OPEI Annual Meeting speakers announced
The Outdoor Power Equipment Institute (OPEI) Annual Meeting will be held at the Hyatt Regency Coconut Point, in Bonita Springs, Fla., June 18-20, 2018. The meeting will feature two keynotes: Adam Steltzner and Vivek Wadhwa.
Described as Einstein brilliance meets Johnny Cash cool, award-winning NASA rocket scientist Adam Steltzner will help you harness the power of curiosity to spark digital innovation and collaborative technology leadership across your entire organization. Prepare yourself for a true story of teamwork, leadership and high-stakes innovation. With a rich and varied background, Steltzner had many of the needed skills to lead the landing team for the Curiosity rover. Still, his team struggled for almost a decade with design challenges and setbacks. How did he keep the team focused and on task? What makes a team gel and enables truly innovative thinking? How do team dynamics drive that process forward or inhibit it? And how can organizational culture create an environment for sustained performance?
The challenges he and the team faced and the lessons learned from those struggles can help you understand how to better lead high-performing teams, manage innovation and drive toward excellence. Steltzner brings to life unique strategies and perspectives on breaking through the seemingly impossible.
Called “Silicon Valley’s most provocative voice” for his ideas on technology trends, globalization, U.S. competitiveness, and the future, Vivek Wadhwa is at the forefront of innovation. From tech entrepreneur and business owner to accomplished academic and widely published author, he offers a look into how exponentially advancing technologies — including robotics, AI, computing, 3D printing, and nanomaterials — will change our world, disrupt entire industries, and create new ones. Wadhwa also reveals the keys to the U.S. remaining competitive and solving grand challenges, in the face of the rapid transformation shaping business in India, China, and Latin America.
An advisor to governments and successful entrepreneurs alike, Wadhwa was named by Foreign Policy Magazine as a “Top 100 Global Thinker,” and, in 2013, TIME magazine listed him as one of the “40 Most Influential Minds in Tech.”
2018 Annual Meeting attendees will also have the opportunity to attend a private event at the Revs Institute, which houses a collection of some of the rarest automobiles and sports cars in the world. The Revs Institute values the importance of preserving automobiles in their original, untouched state. With few deliberately considered exceptions, the more than 100 automobiles in the Collier Collection, which is divided into four thematic galleries — Automobility, Vitesse, Revs and Porsche — are fully operational and displayed free of protective barriers allowing visitors the most intimate access.
This distinct collection of more than 100 automobiles manufactured between 1896 and 1995 were each thoughtfully curated for their rarity and historical significance. The allure of the 1939 Mercedes W154 Grand Prix (Silver Arrows) continues to attract historians and automotive connoisseurs from around the world to behold the flagship of the Collier Collection.
Visitors are also granted up close and unfettered access to other legendary marvels of automotive history including a Panhard et Lavassor Wagnonette, the collection’s oldest vehicle. There are no barriers or exhibit partitions that prevent visitors from standing toe to tire with the very first Porsche 550-01, Gary Cooper’s short-chassis 1935 Duesenberg SSJ or the very first Ferrari race car to be imported to the United States.
For more information about the OPEI Annual Meeting, visit www.opei.org.
