron’s eighth time attending the event and, for the first time, he’s bringing along his entire senior management team, meaning it will be a traveling party of five. He cites the quality of the keynote speakers as one thing that keeps him coming back.
“(NSCA does) a lot of research to make sure they’re bringing in experts in their field,” says Caron. “They’re not just filling time. These are well thought-out, well-planned sessions and topics. You can tell a lot of energy goes into picking the right speakers.”
Caron likes the fact that the keynotes come from speakers who aren’t competitors or partners in the systems integration space.
“It’s good for me to go to a conference where people aren’t from this industry,” he says. “It allows me to look at my business differently when I hear what’s done in other industries.”
It’s important for Caron to have the rest of his management team with him this year, he says.
“There’s more to be a senior manager than putting together technical diagrams and crunching numbers,” he says. “I want them to look at the business differently.”
Caron points to a lesson he learned a few years ago at the BLC, when one of the keynote speakers advised attendees to meet with all of their employees one-on-one at least once every year. With 130 employees under his auspices, Caron saw this as a daunting task but has focused on it since hearing the idea and has found it to be an extremely valuable change.
“We talk about everything in those meetings – from personal to sports to business,” says Caron. “It helps me connect better with the staff and they get to know me better. It’s added to the culture of Signet being a team, a family.”
Caron also learned more about conducting background checks of prospective and even current employees during a different session at another BLC, he says. It’s not something that’s overly common in the integration space, he says, but he’s taken some tips and used them at Signet.
“It’s compelling how prominent that was in other industries since it’s not something we do too much in ours,” says Caron.
