Reinventing the conference: how Amplexor’s Be The Expert transformed

Amplexor’s annual Be The Expert, traditionally a traveling conference, took place in a totally different way this year: virtually. Here’s how it went.

As Covid-19 continues to wreak havoc globally, new ways of working, learning and networking are emerging. This was in evidence at our annual conference last week when our traditional physical get together became something different entirely.

When it became clear that our 22nd annual Be The Expert conference could not take place in Seville as planned, we immediately began to look at virtual alternatives. At the same time, it soon became obvious that our traditional 6 hour per day schedule would not work for attendees sitting at home on a laptop. Our first task then was to reshape the agenda: by reaching out to previous delegates, we built up a good picture of how long sessions should last and how many people would realistically watch in one sitting. That led us to extend the conference to four days with just 2.5 hours of content per day.

Without the commitment of physical travel, the number of delegates soared to more than double the previous year – and the virtual interface actually made the information they provided more valuable. By migrating our customer circles, for example, from physical round table discussions to online polling, with multiple choice, prioritized voting, the output was more concrete and useful to the product development team. This is one feature we’ll continue in our real world conferences. We also saw a huge increase in attendance from the US, which is leading us to explore the possibility of a North American Be The Expert event in the future.

And, most importantly, the content was as compelling as always. Google’s senior program manager, Heidi Dohse, provided an inspirational and insightful account of data-enabled digital healthcare. Steve Gens unveiled the latest results from the World Class RIM Industry Survey. Among the most popular was the case study presented by Abbott, which uses Amplexor to manage millions of documents for 11k users. All these presentations – along with the full agenda – will soon be available right here so check back for updates.

We hope to return to Seville next year, incorporating virtual attendance and online resources such as surveys. And, when we do, we hope to see you there – either in person or in our virtual environment.

About the author

With more than 25 years of experience in the Life Sciences industry, David Gwyn is a seasoned executive with extensive experience. As a Vice President for AMPLEXOR Life Sciences, David’s main focus is aligning customer needs with the capabilities of the company’s Life Sciences Suite to ensure that the solution meets the needs of the customer.