Business conferences don’t appear out of nowhere. Someone has to put them together. Lining up the presenters, wrangling sponsors and making room for all the guests is a serious job. The Inforum 2016 conference in New York City is no different, although it does have the unique twist of appearing every two years.  This year, the duty of running the conference came to Dan Barnhardt, director of Global Communications at Infor, Inc.

Dave Vellante (@dvellante), cohost of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, met with Barnhardt on the convention floor.

Infor’s strength

The conversation opened with Vellante mentioning that Infor has shown a real ability to attract top talent, noting how the company’s CEO, Charles Phillips, was very well-connected. Barnhardt agreed, and then stressed that one of the notable things about Infor was the dedication of its people.

“Everyone at the company firmly believes in our executives and our strategy,” he said.

The talk then turned toward the conference itself, noting the growth of the convention and its coverage. Barnhardt pointed out the number of partners and sponsors who had signed up with the event, and he also commented on how much larger the community was now. He was especially pleased by the media attention, which was relatively large for such a conference. Barnhardt saw Inforum 2016 as a very exciting event.

Building the ecosystem

Barnhardt mentioned the success of Infor’s products, specifically Hook and Loop, an internal group that designs software around the needs of the end-user. He stated this approach was a hugely differentiating strategy, and customers love it. He explained from that experience, the company realized it had the resources to support customers in digital transformation, which is the current plan.

The Internet of Things (IoT) was also part of the plan. Barnhardt pointed out that the conversation around IoT development has concerned making devices talk to each other, but very little has been said about who is doing the listening. He claimed that systems to watch over IoT applications will be a big thing for the company.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the Inforum 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE