Overheard on BoxWorks Day 1
If you aren't in San Francisco with us at BoxWorks, or following the event via Box Live and Twitter, some of the things we heard are certainly worth talking about. From Aaron's opening keynote to Dr. Jill Biden's Box Women's Network Summit keynote, the day was full of memorable moments. While we're looking forward to Day 2, we're not quite ready to close the books on Day 1 without sharing some of our favorite moments of the day.
Here's a look at some of top quotes we overheard at BoxWorks:
"AI/machine learning are fundamentally changing how we manage, secure, and collaborate on content" - Aaron Levie, Box Co-Founder & CEO
Intelligence was a prevalent theme throughout BoxWorks Day 1. During the opening keynote, Box Chief Product Officer, Jeetu Patel, announced Box Skills, a framework that brings machine learning innovation to content in Box. The first three skills introduced from the Skills framework were Image Intelligence, Audio Intelligence and Video Intelligence. Through demos, Product Manager Katie Lee showed how Box will be able to extract and contextualize information from content to gain insights.
“Don’t waste time orchestrating the work - do the work.” - Jenica Blechschmidt, Box Relay PMM
When Jenica came onstage during the keynote, she reminded us that most of the work we do is repeatable. Teams that spend more than half of their time manually performing the same tasks over and over will be happy to know that Box Relay will be generally available in November. Relay allows anyone to create custom workflows to get work done faster, scale processes with external collaborators, and get real-time visibility to make sure everything goes smoothly.
"We’re working hard to make collaboration more powerful" - Ciara Peters, Director of Product Management
Our product team continues to develop new ways to improve the Box experience. Today we announced new features to make collaboration even more seamless. This includes an enhanced commenting experience, the ability to preview any old file version and easily see past versions without having to download the file, and insight into who's currently working in a file or who's recently viewed and edited with Presence. There were also new enhancements to Box Notes – you can now see which notes have recent edits, what changes were made, Presence, and pre-built Templates. These changes are all in an effort to make Box a powerful collaboration tool that allows you to do your best work.
"We have to choose to lift up women, or else we get the same ideas, discussions and policies that have left so many behind." - Dr. Jill Biden
Dr. Jill Biden joined us at BoxWorks for the first ever Box Women's Network Summit, an opportunity for women to come together to network and find mentorship from female leaders in Silicon Valley and beyond. In her keynote, Dr. Biden spoke about the impact of women in the workplace and the specific challenges that they face in society - two topics she holds dear. She shared several messages of empowerment that resonated with the audience: "None of us know where life will take us, but we all have the chance to make a difference with the talents and opportunities that we have." Throughout her keynote she related her own experiences to the audience, including what it was like to raise two children while maintaining a career, her role as Second Lady of the United States, and pursuing her Master's and PHD degrees. Despite her success, she also has days where she just needs to put one foot in front of the other.
Dr. Biden recognized that technology has the ability to make a difference in the world, and those in the field should feel empowered to use that platform to chase after what they are passionate about. And although we have strength within, there are times when "the most courageous thing we can do is lean on each other." She continued, "as I think about the change we need, in a nation where no one gets left behind, it's rooms like this that are the key."
"I've heard that BoxWorks is like the Woodstock of enterprise conferences" - Brian Chesky, Airbnb CEO
Brian joined Aaron onstage at the end of the morning keynote for a fireside chat. Fun fact: BoxWorks was his first enterprise conference ever! Brian talked about the humble beginnings of Airbnb: "We literally had investors walk out in the middle of our meetings," Brian remembers, "they told us that strangers wouldn't want to stay with strangers." He also spoke about how it's been important to Airbnb to keep a strong culture as they grow. In order to stay competitive "you have to celebrate failure and push people to take risks. At Airbnb, we have a ton of conviction and will push ourselves to try things until they work."
If you couldn't join us at BoxWorks, we'll do our best to fill you in, and if you can't make it today, make sure to check out the Day 2 keynote live stream!