The breakouts have started, with 29 concurrent sessions covering 12 different tracks—and that’s just today. There was something for absolutely everyone as evidenced by the crowded session rooms.

Meanwhile, down in the Tech Expo, John Ragsdale played host to two Innovation Tours that visited the booths of the finalists and winners of the Spring Innovator Awards. Both tours drew a sizeable crowd, allowing each partner to present their solutions, field questions, and engage in commentary provided by John.

I stopped J.B. Wood in the Expo Hall to ask him about the highlights of the conference. We ended up talking about his book, due to be released in September. J.B. said a number of notable things, one being that now is a watershed moment for technology services, with the pressure on the economy and the financial models, and that new financial and value models were needed. He went on to state that we have to take the services part of the technology world more seriously than we have in the past, and that we need to figure out what this means for the customer, the shareholder and the value of the products. J.B. is convinced that we’ve ridden the technology service model as far as it can go, and now need to work more efficiently—and cutting cost is an inadequate answer for service strategy.

We’ll keep you posted about his book, the foundation of which is the growing recognition that service is becoming a science, and that companies should embrace the idea that service research and innovation is becoming something they can invest in with confidence.

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