Co-Creation in Process

Submitted By Laura Banks - International Alliance of Avaya Users (InAAU)

While I was listening to all of the sessions last year at the e4 event, I began to think about my association and our annual conference. I have been the Conference Coordinator for the last 13 years and we have held the conference the same way. The conference always starts on Sunday at noon and ends on Thursday at noon. We always have general session Monday through Wednesday morning. We always have the welcome event on Sunday night. We always ….

We do a survey at the end of the conference and get feedback from the attendees and I read every one of them.  And I take them to heart. “What do they mean, they don’t like the food? I picked great food.” “What do you mean the hotel rate was too high! Don’t they know what I went through to get this hotel?” “I knew they would like that keynote speaker, because I know exactly what my conference attendees like.” “Of course, if InAAU has a conference our members will be there.” Well, some of them will be there… at least, if the world doesn’t have an economic problem…or a major flu outbreak.

As I sat (over drinks) in Vancouver with a couple of my board members and our Experient leader last year, I said

• “Do we really know what our attendees want?”
• “Are we really giving them what they want?
• “Should we be doing something different?”
• “Could we be doing something different that would encourage more attendance?”

Experient got us in contact with Dan Sundt and thus began a process that so far has taken us about 10 months.  Dan introduced our whole Planning Team to the Co-Creation principles and then worked with the Team and other key players to get to know InAAU and our principle sponsor (and partner) Avaya. He went through the planning cycle with us and then attended the annual conference and interviewed our attendees. He is now ready to share his recommendations (on July 25) and we will build our goals and will be ready to share the rest of the story at e4. Join Danielle Cote with Sage Software and Pam Fueshko and myself from InAAU at our session Co-Creation Case Studies for “the rest of the story”.