GoldStar attended this year’s Ericsson-LG, Global Partner Conference in Seoul, South Korea. We headed over for the 3-day event from March 7th to March 10th with two of our reseller partners for a jam-packed schedule of events.

Making the most of our trip we added in a couple of quick stop offs along the way before getting to Seoul. Stopping in Helsinki and Tokyo, we took in the famous Omoide Yokocho alley and apparently the busiest pedestrian crossing in the world in the Shibuya district, which can have as many as 2500 people crossing the street every time the light changes!

 

Day 1 – The welcome reception

Arriving in Seoul, we headed to Sevit island on the Han River for the welcome reception. This year was particularly special because it’s been the first opportunity in three years to meet face to face with the team from Ericsson LG as well as all the other reseller and distributors attending from all over the world. The online events held in 2021 and 2022 were a great stand-in, but nothing compared to the real thing.

On the way back to our hotel, we stopped off in Itaewon and came across a memorial wall commemorating all those who had lost their lives in the tragedy on the 31st of October last year.

 

Day 2 – Conference Day

The Conference Day started with welcome addresses from CEO Patrick Johansson and Vice President of Global Sales, Ahed Alkhatib. They were delighted to have everyone in person and meeting face to face again and shared the strong growth of the company over the past 24 months which was attributed to strong sales in Cloud and On Premise.

iPECS, Future Together was the key slogan of the conference. This message was highlighted throughout the morning presentations from Yuno Yung – head of international sales, Jaeen Yoo – head of operations, Seok-Won Lee- Head of R & D and Hyoung Lee – product management. All four of these presentations outlined the relevant developments and road maps of their respective areas, providing us with insight into what to expect in the future.

After lunch, the insightful presentations continued. Kevin Butler from Vertical Communications shared how they’d driven success in their market with iPECS. Richard Knight from GetCrisp provided an overview of the virtues of API integration into iPECS cloud, highlighting the opportunities and verticals it enables.

Conference day came to a close with a lively debate and panel discussion on what aspects of the portfolio could be further enhanced to ensure our iPECS futures. This was followed by a one on one with Will Morey and Ahed of Pragma, where they discussed the key drivers of success in their cloud business in the UK.

 

Day 3

For the final day, our hosts organised a tour of a local, famous temple, where we got to watch the changing of the guard. This was followed by a walk through a typical old Korean neighbourhood and a stop off for lunch, which was a traditional Korean style meal with plenty of vegetables, spicy soups and tasty meats.

We finished off our trip with a visit to the Korean War Museum which we would highly recommend if you’re ever in Seoul.

 

The highlights of our trip

The highlight of every GPC is always the awards ceremony, and we were delighted that two of our parnters, Alcom Voice & Data and Vertel were both recognised for their strong performances over the past 12 months. They received their awards from Yuno Yung and Gyein Shin, our account manager.

One of the most ‘coveted’ awards at the event is the ‘Best Dressed’ award. Each year, there is always a different theme for each event and this year was National Pride. We were delighted to be joint winners of this award along with our friends from Spain and Indonesia. A huge thank you to the people at Blarney Woollen Mills for Kitting us out before we left!

All in all, the entire trip was very successful with plenty of discussion and generation of new ideas, trying new foods with a few beers thrown in.

We are already looking forward to GPC 2024!