PegaWorld, the annual event put on by Pega, a leading customer engagement and process automation platform provider, will be taking place virtually on May 4th. And earlier this week my CRM Playaz co-host Paul Greenberg and I had the opportunity to hold a LinkedIn Live conversation with company founder and CEO Alan Trefler to talk about the event a lot more leading up to the event.

Actually, “a lot more” may be an understatement when it comes to speaking with Trefler as there are so many areas you can delve into with him. Not only is he still at the helm of the company he founded back in 1983, he’s having a lot of fun while also leading Pega to cross $1 billion in annual revenues for the first time last year. He credits a lot of Pega’s success to the lessons he learned working in the family’s restoration business – which will be celebrating its 100th year anniversary next year. He’s also a chess master and an accordion player.

So Paul and I covered a lot of bases in our time with Alan, and below is an edited transcript of a portion of our conversation. To hear the full discussion click on the embedded SoundCloud player.