A Message from Bill Barney, PTC President & Chair of the Board of Governors

Aloha!

The famous Steve Jobs once said about tech and telecom leaders, “About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

Over 45 years, we have watched many of the world’s great thought leaders and their teams come to the shores of Hawaii to speak, negotiate, and celebrate. Our conference, with its inclusiveness, has seen and often foreshadowed massive new trends such as voice refile, private submarine cables, wireless telecoms, cloud computing, and many more. These trends were often presented, discussed, and debated in open forums as well as “closed forums” over drinks at the Tapa Bar or The Great Lawn of the Hilton Hawaiian Village. We have provided a space where “ohana” was nurtured between new thinkers and the old school ones. The PTC Annual Conference has been a powerful event, and it has been fun to watch it evolve.

After more than 20 years of involvement with PTC, I am honored to serve as the newly-elected president and chair of the Board of Governors (BG). PTC’s CEO Brian Moon and I were given the “keys” to the organization in a year that had exceeded most previous ones. Kudos to the PTC Secretariat, BG, Advisory Council, sponsors, and volunteers who worked tirelessly to deliver PTC’23. Special thanks to our members, sponsors, and attendees as your commitment of time and resources are what makes this incredible platform a huge success! PTC’23 was not only the most well-attended conference in our history, we also had a solid program with top-notch speakers who shared valuable insights on new directions and initiatives across the ICT/TMT sector. In addition, it was inspiring to see an increase in attendance of next-generation young professionals.

Moving forward in this post-COVID era, we hope to find ways to “change people’s worlds” by creating an even more dynamic tech and telecom conference. We are looking to bring a clean sheet of paper to our strategy this year and look at new ways we can work with you to make the experience in Hawaii even better in the years ahead. We will explore ways to further engage our members and stakeholders as we drive dialog, participation, and learning throughout the year. We hope to build stronger partnerships and strengthen the Annual Conference as a platform that enables new business opportunities. As we leapfrog into the PTC of tomorrow, we will also be undergoing a rebranding process to capture the attention of a new generation of tech-savvy professionals and future leaders in ICT/TMT. We will keep you posted on new developments. Let’s join forces to make PTC’24 an even bigger success!

We look forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas on how we can work together to strengthen PTC’s impact in an ever-changing digital world. Please visit PTC.ORG for updates on PTC programs and key initiatives.