By: The AINS Team
At the beginning of November, AINS celebrated its 16th Annual User Conference alongside its 33rd anniversary. For over three decades, AINS has been dedicated to digital transformation partnerships, improving workflows, and driving efficiencies. It is because of this dedication to our customers, and their continued trust and support, that we have consistently been able to bring our services to the forefront of the industry. This was exemplified at this year’s conference, our most successful to date with almost 600 registered attendees across two days. In keeping with our promise to continuously develop and improve, we’ll be diving into the successes and setbacks of this year’s conference, and what we hope to bring in AINS’ next 33 years.
With Great Attendance…
As mentioned, this conference broke all prior attendance records. With lessons learned from 2020’s virtual conference, a first for us and many others, we had a great foundation to start with. One of the big issues from last year’s conference was getting folks in: many of our customers were unable to access the conference using Zoom Webinar. Our team looked to alternative services for our next virtual conference and landed on Microsoft Teams Webinar, which allowed for greater attendance and engagement. Though our experience with Teams was improved, it wasn’t without hurdles. Several customers were unable to receive the invitation links as the emails were redirected to their junk folders – an issue we are working to address.
Keeping Our Momentum
Last year our team utilized a countdown clock between each session, to show when the breaks would begin and end. This year we utilized static slides instead, which resulted in some confusion and questions about the session time frames. Our team brainstormed some ways to combat this problem beyond the original countdown dynamic, and resolved to add some engaging media, such as videos played between sessions, or polls and interactive quizzes to keep the momentum of the Conference going.
Setting the Experience
Some of the most successful talks from the 2021 conference focused on wider issues, including interactive organizational needs and everyday simulated issues. These help to convey the broader needs of many of our partners, and provide new perspectives on our out-of-the-box services. Through broader discussions like these help actualize eCase’s capabilities, and is one driving purpose of our User Conference. Our team will endeavor to introduce more broad themes in future conferences, helping to drive engagement and discussions. This also helps to highlight more customer-specifics for our developers ahead of each session.
Final Thoughts
Our speakers were able to deliver seamless, high-quality content thanks in large part to our team’s cooperation and dedication. Throughout the conference, moderators were on-hand to answer user questions and help speakers transition through their sessions. With our IT team hard at work, technical issues were minimal, and the conference was highly accessible to our customers.
We are most thankful to our customers and attendees for supporting AINS through our new endeavors. This year’s virtual conference has expanded what we as an organization can deliver to our customers, including the potential for product-specific webinars in the future. Feedback from our 2021 conference has been positive, and we hope to be building a foundation for delivering even better experiences in the future.
From the AINS team, thanks for helping make the 16th annual User Conference a success, and thanks to all of our partners for 33 great years (and counting!).
