MORGO Queenstown 2020 - Resilience, Leadership and Opportunity

I’ve previously written about MORGO, an annual conference run by Jenny Morel for start-ups and high growth companies.

Earlier this year Cumulo9 decided to become a sponsor of the event.  Following that decision, the world changed and while there were several anxious conversations around whether the conference would proceed, I’m delighted to report that September 2, 3, and 4 2020 were a resounding success.  This was largely due to the meticulous planning by Terri van Schooten and her team from Verve.  Terri was the consummate professional even when faced with a suggestion from the Government that perhaps MORGO should not proceed. One hundred people ended up attending the event.

The theme, given COVID is wracking the world was: Resilience, Leadership, and Opportunity.  The following blog is a quick overview of the event and why Cumulo9 attends and supports this event. I’d also recommend you check out the great video of the event here (2min 20s) – worth it for the beautiful scenery alone!

I was privileged to be able to introduce the first two sessions as well as a few cameos from sponsored attendees.  First up was an amazing story of a company that went from 2,000 staff to 15 in less than a week, from $17million annual revenues to ZERO, re-invented itself, raised a few million, and is now back operating under a new model with many of its staff working again.  What a session to kick the event off.  This example encapsulated the Conference theme perfectly.

There was a good focus on Health and AI over the following two days – both very important areas and receiving even more attention with COVID on everyone’s mind.

We had a visit from Spot the robotic dog, who walked onto the stage and then strolled outside to have a photo taken – you may have seen Spot in your news feed lately walking the streets.

On the health side, we heard how a company measuring progesterone in cows was pivoting to measure COVID anti-bodies – the result (hopefully) a quick test!

Our MC was David Downs, who I met last year.  David was responsible for Cumulo9 supporting the Malaghan Institute and in particular their Car-T cell therapy which gained approval for trials in 2019. As always, the conference operates under “Chatham House Rules” and as a result, everyone is completely open.  The result is that both successes and dramatic failures are openly shared.

How does MORGO relate to Cumulo9 and our digital solutions?

The purely academic answer is that it doesn’t.  So why did we sponsor the event?  The answer has a number of components.  I’ll briefly discuss them based around the MORGO theme this year:

• Cumulo9 has successfully challenged the status quo over the years and is constantly reinventing itself, and always with a digital solutions goal – Resilience.
  • In the last two years we have:
    • Become New Zealand’s only Platinum reseller of Quadient Inspire
    • Partnered with AWS to host our solutions
    • Introduced a new product – C9 Validate
    • Become an IBM channel partner – we’re really interested in their AI and data storage offerings
  • Sharing our resilience with others helps to reinforce that we have the correct strategies in place - and equally where there is new thinking we can evaluate and adopt it.
• You can’t re-invent if you have blinkers on – conferences like MORGO force you to think differently – Opportunity
• When it comes to digital solutions and in particular Digital Delivery, we are acknowledged for our leadership. Cumulo9 delivers data for more than 50% of New Zealand’s top 50 B2C companies, from Banks, to insurance companies, Government Ministries, and utilities - Leadership
• Finally – activities like MORGO provide us with an opportunity to “give back”.  We’re proud to support events, organisations, and individuals that display characteristics that are important to all of us.  We’re launching a new section on our website to promote this and hopefully provide these entities with more exposure – watch out for an announcement in the near future.

In the meantime, if you need assistance with your Digital Solutions or any further information, please contact us:  Phone +64 9 377 8885 or email sales@cumulo9.com.