Interop Digital. No Walls.

My Interop Journey 

Romi Mahajan, CMRO Quantarium

With Interop coming up in a month, I wanted to reflect on the event- its past and present.

I’ve been a votary, fan, customer and partner of Interop for decades now.  I’ve also been lucky enough to be an Advisor for the past 6 years.  I’m found my role – howsoever small- in Interop to be one of the richest and most rewarding of my professional experiences each year.

For the past 22 years, I’ve worked in the Silicon Universe- mostly as a Marketer but also as a sales leader, product helper, partnership developer, strategic advisor, Board Member, and consumer.  In each of these incarnations, I’ve learned a lot from Interop- from the community, the content, and the commerce that is generated.

Themes and emphases have changed.  In 2007 and 2008, I worked for Microsoft and we set out to show IT Pros and Developers that Microsoft was a good partner who was seeking their feedback in product development and design.  We also wanted to make it clear that Microsoft existed in large part because of and in support of their efforts.  During those years, my contribution to Interop had nothing to do with products or solution but instead with the generation of goodwill and stewardship for the community. 

Some years later, I was at Interop looking to develop business for a startup I was lucky enough to be CMO for.  A year after that, on behalf of a client, I was there to help coach IT teams how best to communicate with the “business side” of the house in order to gain a mutual understanding and to stop the recriminations between the two sides.  Hugely diverse roles but all found homes in Interop.

This year, I am lucky to wear multiple hats.  I’ve been able to convene an entire track on AI and Data, wherein we’ll have some incredible presentations looking to cut through the noise and offer real and practical information and skill development on these popular subjects.  Here is one example, where we’ll feature Kathy Visser-May of SAP, Samir Saluja of Ahrian, and Cal Escue of Akvelon, all leaders, thinkers, and practitioners of the trade. 

I also have the pleasure of running two panels and a “birds of a feather” session on the emerging area of Fintech, where we’ll be discussing Cloud-Native Fintech solutions, AssetTech, and the evolution of Payments.  Indeed, all of this will be done under the Interop umbrella.  These Fintech sessions can be found here and here. It’s exciting to be able to work with folks like Pulak Sinha of Pepper, Danielle Funston of Sentinel Compliance Group, Dharmesh Godha of Advaiya, Khadija Mustafa of Microsoft, John Thomas of Zact, Sarah Wheeler of HousingWire, and Syed Hussein of Liquidity Digital.

Only Interop can bring together such a gallery of eminent technologists and innovators. As always, I look forward to the discussions and the creation of new professional and personal bonds, even though this year’s event is virtual.

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