Telematics 2018: what it was like and why we had to use a drone

Partner conference gathers Gurtam community in Minsk for the 9th time in a row on July 3-6. Telematics keeps expanding its boundaries. This year, Beijing Hotel alongside with Gurtam Headquarters welcomed the participants. 220 guests from Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Germany, Bulgaria, Moldova, Lithuania, and China attended us here in the Belarusian capital.

They spent four days enjoying training sessions, experts’ talks, workshops, and quests. Here is the short summary of each day: we are going to recollect everything as if it happened just yesterday, and tell you why you shouldn’t be scared of speed dating.

Warming up: trainings, quest, and speed dating

The “zero” conference day started at Gurtam office early in the morning. Some guests were so anxious to begin that came by 8 AM! We were happy to see them though because normally we meet lots of our partners just once a year. So, the more time together, the better. Most participants had already been at our office multiple times and hence felt at home. We appreciate it a lot. Those 120 first-time visitors felt at ease quite soon as well.

More than 50 Gurtam people worked to get the reports, training sessions, and workshops ready! They shared with the guests what they were experts in:

• Business Development Director talked about how to create a powerful Sales Department;
• Head of Marketing Department told about how to promote business on the Internet;
• Training specialists showed how to work with Logistics, control fuel consumption and driver behavior;
• Web-applications developers talked about NimBus, a new solution for public transportation tracking;
• Hardware department introduced a step-by-step instruction on how to start developing Wialon-based solutions;
• And finally, the specialists of the Sales and Marketing Departments together proved that conferences and seminars are a great sales tool.

Watch all the presentations and talks on my.gurtam.com.

Thanks to “Around Gurtam in two days” quest partners got an excellent chance to visit the company’s departments, talk to our employees, ask for help, tell about their projects, and thank for the conference.

Speed dating (quick and useful conversations with Gurtam employees) was a huge success! By the way, it is the part of our August conference as well.

Conference Day 1

Beijing Hotel became the gathering ground for the next two days. Gurtam expert talks were scheduled for the first part of the day, while the workshops started after lunch. The idea was to provide partners with some background so that later they could come up with their own ideas.

Denis Grebennikov, CIS Business Development Director, was the one to officially open the conference. He highlighted the fact of more than 120 new participants that came to the conference this year. All of them got small but sweet gifts.

The first talk was dedicated to Wialon Hosting. Nickolay Kurdesov, Head of Wialon Data Center, summed up the past year results:

He also shared the plans for the further development of the system.

Aleksey Shmigelski, Head of Wialon Apps Development Group, was the next speaker. He told about why Gurtam decided to develop stand-alone applications and niche solutions and what lessons they learnt in the process of development: for example, that any more or less complex project needs about a year of hard work – the first test version is released in approximately 3-6 months, then follow the long months of testing and enhancements.

Alexey Demidenko, Head of Local Group, and Olga Yaskova, Wialon Local Business Analyst, told about how the server solution is created and compared versions 1704 and 1804:

Wialon Local 1804 became one of the most functional and stable in the history of the server version. They gave an insight into the further development of the system as well:

• Parallel development of Wialon Hosting and Wialon Local functionalities;
• Work on the development of Wialon Local backend, its administration panel, and diagnostics tools;
• Integration with Gurtam niche solutions.

Katsiaryna Chaplinskaya, Head of Web Group, informed the partners of the new features of my.gurtam.com, current developments, and upcoming novelties. And you, do you know everything about my.gurtam.com?

The International (Europe, Africa, APAC) Business Development Department headed by Olga Filonchuk presented the case-studies from different countries and insights they learned from those:

• The community is valuable for giving an opportunity to get help when it is needed: for example, the Russian company helped the company from Uganda to win the project of the Swiss customer having a fleet in Uganda.
• Giving up is not the option even if Wialon can’t provide a ready-made solution. You can give it a try and make up the solution as you go which means to turn impossible into possible!

Workshops started after lunch. The participants shared their experience in sales, niche solutions, mobile apps implementation, and hardware integration. So that they could choose the workshops to their preferences beforehand, we recorded a number of short videos (and had much fun during the process).

The business part of the conference finished with dinner. It was not very long because the next day promised to be even more intensive!

Conference Day 2

This day was the start of hardware manufacturers Expo. Without them, this market wouldn’t exist at all. Among those who took part in the Expo you could find:

Besides, that day, we took a traditional group picture. We had to use a drone to take it because there were over 250 people together with Gurtam employees!

Aliaksandr Kuushynau, Head of Wialon Division, opened the second conference day with his report where he recollected how Gurtam community was set in, who and how started it. He also defined the countries with the largest number of connected units. 

“... We have a lot to be proud of, and not only on the territory of the former Soviet countries: we made considerable progress for a couple of last years at many foreign markets,” told Aliaksandr and showed how the units are distributed across the continents:

See for yourself: our partner conferences that take place abroad gather more than 150 people each, we participate in industry events all around the world: in Russia, North and Latin America, Europe, South Africa, and Asia. 

Navitech 2018 in Moscow was the first exhibition to face the introduction of megabooth. The concept implies the gathering of Gurtam technology partners at one huge booth. So, next time we will build megabooths at MWCA in Los Angeles and Gitex in Dubai. Want to join us? Then hurry up and write at marketing@gurtam.com! Vacant spaces at the booth are being sold out like hot cakes – only 2 of them are left for each exhibition! 

Then the participants watched the presentations of Gurtam partners, hardware manufacturers, and developers of Wialon-based solutions. Among them, there were Teletracking, Global Position, Tetron, Technoton, Avtoscan, BCE, Mielta, Streamax Technology, Teltonika, Escort, Galileosky, GLONASSsoft, Quarta Technologies. Technoton was the lucky one to present the most interesting presentation according to the participants poll. You will have a chance to read about it on our blog soon, follow the news! 

Workshops started after lunch again. The topics were all new if compared to the previous day, and the partners could share their best practices and ideas on the point of agricultural solutions, video monitoring, marketing, and technical support.

A good deal of leisure time should balance productive work. That’s why when the business part of the day was over we moved to Astoria Riverside Restaurant. It turned into a small but bright piece of Mexico that night! 

The partners turned into Mexicans themselves: you could meet Adelita, Carlos, Juanita, Mario, Damian, and what not. Temporary tattoos, Mexican makeup, false mustache and eyebrows, the photo booth with thematic accessories made the party even more fun. 

Adrenaline junkies could try themselves in “rodeo” where one of the participants set a record – 50 seconds!

But the best and most intriguing part was undoubtedly Wialon TOP 50 Global award ceremony. The winners among Russian-speaking partners got their prizes.

It was the first award round, and the second is expected to take place at the conference for English-speaking partners that is due to be held on August 14-17. After it finishes, we will reveal the full TOP 50 rating and publish the results on the blog.

Conference Day 3: the end

“The morning is always good when it starts at Gurtam!” Having this in mind, we met our guests at the office again and went on working in a cozy and home-like atmosphere.

The day was devoted to training sessions prepared by our partners:

• Alexander Ivanov from LocMe.ru showed what it means to implement really complex solutions;

• PSM Group organized a spur-of-the-moment kind of workshop on marketing and sales;

• Baltic Car Equipment told how to save time with online hardware configurator;

• Technoton took a deep dive into the topic of  fuel consumption again, this time – with flow meters;

• SKAUT explained how to win sales with the help of Wialon Eco Driving module;

• Iridium introduced their company, told about their competitors and differences between service providers. They also elaborated on how satellite connection gets in the projects from various spheres.

That was the official end of the Telematics 2018 partner conference. But it didn’t prevent partners from networking. Many of them stayed for some more hours to talk in a friendly atmosphere! All photos from the event are here. 

The very next day, we started getting the first comments: 

We look forward to announcing Telematics 2019 dates as well! Follow our updates!