Tony Hsieh stood onstage at the Lerner Theatre and showed a picture of the doggie daycare room at Zappos headquarters.
The crowd or more than 900 people let out a collective “awwww.”
It wasn’t the biggest takeaway from the speech by the founder and CEO of one of the world’s most popular online sales companies. Yet here was this online entrepreneur and innovator who flew in from Las Vegas to speak as part of the first IDEA Week, an innovation festival in the South Bend-Elkhart Region. There hasn’t been a festival like this before in northern Indiana.
Lippert Components has operations in both counties, so it was appropriate for Jason Lippert to be onstage in Elkhart Wednesday afternoon talking with Amish Shah of Kem Krest and Jon Wenger of Genesis Products about driving growth in manufacturing. Lippert told of the OneControl technology that elevates how an RV owner can control and service the vehicle.
Earlier in the day, the RV that showcases its OneControl technology was at the ETHOS Science Center for a small Northern Indiana Tech Expo. In the RV showing how RVers can control a range of operations from one smartphone App, Michael Rupchock, Lippert’s director of customer experience technology, explained how the Internet of Things is coming to camping.
“I want people to be aware that Elkhart is a hotbed of innovation,” he said.
This story by Marshall V. King can be read in the South Bend Tribune.