By Steve Guglielmo and Hector Villarreal
GAWDA’s Technology Committee was announced just over a year ago, and the new committee has hit the ground running, tackling important topics like cybersecurity, e-commerce, and, of course, the incredibly hot-button topic of AI. During this year’s Educational Sessions at the Spring Management Conference in Dallas, the Technology Committee will host two sessions: “Cybersecurity: Experiences and Lessons Learned” and “E-Commerce: Lighting the Way to B2B E-Commerce Success.” We had the opportunity to speak with Technology Committee co-chair Hector Villarreal about the upcoming SMC and everything that the new committee has achieved during its first year for the May episode of GAWDA TV. The following is a lightly edited transcript of that conversation.
GAWDA TV: The technology committee has been in place for a little over a year now. Can you discuss the progress that the committee has made so far and the biggest topics of discussion that you’ve undertaken as a group?
Hector Villarreal: Yeah, it’s been a really interesting experience. You know, the majority of the people who are on the committee are in the IT departments for the various distributors. So, this is a different group of people than I normally talk to. I’ve spent the majority of my career talking to people in ops or ownership. And so, the energy level has been incredibly high. Everybody is very astute and in tune with this field.
I consider myself to be a very techie kind of person. And they’re dropping acronyms that I’m Googling on the fly because they live in this world, right? And I’m just visiting. And so it’s been a great education for me.
And I think that the GAWDA membership, in general, is going to benefit from this because I think this is a group of people within GAWDA that are always kind of in the background plugging away. They are absolutely essential to what everybody does, but they haven’t gotten a lot of screen time at GAWDA. And so I think this is an excellent platform to educate everybody on what they do and the importance of it.
GAWDA TV: One of the first things that you did as a committee when you were first announced was to establish three separate subcommittees. Can you discuss those subcommittees and the roles that they play within the larger committee?
Hector: The feedback that we got from the Board of Directors was that everybody was very interested in artificial intelligence. And everybody was concerned about cybersecurity, and everybody wanted to do more e-commerce or better e-commerce. So, those three subcommittees were subjects that were important to the Board. So, we attacked it from that position.
And very early on, it was obvious that some members of the committee were very into either cybersecurity or e-commerce, depending on what their positions were within the companies. But everybody had an interest in the AI because it’s the latest hotness. So that’s where those three committees came from. And they are the cybersecurity, e-commerce, and artificial intelligence subcommittees.
GAWDA TV: As we discussed the last time we had the opportunity to have you on the show, there is this thirst for technology within all industries, but especially within GAWDA. And that’s really going to come to the forefront during this year’s SMC in Dallas, where the Technology Committee will have a starring role, with an entire Educational Track. Can you give viewers a preview of some of the topics that you will be discussing during those sessions and why they shouldn’t miss those opportunities?
Hector: I think it’s become pretty obvious that if you don’t have an e-commerce position on your website, you’re really missing the boat. When I took over this committee, I reached out to friends in the industry who I knew had been doing e-commerce for a while. And the responses that I got were actually very mixed. Some who were early into it felt that the return was lacking as time went on. Initially, there was this nice big bump, and then, over time, it just kind of came down. And others who were getting into it wanted to make sure that they did it in the most efficient way possible. And so, as I spoke to other experts in the field, what I found was that you need to understand that there is no finish line in e-commerce. There’s no finish line in cybersecurity. You always have to be evolving. And there were some companies that made initial investments in their e-commerce website. But that was kind of it. And then there was somebody in the background who was trying to maintain it. And there has to be a reinvestment. And you have to walk in with that mindset that this is going to be an ongoing thing. The good news is that, and we’ll talk about this on the panel, the tools to do so have gotten easier to use, and they’ve become much less expensive than they were just 10 years ago. People need to understand that.
And on our e-commerce panel, we’ve got a really great lineup. We’ve got Marisa Leek with Keen Gas, Ryan Esparza with Esprigas, and David Schaer with Computers Unlimited. And it’s a nice perspective. We’ve got people who have been doing it since the beginning of e-commerce. And then we’ve got a person who is sort of new and is creating or updating a current website. And it’s going to be the lessons learned. So, there are going to be a lot of great takeaways on the e-commerce side. And I highly recommend everybody do it. It’s a vital part of everybody’s business. And if you’re not doing it, you should be doing it.
On the cybersecurity side, everybody has concerns. The headlines are full of horrible, horrible things happening almost daily now. And here, within Weldcoa, we’re always concerned about that. We spend a lot of time and money securing what we do. But when I was talking to the members of the committee, I was shocked at how many daily attacks are occurring. And that are being prevented. And nobody knows about it. They’re doing their job, and because nothing goes down, nobody is any wiser to what’s going on.
So, we’ve got a really great panel on cybersecurity. We just talked to Ryan Esparza with Esprigas. And Ryan has some real-world, very updated experiences in protecting systems. John, who is my co-chair on the panel, John Vrana with Red Ball, is going to be on there. And then, we have two industry experts. We felt it was important to get people from outside the industry on the panel. So, we’ve got Tom Barnes with Castor Security and Keith Johnson with Obviam. And these are companies that are constantly testing not just your security, but your staff. They’re doing fake attacks to see how your team handles it and who falls for these phishing schemes, which is always interesting. It’s a lesson learned kind of thing. Once you get burned, it’s better to get burned by somebody that you’re paying to do it than by some outside evil actor out there.
So, that’s what’s going to be on at the panels. I think it’s very timely, and I think people are going to walk away with a lot of information that they can use right away. I definitely think it’s a don’t miss.
GAWDA TV: You just kind of alluded to it; you know the headlines out there are terrifying if you let yourself kind of get sucked into them, and technology continues to evolve at this incredible pace. What are some of the biggest disruptors in the tech world right now, especially as they pertain to GAWDA and our members?
Hector: Yeah, you know, it’s no secret. Artificial intelligence is the big buzzword out there. Most people don’t understand how it’s going to affect their lives. Everybody’s used to ChatGPT and typing in a question, and they think it’s a glorified Google, but it is not. It’s so much more.
And I’ve told the story several times now, but it was 10 years ago, I was out of the country doing a presentation for a group of gas distributors in the Middle East. It was the first time that I spoke about artificial intelligence. I had been following IBM’s Watson artificial intelligence. And, at that time, Watson had just won Jeopardy, which was unheard of up until then. Artificial intelligence had been employed to play games like poker or chess, right? A lot of people at that point in time had played computer chess, and they saw how smart the computer could be, but for an artificial intelligence to answer random questions was unheard of at the time. And so, I was really fascinated by it. A lot of the science journals were talking about it. And ultimately, when I brought it up at the conference, at the cocktail party that night, everybody was asking me if it was a joke, if I was serious about it. And I was just like, no, I’m very serious. This technology is happening. You just haven’t heard about it yet. And it’s going to come.
At the same time, we have other technologies that are advancing at a similar rate. At the time, cobots weren’t a thing. But I knew, because I had visited facilities that were using cobots, that they were out there. And you fast forward 10 years, and a lot of our distributors are selling cobots. And they’ve been very successful selling robotic cobots for welding. It’s going to be the same thing with AI. Right now, distributors can use AI in their sales process, marketing process, and administrative process. And the technology to use it in their warehouses is developing. That’s the next phase.
And, as we get into quantum computing, when you merge the AI with quantum computing, it’s going to be a whole new world. It’s limited right now by its computational power. And when we cross that threshold into quantum computing, it is going to change a lot of things, for sure.
GAWDA TV: Looking ahead now to year two of the tech committee, what would you say your biggest goals are?
Hector: It’s kind of funny you’re talking about how we’re a young committee. I thought I’d have a couple of years to get everybody to find a rhythm. And we were formed, and then right away, the Board asked us to set up these panels. And so we were like, “Okay, we’ve got the people, we can do this.” And we set it up.
And I think what the team wants to do, what the committee wants to do, is we want to put out a lot more articles, some white papers, to help people navigate the complexities of cybersecurity, of e-commerce, and definitely educate people on what is usable on the AI side. There are a lot of products out there. X has its AI, and, of course, there’s ChatGPT, and then there’s Copilot and Microsoft, and Chat and Microsoft just released new versions of their AI. And there are several others out there that most people have never heard of. And we want to provide that education to people.
I think technology and business have always merged. And when that merger occurs, there are always winners and losers. And you definitely want to be on the winning side.
GAWDA TV: We’ve covered a ton of ground, but is there anything that you want to leave readers and viewers with before we go today?
Hector: If you’ve got people on your team that are interested in technology and, you know, they don’t have to be an expert, if they just have an interest, we would welcome anyone to join. I am certainly not an expert. I am just somebody who is fascinated by it. So, come join the technology committee. Be a fly on the wall. You can learn a lot. The conversations that we have are incredibly interesting. And again, you don’t have to be an IT expert to be part of that.
GAWDA TV: Well, Hector, you’re doing the Lord’s work here. You’re taking a really complex topic, and you’re making it really accessible. So, we really appreciate you, everything you’re doing, and we really appreciate your time today. So thank you so much.
