Personify, Inc. (“Personify”), the market-leading provider of technology solutions for associations, nonprofits and events organizations, announced that its 22nd annual PersoniFest user conference will take place virtually on March 2-3, 2021. PersoniFest is the leading conference for association, nonprofit, YMCA, JCC and event professionals. This will be the second year in a row that Personify hosts its annual conference in a virtual format and, in 2021, the organization will leverage its own virtual conference platform to host the two-day event.

“We had great attendance at our first-ever virtual PersoniFest in 2020 with a 5X increase in attendees from the previous year,” said Teresa Zimmerman, Vice President of Marketing at Personify. “Our clients were able to send more of their employees to the virtual show, attendees watched more sessions both live and on-demand, so we listened to our clients and decided to make PersoniFest virtual again next year.”

The PersoniFest call for proposals is now open and Personify’s clients and partners are encouraged to submit ideas for sessions that will be featured as part of the 2021 program. The deadline to submit a session proposal is November 6; more details and the submission form are available at www.personifest.com.

“We’ve helped many of our clients transition their in-person events to virtual and hybrid experiences, and we are pleased to bring those best practices and leading trends for virtual events into our 2021 conference,” said Dave Cooper, Chief Technology Officer of Personify. “Personify’s virtual conference solution provides a robust day-of-event experience for speakers, attendees and exhibitors to attend sessions, host Q&A, participate in discussions, and network with one another.”

About Personify

A trusted solution that allows for infinite possibilities, Personify is the technology foundation that provides insights to maximize engagement and deliver value across every interaction with members, donors, volunteers, attendees, exhibitors and more. For over 20 years, Personify has been a trusted partner to associations, nonprofits, show organizers, YMCAs and JCCs—helping them improve insights, optimize operations, increase revenue and drive productivity. For more information, visit www.personifycorp.com.

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Our team recently hosted the 21^st annual PersoniFest, our annual user conference for clients, partners and staff. While this conference is typically held in April and takes place in a different city each year, we made the decision to shift to a virtual event in early March due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While the planning process takes around nine months on average for the in-person event, we needed to rapidly transition to virtual in a little over a month.

Today, I’m sharing a behind-the-event look at how we took PersoniFest virtual. We also chronicled this process each week leading up to the big event on Personify’s Planet Leadership podcast. I encourage you to check out the episodes.

#1 Set Realistic Goals

The first thing that we did when deciding to go virtual was to sit down with the full marketing team and rearchitect our goals and expectations for the event. Some of the key performance indicators (KPIs) that we set for the in-person conference were no longer relevant in the new setting.

It was crucial to understand what success would look like with our virtual event and use those goals to guide our approach to programming, attendance, pricing, sponsors and more. The questions that we asked included:

• What are the goals with this event and how do they differ from an in-person event?
• Can we achieve these goals in a virtual setting? The answer might be no and that’s okay.
• How does our audience change in a virtual setting? Are there accessibility issues we need to keep in mind for segments of our audience?
• Who should be involved in the planning process?
• What’s the communication strategy for sharing updates?

While a virtual event presents different challenges from a live conference, it also created new opportunities for our team. With a virtual event, our attendees do not need to book flights and hotels and be away from the office for multiple days. I am excited to share that our attendance at PersoniFest virtual was more than 5X the attendance of our previous in-person events. As a result, our team is considering how to incorporate a virtual offering into future events, even when business travel has resumed. The huge attendance numbers showed us that our clients are hungry for resources on how to better leverage the Personify products and educational content that helps them grow in their professions.

#2 Identify Your Tech Stack

After establishing our goals and expectations for the virtual event, our team quickly began evaluating our technology stack to ensure that we had the tools available to execute our plan. Each year, we want to deliver an exceptional experience for our attendees but we also want to be able to track all of the conference data back to our central database to understand the most popular topics, identify gaps in our content and inform our future R&D efforts.

We have a strategy of “build, buy and partner” with our marketing tech stack. First, we looked at the technology that was already in place for the in-person event and identified what we could repurpose in a virtual setting. We used our own A2Z Events solution to power the agenda and online booth presence for sponsors. There were some new solutions that we would need to explore. One of them was the day-of experience, so we chose webcastcloud to run the virtual conference for us. They have live-streamed the general sessions at previous PersoniFest events so it was a natural extension as we reimagined the delivery channel for our virtual sessions.

We also partnered with Gather Voices to enable our sponsors and award winners to record videos that were available on the day of the conference. We leveraged our client communities that are powered by Personify Community to host roundtable discussions and happy hour events at the end of the day. And, we recorded the keynotes and breakout sessions using Zoom leading up to the conference and on the day of the event.

There are a wealth of different platforms and tools that an organization can use to build their virtual conference. An important thing to keep in mind is to think about the user experience and actions that an attendee will need to take to navigate between the platforms. The more seamless you can make it, the better your attendee experience will be.

#3 Build Your Virtual Conference Program

We developed our approach, built out our technology stack and then turned our attention to programming for the virtual conference. It was definitely a challenge to take three days’ worth of educational content and repackage it into a one-day virtual event. We knew that in addition to attending PersoniFest, our clients are doing their day jobs remotely while homeschooling kids, sharing their make-shift home office with spouses, and trying to find the necessities like toilet paper – all while maintaining their sanity as well. There are only so many hours in the day, so it wasn’t feasible to recreate every session that was planned for the in-person event.

First, it was important to consider what kind of content our audience will have an appetite for in this new environment, then start to evaluate which of the sessions could be effectively recreated and consumed in a virtual environment.

We set up meetings with key stakeholders for each of our client verticals- people who work most closely with our clients and have the best understanding of their needs and priorities-  to understand which educational sessions were crucial to include and which ones may not be the right fit for a virtual environment. We also checked in with internal and external speakers to understand how their bandwidth may have changed in recent weeks and gauge their willingness to participate.

These conversations were also opportunities to discuss ways to adjust the programming to include ideas and helpful tips to navigate this changing market and better support our attendees as they are making a similar shift for a lot of their events. So, we actually ended up adding several new sessions to the virtual program that weren’t originally included in the in-person program.

This is the approach that worked best for us, but there’s no one “right way” to do it. It depends on your audience, the types of content, the timing of your event, technology limitations, and more.

#4 Find Opportunities for Sponsors

While we made the decision to refund our sponsors upfront, we were unsure of the best way to involve sponsors in a virtual format or if we should involve them at all. We receive feedback every year that the sponsors love to meet with people face-to-face and to really become part of the Personify ecosystem. So, we didn’t want to shortchange our sponsors because we couldn’t provide that in-person experience. Yet, many of our sponsors reached out to us about joining the virtual experience. Our team then sat down and thought through a few options to provide visibility and engagement opportunities for sponsors throughout the virtual event.

We created two new virtual sponsor categories and offered them up to our list of original sponsors. While the virtual sponsor opportunities are paid, we charged a lower rate than we did for the in-person event in consideration of tight budgets during the global pandemic. We were thrilled that more half of our confirmed sponsors for the in-person event decided to join us virtually!

To make it a compelling experience, we offered online booth profiles for each sponsor with the ability to upload videos, brochures, press releases and more. We also encouraged sponsors to record a video about themselves for attendees to watch on the day of the event. We saw the highest engagement among sponsors who also presented breakout sessions, which is a similar trend for our in-person events. To create continued engagement, we offered sponsors the ability to author blog posts on the Personify blog and/or send a dedicated email to attendees of the conference.

#5 Adding the WOW factor to a Virtual Conference

One of the most important considerations for our virtual conference was the ability to engage people and get them excited without face-to-face interactions. I personally find it difficult to resist the urge to multitask and check emails while attending a virtual event, so I expected this to be a challenge for our attendees as well.

We wanted our attendees to experience glimpses of how we had originally conceived PersoniFest over the past nine months. We had a brainstorming virtual happy hour session one late afternoon where we just let our creativity run wild. This included questions such as: Should we do a virtual 5k? Should we build in bathroom breaks? Should we do celebrity cameos? Do we have a track dedicated to yoga and meditation? Basically, how do we keep people engaged on the platform and in the event when there’s so much pulling at their time?

There were so many great ideas that came out of that brainstorming happy hour that we decided to replicate this for our attendees. So, we set up Happy Hour Roundtables that were hosted in each of the product line communities and included a variety of topics. Indeed, it was one of my favorite parts of the day to grab a beverage, share insights and recap the day with our clients.

We also hosted a virtual 5K/dog walk in the morning and had several clients tag us in photos with their pets. To keep up interest during the sessions, we conducted polls, speakers engaged in Q&A in real-time, and we encouraged attendees to keep the conversation going in each of our client communities.

Wrapping Up

While this is the strategy that we implemented this year, I have a ton of ideas for how we would tweak and optimize our next virtual event. It’s been a great learning experience for our team. I’ll reiterate that there is no one “right way” to host a virtual event. There are many considerations to be made, including your audience’s needs, your content and programming, your sponsorship program, overall goals and more to build the plan that is best for your organization.

If you’re looking for more ideas, I encourage you check out our PersoniFest Behind-the-Event episodes on the Planet Leadership podcast or feel free to email our team.

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As you may know, we launched the Persi Awards a few years ago to recognize the incredible accomplishments that our clients have made over the past year and to highlight their success stories.

Persi Award Winners for Innovation

With this category of awards, we recognized organizations using innovative approaches to acquire and engage their members, donors, attendees, exhibitors and more.

The American Pharmacists Association received the Persi Award for Innovation in the Association segment because of their efforts to restructure their membership process over the past year and transform the way that they engage their members. APhA shifted away from having traditional membership types to membership levels that focus on the benefits received and simplify the new membership and renewal process. They also restructured their IT department and made changes in how they manage financial records within Personify360.

In the nonprofit and community category, we selected the American Society of Safety Professionals for the Persi Award for Innovation. ASSP developed a Champions program to empower nonprofit leaders to drive conversations and engagement in their online Community. These champions have created more than 250 conversations between leaders, stakeholders and members in the organizations, and over 20 groups are led by Champions. Within a year of the program launching, more than 1,400 members were added to the community, 30 Champions are currently in the program and there have 400,000 pageviews in the community.

In the Health and wellness category, our Persi Award Innovation winner is the YMCA of the Twin Cities. They engaged Personify, NetPulse and eGym to leverage an Apple technology program for their members. Members can now check into facility by scanning their Apple Watch and log into equipment at facility that track metrics and progress in wellness programs. Members are also able to renew their YMCA membership using their Apple Watch, which is integrated with all of the member’s information in Personify. The YMCA of the Twin Cities is innovative in many ways. Their third-party vendors use Personify’s APIs for receipts that can be used to calculate the cost of childcare expenses for tax filing. They also have vendors that use Personify eBusiness to manage camp reservations, choose meals and more.

We introduced a new Persi Award category for event professionals and show organizers in 2020. Our Innovation award winner for this category is Emerald, a leader in business-to-business trade shows and conferences and each year they connect over 1.9 million customers across 142 events using A2Z Events. Emerald continues to innovate by providing unparalleled experiences to connect buyers and suppliers using the entire platform. They lead the way in adoption and sales of enhanced digital content, and they increase the value for exhibitors and improve the attendee experience.

Additionally, Emerald is currently launching a new events Community for a recently canceled event due to COVID-19. The team works collaboratively with Personify to remain at the forefront of creating rich event experiences.

Our final Persi Award Innovation winner is the Newcomer Friends of Greater Plano. This volunteer-run organization has been an active member of Wild Apricot for over 5 years. They have a busy and ever-growing calendar of events and a website that constantly needs updating, all while having board members on constant rotation. With Wild Apricot being a necessity to this organization achieving their goals, the board made the decision to assign nearly 15 tasks a month to one of our partners, releasing over 200 hours. This has allowed members to shift their focus back to their mission and focus on what matters most.

Persi Awards Winners for Impact

The Impact Awards are for organizations who have leveraged Personify’s solutions to drive their mission forward and meet their organization’s goals. They have fostered advocacy, vibrancy and collaboration through the use of technology.

The American Water Works Association was chosen as the Impact winner for the Association segment. They provide video training content to members and wanted to move to a Netflix-style video subscription. The AWWA team worked with Personify partner webcastcloud to develop a branded video channel and hosting to deliver training videos to members in a process that is seamlessly integrated with Personify360 via Personify’s single sign-on interface. AWWA also recently went through an upgrade process with Personify360 and is now able to take advantage of the latest updates and enhancements to better serve their members.

The next Impact recipient is the Citizens Climate Lobby, our winner in the nonprofit and community category. When this organization’s founder passed away in 2019, members created a space within the community to memorialize him. Across the world, people shared news clippings, video and reflections within the community. The founder’s wife even became involved in thanking members. This is a very large community, but the organization’s leaders were able to make this very personal for members.

During this time, the community had 420,000 pageviews, which is an all-time high for this community and the memorial made up 78% of all pageviews during that time. While we are sad about this organization’s loss, we want to applaud the Citizens Climate Lobby for the great work that they have done to keep members connected.

Our Impact winner for the Health and wellness segment is the YMCA of Metropolitan Chattanooga for their commitment and engagement in their recent implementation of Personify360. They reached out to Personify to help them build an online presence for members and sell memberships online.

After going live, they sold 15% of memberships online in the first month and did this with no advertising. This allows members to sign up for memberships much quickly and freed up staff time to focus on programming and other activities.

Our Impact winner in the new event professionals and show organizer category is Taffy Event Strategies who has a team of top-notch industry experts from some of the most well-known and respected tradeshows and companies globally. Taffy uses A2Z Events as their platform of choice for show and conference management as well as mobile solutions. They were also the first client to add the Virtual Connect Suite for one of their largest show management clients when the event was canceled due to COVID-19. The event is the largest international tile and stone show in North America and is on the Gold 100 List.

Our final winner in the Impact category is the Fort Worth Mothers of Multiples, a new Wild Apricot member. They utilized the all-in-one software to double their membership in the last 12 months. They have since seen an increase in sponsorship, engagement from stakeholders and members and have acquired a budget increase allowing them to go into 2020 thriving.

Trailblazer Awards

Our next category is the Trailblazers category. These are organizations that use several of Personify’s solutions to take their constituent management and engagement approach to a new level. They leverage technology in innovative ways and are making significant strides to better acquire, engage and retain their constituents.

Our first winner, the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, went through a significant upgrade in 2019. CASE had previously used a customized system but wanted to benefit from the latest product enhancements. By upgrading their technology, they lowered their spend on customizations and reinvested those dollars into the programming.

Additionally, CASE has affiliates across the world and leverage multi-currency functionality to interact with affiliates in different countries. They are a new A2Z Events client and will have many events take place across the globe this year and next. While some of their events may be postponed or canceled due to COVID-19, they will be positioned well to deliver strong events in the future and can tie all the data back into Personify360.

The final Trailblazer is the American College of Physicians, an organization that has been a longtime client that also recently went through a technology upgrade. This upgrade was well executed and organized on their side. They are very methodical about their process and committed to making the best use of their technology.

ACP leverages A2Z Events to manage their online booth space application, reservation contracts and sponsorship contracts. They take advantage of the revenue acceleration program to deliver more value to their exhibitors before, during and after the show. While their show was canceled this year, ACP will be able to create and execute amazing event experiences for their clients in the future.

Congratulations to all of our 2020 Persi Award winners! This is just a sample of the great things our clients are doing every day and truly what the PersoniFest user conference is all about. We’re thrilled to be able to recognize the work that they do to grow their organizations and increase their impact!

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Personify, Inc. (“Personify”), the market-leading provider of technology solutions for associations, nonprofits and events organizations, held its 21st annual PersoniFest user conference today in an entirely virtual format. PersoniFest is the leading conference for association, nonprofit, health and wellness, and event professionals. While the conference had been scheduled to take place in Colorado Springs, Personify staff quickly transformed the event into a virtual conference as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. More than 2,000 clients attended the annual user conference, which is the largest turnout in PersoniFest history.

During the event, Personify shared innovations in the Personify Cloud Platform including Virtual Connect, Virtual Events, Job Boards, Community Health Check and a modernized user interface and user experience across the product portfolio. Personify also unveiled a new user command center where clients can access Personify360, Community, A2Z Events and Wild Apricot from a single location with activity feeds, user management and workflows across products.

“Our clients leverage technology to have a full view of their constituent base and unearth opportunities for better engagement, which is especially important now as many find themselves operating in a digital-only environment,” said Norbert Orth, CEO of Personify. “The innovations that we shared at PersoniFest enable our clients to deliver more value through the connected constituent experience and drive digital transformation efforts within their organizations using the full Personify suite of products.”

PersoniFest 2020 also included the third annual Persi Awards to recognize the impact and achievements that Personify’s clients have made in the past year. Winners include the American College of Physicians, Citizens Climate Lobby, the YMCA of the Twin Cities, Taffy Event Strategies, the American Pharmacists Association and more.

As the Personify team worked to quickly pivot to a virtual event over the past few weeks, the team documented their strategy and considerations on Personify’s podcast, Planet Leadership: https://theplanetleadership.com/. To date, the Personify team has released five episodes that cover topics such as the overall concept, technology stack, virtual programming, sponsors and more.

“While we are disappointed that we couldn’t be together in-person in Colorado Springs, I’m proud of how we’ve been able to stand up a virtual experience so quickly,” said Teresa Zimmerman, Vice President of Marketing. “Because we know that many of our clients are asking the same questions of their events and tradeshows, we wanted to document our approach to going virtual.”

Event organizers announced that they will take PersoniFest on the road in 2021 with events held in Washington D.C., Chicago and Austin next spring. To learn more about PersoniFest, please visit https://personifest.com/. For more about Personify, visit https://personifycorp.com/.

About Personify

Personify is the market-leading Constituent Management and Engagement (CME) platform that empowers organizations to better engage their constituents, maximize revenue and optimize operations. For over 20 years, Personify has served as the technology foundation for organizations of all sizes from the largest associations, charities, YMCAs and JCCs to emerging nonprofits. For more information, visit https://personifycorp.com/

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For the past 13 days, I’ve been working remotely and practicing social isolation. It’s been an adjustment and, on some days, a real struggle. If you’re like me, COVID-19 has affected every part of your daily life, both personal and professional. All of the upcoming trade shows that our team has been hard at work on are now cancelled, we’re in the middle of reimagining our annual user conference into a virtual event and our company is transitioning to a remote workforce. On a more personal level, I’ve had to postpone my upcoming wedding and honeymoon.

While it feels overwhelming at times, I know that nearly every individual, business and community is struggling with these same challenges. We are all in the midst of adjusting to our “new, temporary normal” and rethinking our strategies during this unprecedented time. In the spirit of collaboration, I thought I would share a few thoughts on how our team is shifting our events strategy. I certainly don’t have all of the answers (and certainly not as many as I’d like), but it’s been helpful for me to talk through the new process and considerations with our team.

For our events strategy, the questions that we’re asking ourselves include:

• Should we attempt a virtual exhibit booth for trade shows that we planned to sponsor in the first half of the year?
• What does a virtual user conference look like and how can we deliver value to our attendees in this type of format?
• How long should it be—do we retain our original three-day structure or make it more succinct and deliver the content within a single day?
• What percentage of the keynotes and breakout sessions should be recorded live versus pre-recorded?
• What technology do we need to leverage to be successful?

How can we keep people informed and up to date on the evolution of our conference, much of which is happening in real time?

Recently, our team decided to share a behind-the-event peek at how we’re adjusting and pivoting to a virtual conference on Planet Leadership, Personify’s podcast for association, nonprofit and event professionals.

Whether you’re a regular subscriber to the podcast or if this is the first time that you’re hearing of it, I encourage my fellow marketers and event professionals to check out our latest episode where we discuss many of the considerations that impact the transition to a virtual event.

In the first episode, which we’ve titled Getting Organized, I’m joined by my colleagues Teresa Zimmerman, Vice President of Marketing, and Rich Vallaster, Director of Client Relations and the Trade Show Wonk, to discuss our thought process and how we are rearchitecting the foundation for our annual conference. As you and your team are working on your events strategy, we hope that you gain some value and clarity from hearing about our new process and next steps.

I’m excited to share that this will be a multi-part series where various members of the Personify team share their new strategies, thought process and questions to consider as we move forward with our virtual conference. Join us!

Listen to the Episode

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If you haven’t attended before, one of my favorite events is the annual Persi Awards program on Wednesday morning where we share and celebrate our clients’ success stories. The Persis include two categories:

Innovation

Persi winners in the Innovation category are leveraging technology in innovative and unique ways to better acquire, engage and retain their constituents whether they are members, donors, attendees and exhibitors (or a combination of these). This can include integrating Personify’s technology with other platforms and/or implementing AI or machine learning to optimize and automate their common tasks.

One of our previous winners if the American Optometric Association (AOA) who undertook a digital transformation in 2019 and used the data housed in Personify360 to map out a buyer’s journey focused on interactions and engagements. This initiative then allowed them to better tailor member experiences by identifying programs that would be of interest to them, ultimately helping to increase retention.

Impact

In the impact category, Persi winners are making use of Personify’s technology to meet their goals and deliver more value to the people that they serve. This can include increasing exhibitor retention, fostering an online community or growing their membership base—through the use of technology.

The American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons (AAOMS) is a past winner who represents more than 9,000 surgeons across the U.S. and leverages both Personify360 and Community to optimize and streamline a complex membership process. AAOMS creates collaboration spaces in their online community that are specific to their varied types of memberships and can unite those with specific goals like their board of directors, committees, delegates and clinical interest groups.

Share Your Story

If you’re looking for ideas on stories to submit, I encourage you to check out our recap of 2018 winners and 2019 winners.

We’ve already received quite a few nominations for the 2020 Persi Awards but it’s not too late to submit if you haven’t already. Nominations will close at 11:59 PM on February 29^th!

Submit a Nomination

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In 2020, we’ll have four main stage sessions, one out-of-this-world keynote speaker, community manager breakout sessions, 20+ hours of training, one BIG party, plus tons of opportunities to consult with Personify experts… and that’s just the beginning of what’s to come. 

The PersoniFest planning team has designed a valuable, experience for those clients using Personify Community. Whether you’re a first-time attendee looking for ways to optimize your online community or a veteran attendee driving engagement strategies for your association, PersoniFest has something for you! 

We’ve built a track of breakout sessions that are focused on goals and challenges for professionals who manage an online community and are tasked with driving engagement in their organization. See our breakout sessions for Community users. 

Our Top Picks for Community Users 

• Getting Your Membership Active Online: Communicating the Value of Digital Membership: From trends in young member acquisition to changes in social channel usage, hear what the data tells us about successful strategies to help your community stand out as a value-driver for your members. 

• Power Your Programs with Online Community Events: Whether scheduling volunteer opportunities and assigning roles, building mentorship office hours, or facilitating member-hosted engagements, this session will help you uncover the power of events functionality within your online community. 
• Building Champions and Managing Change: Building an online community is a change management initiative with moving pieces that include stakeholder identification and engagement balanced against organizational and departmental strategic priorities, organizational culture and subcultures. Through a case study featuring the American Society of Safety Professionals, this session will introduce attendees to the elements of effective change management to assess organizational readiness and preparation to implement a thriving online community. 

See the Full Agenda 

Exclusive for Personify Community Users 

In addition to the multiple breakout sessions and keynotes, our Community Consultants team will hold Community Office Hours where you can pop in to ask questions and get advice on how to make your online community a success. 

We encourage you to attend a Community Roundtable discussion on Monday from 11:10 AM-12:10 PM where clients will network and share their best practices and challenges in cultivating a successful community.  

Throughout the conference, we’ll host meetups for clients using Personify Community at social events. We recommend this networking opportunity for all attendees but especially for first-time users who are looking to connect with their peers. 

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We’re excited to announce that the PersoniFest Agenda is LIVE! Our team has spent the past several months gathering feedback, evaluating past events and working with our programming committee to gather proposals and design a valuable experience for all PersoniFest attendees. Whether you’re a first-time attendee looking for ways to optimize your event tech stack or a veteran attendee leading your organization through a major transition to the cloud, PersoniFest has something for you!

We’ve even put together a full suite of content for our Health & Wellness clients covering topics like SaaS training, new features, membership and program reporting, and a roundtable discussion on the future vision of fellow YMCA and JCC clients.

Planning Your PersoniFest Schedule

The full program is available now at personifest.com and we’ll continue to add session information throughout the month. We’ve added an Advanced Search feature that allows you to search and filter through the full list of sessions to find the content that’s most relevant to you and your organization. You can filter by persona/ area of interest, product, day, speaker and more!

Breakdown of Each Day

Sunday | Welcome to the Broadmoor!

After a day of travel, we look forward to hosting you at the beautiful Broadmoor for cocktails and light snacks at the Welcome Reception. Don’t forget to swing by the Registration Desk first to grab your badge!

Monday | Let’s Get Started

We’ll kick off the conference by gathering the PersoniFam in the general session ballroom for the Welcome Address, followed immediately by a full day of breakout sessions! Topics include digital membership, event tech trends, data integrity, member onboarding and more. Throughout the conference, you’ll have ample time to meet with our partners and sponsors in our Exhibitor Hall, catch a quick product demo at the demo stage, or schedule time to meet one-on-one with a Personify expert. A few of Monday’s highlights include:

• Why Onboarding Matters: Optimize Member Acquisition Cost & Improve Retention
• Introduction to Data Analyzer Bootcamp for Personify360 users
• Personify360 SaaS: Latest and Greatest AND Personify360 SaaS Training for Beginners
• Community Roundtable: Learning Key Insights from Community Managers
• Wild Apricot Roundtable: Tips, Tricks, Feedback and More led by Coach Mark
• From A to Z: Top 20 Trends for Event Professionals in 2020 with Tradeshow Wonk, Rich Vallaster

Tuesday | A Day of Learning + a Celebration

We’ll kick off Tuesday with our Product Keynote where you’ll learn more about the innovations that are coming for the Personify suite of products in 2020. Tuesday’s highlights include:

• Advanced Data Analyzer Bootcamp and Personify360 SaaS Training for Accountants
• The “ABC’s” of Marketing: Always Be Converting with longtime partner HighRoad Solutions
• A2Z Events Bootcamp: Business Intelligence and Reporting
• Sessions for Event Professionals on onboarding new event tech and strengthening sponsor and exhibitor relationships

We’ll finish the breakout sessions slightly early on Tuesday so that you have time to get ready for the PersoniFest Conference Party that takes place that evening at the Broadmoor. We’ll be sharing more details about the Conference Party theme and activities soon!

Wednesday | Going Out with A Bang

The final day of the conference kicks off with my favorite session of the program: the announcement of the Persi Award winners! The Persi Awards are an opportunity for us to celebrate Personify clients who are change-makers and innovators in their field.

Nominations are still open for the Innovation and Impact Awards, so submit your organization before February 29th for a chance to be recognized on stage!

Other Wednesday highlights include:

• Developer Day, an add-on technical training covering topics like Web Designer, SaaS API’s, Single Sign On and more!
  • Please note that Developer Day is not included in the full conference pass so attendees that want to take advantage of this session should sign up for Developer Day when registering or email marketing@personifycorp.com to add it on.
• Engagement Beyond the Booth with the Tradeshow Wonk, Rich Vallaster
• Wild Apricot Mobile App: Ways to Save Time & Manage Your Organization On-The-Go
• Does Your Website Hurt Your Online Sales?
• Tons of Personify360 training sessions!

Don’t see what you’re looking for here? Check out the full program for more! For additional program highlights by product focus, check out our Program Picks!

We can’t wait to see you at PersoniFest 2020! The PersoniFest Mobile App will be available soon, which will allow you to build a personalized schedule of all your favorite sessions throughout the conference.

*NOTE: Session times are subject to change. We will continue to add breakout sessions, trainings and additional details throughout the month of January.

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December 16, 2019 – Austin, Texas – Personify, Inc. (“Personify”), the market-leading provider of technology solutions for associations, nonprofits and corporations, today announced that former NASA Astronaut Mike Massimino will give the keynote address at the 2020 PersoniFest taking place April 5-8, 2020, in Colorado Springs, Colo. PersoniFest is the leading conference for professionals in the association, nonprofit, YMCA, JCC and trade show organizer sectors. Massimino will share lessons he has learned throughout his career and his unique perspective on teamwork, innovation, and leadership.

An astronaut, the first person to tweet from space, a recurring character on The Big Bang Theory, and now a bestselling author, Massimino grew up a working–class kid whose seemingly unreachable dream of becoming an astronaut and flying in space was realized in a journey that was accomplished with hard work and humor. After two missions to the Hubble Telescope and four spacewalks to make critical repairs to the telescope, he is now a Columbia University professor, the Senior Space Advisor for the Air & Space Museum, an author, television host and more.    

“In 2020, our PersoniFest programming will focus on ascending to new heights and Mike Massimino is the perfect speaker to exemplify that theme,” said Teresa Zimmerman, Vice President of Marketing, Personify. “From his numerous spacewalking missions to his current endeavors that include teaching at Columbia and appearing on the Big Bang Theory, Mike has a passion for excellence and understands the hard work that it takes to achieve your goals. We’re honored to welcome him to PersoniFest and look forward to hearing from a down-to-earth spaceman.” 

In its 21st year, Personifest will provide three days of education, thought leadership and training from leaders like Massimino. Attendees can choose from a wealth of education sessions that are tailored to executives, marketing, membership, finance and IT professionals, all while earning Certified Association Executive (CAE), Continuing Professional Education (CPE) and Certified Exhibition Management (CEM) credits. 

For additional information on Personifest or to register, visit www.personifest.com.  

About Personify 

Personify is the market-leading Constituent Management and Engagement (CME) platform that empowers organizations to better engage their constituents, maximize revenue and optimize operations. For over 20 years, Personify has served as the technology foundation for associations, nonprofits, event professionals and show organizers as well as YMCAs and JCCs. For more information, visit https://personifycorp.com/.  

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My colleague Megan and I had the privilege of visiting the Broadmoor Hotel last week to coordinate logistics and activities for next year’s PersoniFest. I’m rounding up some of my favorite things about Colorado Springs and how we plan to make this the best PersoniFest yet.

1. The History of the Broadmoor

Our upcoming conference will be hosted at the Broadmoor Hotel, which was opened by Spencer and Julie Penrose in 1918 with the goal of creating a property where European elegance met Western hospitality. The Broadmoor boasts 779 rooms, three championship golf courses, 18 restaurants and 25 unique retail shops. Additionally, it is the longest running Five Star, Five Diamond property in the United States.

My expectations were pretty high going into this trip but, in spite of that, I was amazed by how tranquility and beauty of the resort. The Broadmoor has several historic buildings that are situated around Cheyenne Lake, which was originally built by Count James Pourtales who developed a casino on the property before it was the Broadmoor. Pourtales built the lake to enhance the beauty of the property but found it mysteriously empty 14 days later, so he went to great expense to fill the excavation with clay and, thus, prevent this from happening again.

Today, the lake is home to two beautiful white swans that I enjoyed seeing swim as we walked the property and coordinated the layout of our event. Interestingly enough, in the 1950s, the lake kept a few sea lions on property. One of them decided to take a “stroll” one day and went into the Mezzanine, down the escalator and proceeded to bark at incoming guests until it was removed by staff. While it’s probably best to not have sea lions on property for several reasons, I’m a little bummed that I won’t get to see this happen at PersoniFest.

The Broadmoor has a captivating history that includes visits from celebrity guests such as Prince Harry, Margaret Thatcher, Buzz Aldrin along with Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt to tunnels that were built under the property for sneaking in illegal booze during prohibition. We’re excited to allow our guests the opportunity to learn about the Broadmoor’s history and explore the beautiful grounds of the hotel while also brushing up on their technical skills and expertise and becoming a Personify power user.

2. The Garden of the Gods Park

During our recent site visit, our team drove through the Garden of the Gods Park, a public park that was designated as a National Natural Landmark in 1971. In the 1850s, two European surveyors were awestruck by the formation and remarked that it “is a place fit for the Gods to assemble” and, therefore, how it was named.

The Garden of the Gods’ red rock formations are stunning and seem to pop up out of nowhere as you’re entering the park. The formations were formed during a geological upheaval along a natural fault light millions of years ago.

While driving through the park, our guide pointed out that many of the formations have shapes that resemble animals and people. For example, there are two kissing camels at the top of North Gateway Rock and a bear and seal atop the Three Graces Rock. The Garden of the Gods is an easy drive and only a short distance from the Broadmoor. If you have time during the conference, I highly encourage attendees to check it out.

3. CAE, CEM and CPE Credits Galore

While we’re thrilled about the location and the activities available in Colorado Springs, our team is working hard to ensure that attendees have a wealth of programming tailored to their interests, roles and industries. In 2019, we had more than 35 sessions that were available for Certified Association Executive (CAE), Certified Exhibition Management (CEM) and Continuing Professional Education (CPE) credits. We plan to provide even more compelling content and breakout sessions in 2020 that allow attendees to grow their skillsets, learn best practices from their peers and become more effective users of our suite of products.

I’ll be sharing more details about PersoniFest in the coming months such as our keynote speaker, conference party details and more. But I did want to share that we recently opened registration for 2020 and are offering 20% off with the code “earlybird” if you purchase an All Accesa Pass.

Learn more about PersoniFest

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