Perspectives on Insights: How would you improve the conference?

Off Topic
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Not to burst anyone’s bubble but speaking as a leader of a regional EUG, that is what your regional User Groups are for, though the meetings are quarterly because of the amount of time it takes to coordinate. I had several people ask me about the meetings here in the MI-IN area while at Insights. I will be working with my leadership team to get an in-person meeting this fall provided our site is now available and we can line up resources. You do not have to be a member of the EUG to attend regional user group meetings.

Epicor has frowned on virtual meetings in the past for regional groups but has allowed them during COVID. I’m not sure what the stance will be post-COVID, but even so, it is better to attend an in-person event because of the networking. Epicor also frowns on recording of meetings which is why you won’t see the sessions at Insights recorded.

I agree that it would be nice to have the sessions at Insights recorded so that they can be viewed by attendees at a later date. Just this morning I was looking for the one on Sales Order Automation that I wasn’t able to attend. There was a session or two that I had to leave early because I wasn’t comfortable sitting in front of someone who was coughing and blowing their nose behind me.

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22

@Beth and @JasonMcD bring up some important history of user groups and where we are today.

(Play the Pepperidge Farm music…)

A long, long time ago, user groups were run for and by the users. I was a part of Interex, the International HP Users Group. It was huge and got even larger with the eventual acquisition of Compaq and DEC. They put together the HP World user conference and invited the HP to participate. HP was just another vendor in the solution pavilion and spoke at a few sessions. Interex even published a quarterly magazine. (I wrote a few articles for it, including this one about this new thing called XML. Pepperidge Farm remembers…) Not long after that article, Interex declared bankruptcy. HP started a competing conference to take control of the marketing narrative. Other companies followed suit. Regional Microsoft user groups eventually gave way to big events put on by Microsoft. And so on…

That brings us to the EUG. I’ve always liked the EUG. But I’m sure they’re feeling the same squeeze that the other groups have. The EUG used to manage the enhancement list but that’s been replaced by Epicor Ideas. I believe they had a bigger hand in Perspectives than they do now with Insights. They’ve had competition with other “free” groups like the Midwest User Group, which has been run by independent Epicor consultants (CodaBears) but not affiliated with the EUG. And there’s the Yahoo!Group which is the forerunner of this group. Independent user groups are frustrating to the official user group. Discussions about competitors to products or services that Epicor provides, possible leakage of intellectual property, fodder for other competitors looking for an edge, or pointless b!tch sessions are understandably not really welcome. Sure, companies can use their legal departments to pressure them but going after your own users is unseemly. (See Oracle).

The basic schism is what is best for the organizations who provide services and those they are selling those services to? Looking for a win-win.

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23

I dont think it would need to be that much. I bet more than half of our attendance cost went towards the open bar costs.

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Speaking from the perspective of a person who lives on the other side of the world and has been to Insights once. Having the content made available offline to revisit at a later date or for those “Customers” that just can’t afford/justify sending delegates would be great value, as a learning resource and to help time poor users get more value out of company’s ERP investment.

If access to the content is made available via Epicweb it’s all protected by Epicor’s maintenance agreement. Its funny that there is so much content there, and some of it not new, I came across a programmers guide for cdc (2003)! So it’s not as is there is any lack of capablity there. Perhaps the cost of BrightCove is prohibitive…

Anyway, my point is that Epicor have a mechanism to protect the content, via up to data maintenance agreements, and you could argue that EUG do have via the paid membership plans storing it on Epicweb/ELC or in a members only section on EUG.

Insights U.S. is the premier event and provides the face to face networking. Due to it’s size and sheer number of sessions, it just not physically possible to see them all. It makes sense to have them recorded for later consumption.

The other elephant in the room of course is. Businesses pay a large amount of money to send each delegate for three days. As such, perhaps there is a feeling that the investment of the invested customer is worth protecting from the other non payers…Perhaps I’m wrong and I hope that’s the case. If it is, then perhaps there needs to be a change of thought there. I would be interested in regular Insights take on that. I’m pretty sure that a substantial amount of the fee is directed towards food and entertainment, which was pretty darn good when I went in 2017, by the looks it was pretty good again this year.

Personally I just about need to commit myself every year, following along best I can and experiencing it through other peoples posts on EpiUsers/LinkedIn and Twitter.

I long for catching up, and learning new and more things about Epicor. There is something fun about going off to conference and learning from the experts face to face. Not to mention the adventure of going off to the other side of the world.

Personally IF Epicor are committed to make something good, great, please open the taps and feed the community. Having a large number happy, well informed customer advocates, is way better than having a great website and expecting new customers to come on by, or even seeing a tiny logo on a spoiler wizzing past at 200+ mph.

I don’t know how many times I’ve spoken to people and I talk about Epicor, they say “Epicor who” or give some glazed over look, mention Netsuite or Dynamics then they get it.

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25

From a user’s perspective (engineer turned wannabe developer), having recordings made available would make the conference multiple times more valuable to our company. There is SO much that’s covered, and you can only remember so much. Most of which is lost when you learn more new things at the next session! And repeat 15x.

Having it recorded where you can play it back would let us take what we learned, along with the hand holding of a video showing the steps in detail, and let us confidently repeat the new skill back at the office when we have time to apply it to our own situation. Whether it’s migrating some Classic customization to deploy into the cryptic App Studio, or recalling that one feature you just learned about to streamline some process, having the video to get you through it would be huge.

Also, sharing the amazing customer presentations with your bosses and co-workers. There are so many great ways folks have tweaked Epicor to make work easier, and sharing those presentations internally is a great sell to how useful attending Insights is, and that it’s worth the cost of the trip.

We do our best by downloading the power point, but that doesn’t convey the speaker’s presentation as effectively as video. It also doesn’t capture the screens, which is needed when the presentation shares a live/dev example, or when you’re doing a lab and got stuck, while the class marches on.

If videos were available, I wouldn’t have to be furiously typing notes into OneNote while trying to snap pictures of the screen, and trying to follow along too!

I could see Epicor not allowing virtual attendance, as they’d be afraid of losing attendance if folks could virtually attend, but if they sold a virtual option, then so many more people could attend. Especially those where travelling across the world for a 3 day conference is impossible.

Anyways, that’s my two cents. I’d love to have videos of the presentations I attended, if not access to all of them. There are also session conflicts when I’d like to be 3 people and attend different ones at the same time (although this gets easier every year, as many sessions are repeats from the past).

/BrainDumped

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I don’t think they are opposed to someone taping the sessions either, but how we would go about doing that would be difficult.

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Agreed - to be clear. You can download all sessions from EventMobi… I usually download them anyways and if your name is in the Attendees list on EventMobi and you pm me for it I can give you the 7z save you 30min of clicking through all sessions youd like to read thru.

But Jose is right I dont post them here for public because its not fair to those who paid 1700~$.

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28

Id like to see more Demo’s and cut all the Theory stuff… we need Brian Hattrup, Patrick Ferrington, Rich Riley and everyone to go down the rabbit hole deep! Just my type of sessions Id like to see. :slight_smile:

@Edge presentation on Epicor Architecture is my type of content I want :slight_smile:

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@Ross.Fireball.Kuiper would like to see OneRepublic once more next year :slight_smile:

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29

I would love that overview and an overview of application studio and the kinetic screens.

Haso, I never ran into Brian this year, was he there? I have always talked to him at previous conferences, but I didn’t see him this time.

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@Rich said he didnt make it in this year (Brian that is) and that he has moved to the Kinetic Team while Rich maintains Server-Side framework what not.

Maybe next year :slight_smile: He maybe just likes Vegas… @Bhattrup

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Brian now has two young children…

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^^ THIS

^^ This too!

I don’t see any reason they can’t have a flag on what companies sent people to Insights(Insert Year Here) and lock the videos behind said flag on EpiWeb/EpiCare. There were so many tidbits in sessions that one can’t possibly remember it all.

The customer led sessions are always the best ones for me at Insights and a great way to network. I can’t count the many ideas other people have shared that I’ve had a need to use. I hope I’ve shared a few myself for someone else to pick up. Showing the executives this kind of resource would also go a long way into proving the cost is worth it for the company.

Even as a introvert, I will say the virtual EUGs were not as fulfilling as the in-person events of the past. I’m looking forward to going back to our local EUG’s meeting in-person this fall.

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33

I have to disagree with everyone who is saying the sessions should be recorded. I think that puts a damper on spontaneous conversation/questions which were the biggest value I got out of most of the sessions. Then EVERYONE who attends the session has to consent to be on video. No thanks.

As the only person who attended from my company, I found it really challenging. Maybe I’m an introvert at heart, but it took a lot of mental effort to go sit with random people at meal times or other times and just start talking to them. The conversations were great and I made some new connections but it was just really hard to do and I didn’t necessarily feel welcome. It seemed like everyone else was there with the rest of their team or other people they already knew. I don’t know that I have any specific suggestions for the event organizers on what they could do to make it easier, but just throwing it out there in case anybody else had a similar experience.

Overall it was fantastic and I would absolutely go again.

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Would them recording only the projector video and audio and not videotape participants be less intimidating?

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35

Please pardon the pun, but that is an outstanding “insight” @aosemwengie1! Sadly, there’s no good workaround that I know of… and it’s not really polite to stare an someone’s chest to try and read their name badge! I’m also not that fond of crowds… these events are completely exhausting (I skipped the OneRepublic show and went to sleep instead).

A couple of things that someone could try in the future… before the show, maybe message some of the folks here privately and ask what sessions or Extended Ed classes (if you’re going to those) they’re attending, and try to meet up with them. Go to the Epiusers group session(s) where you’re CERTAIN to recognize someone (Jose really looks just like his picture!). If you’ve worked with a partner that has a booth, go to that booth and talk to them, they’ll be THRILLED to use you as a reference (I hope).

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I’ve been to several Perspectives/Insights and always the only person from my company. Even as more of an extrovert, I completely understand how you feel!

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@hkeric.wci, you are correct, I prefer Vegas over Nashville every time. :beer:

@Mark_Wonsil, I sure hope you are not correct. My daughters are all in their 20’s now and they would not be happy having new young sibs. :smiley:

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I think I do. If you message me with your email I can send what I’ve got. On that note, can anyone send me a digital copy of the Kinetic lab book, please? I spilled an entire full cup of coffee in my bag so it’s ruined. :cry:

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I understand exactly how you feel, @aosemwengie1. Me and another coworker go, but we don’t sit together and all that, and we usually take different EE and sessions, so I’m solo too. I take my boyfriend on the trips but he only comes to dinners and the show, and this year we ended up skipping the show because I was exhausted. (Humidity in the room this year did me in!)
It did look most people were there in a group, and I don’t love coming to a full table of strangers either. Fair amount of anxiety for sure. Maybe they could have some specific tables for “singles” so we could all help each other out? I’d totally sit there.

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As far as connections, knowing there were so many of us there eating in the same room, but also only in small groups or alone was something I thought about on the way home. I have a couple of ideas.

  1. EpiUsers buttons so we can recognize a fellow user and say hello or sit down to eat. We would need a consultant to let people pick them up as they came to the conference. @Chris_Conn and I closed the bar with one that would likely do it. It would have to bigger the @MikeGross’s I am DocStar Rockstar button to be seen from a distance. I can get 150 3 inch buttons for $140.

  2. Some kind of mass texting app for impromptu dinner gathering. Preferably one that doesn’t expose my phone number. We literally have enough people in the room to do a mini Epiusers get together each meal. Anyone willing to research? I thought about Remind that we use with our team, but it is education only.

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