Another successful Knowledge Days users conference is behind us. I have had about a month now to think about my KDays experience. During those three days, there were plenty of educational and training sessions, keynote presentations, opportunities to engage and meet new people, and fun evening events to network during the conference. They were also my first three days working with ACGI.
It was a great opportunity for me to just dive in and meet ACGI’s staff, customers and resource partners. Everyone was excited about the conference from the get-go and some customers even took the time to offer me some friendly words of encouragement (Thank you!).
What impressed me the most was how carefully planned the entire conference was. From the welcoming event on Sunday evening to the closing sessions on Tuesday, every detail of the conference was considered and left a positive impression about the event experience and ACGI overall.
But what happens when it’s not all positive.
I’m sure many of you, especially event professionals, know that no matter how much planning goes into an event, there’s always a chance for things to not go as planned. It’s like counting down the days to vacation only to get sunburned on your first day and having to stay inside for the rest of the week, or looking forward to a first date and getting a flat tire on your way to meet them (those are totally not personal experiences or anything…). Truth is, we all have had a bad experience at some point in our lives, and often times, these are the ones our minds remember instead of the positive ones.
What I am trying to get at here is that with the right amount of preparation and planning, an event like Knowledge Days is set up to run smoothly and with minimal hiccups to be expected, leaving attendees with a positive event and user experience (UX).
The UX at KDays is similar to the UX with your Association Management System. You want your experience to be beneficial, educational, and help you as an association professional improve organizational effectiveness, efficiency and member value.
In a recent Forbes article, Karen Cole, co-founder and CEO of Seattle based user experience firm, Blink UX, makes a good point about how UX is revolutionizing businesses today:
[…] It’s not just new, disruptive companies for which UX is fundamental, UX is revolutionizing pretty much every business today. In fact, UX is fast becoming the defining strategy of every company. [..] No company can become or remain a leader if it doesn’t prioritize and put money behind creating a user experience that meets its customers’ needs, and more importantly, customer expectations.
Cole goes on to share how UX has gradually become a primary focus and strategy for businesses big and small over the past 20 years, and offers us endless opportunities for greater digital experiences that we should all take advantage of.
At ACGI, we strive to provide the best user experience possible with our products, Association Anywhere AMS and Certelligence, our Credentialing Management System. By centralizing data, automating and streamlining processes, and eliminating system silos, we aim to provide our users an experience that enables you to become more efficient and agile so you can better serve constituents, accelerate growth and deliver higher levels of performance in achieving your goals.
To learn more about our products and how they can help your organization achieve high performance and a better user experience, we invite you to join us for one of our upcoming overview webinars in July.
Written and edited by Melissa Madigan, Marketing Coordinator, and Merrik Kressley, Marketing & Sales Intern, ACGI Software.
Photo credit: Flickr, Michael Kappel,(c)2011; Forbes.com;
