It’s been one week since our team had the privilege of attending bbcon 2018 at the Gaylord Palms in Orlando, Florida. As a new Blackbaud Consulting Partner, we were excited to participate as an exhibitor and host a special event. We had a great time connecting with our partners, clients and prospects who stopped by our kiosk to:

• Learn more about our BrightVine Data Loader tool

• See a demo of our Microsoft Outlook Integration for Blackbaud CRM™ (version 3.0 is scheduled for an early November release)

• Hear about our Google Apps Integration for Blackbaud CRM™ (coming Q4 2018)

• Check out our reporting and performance dashboards

• Learn more about who we are and what makes us unique!

We were also inspired by many of the sessions led by our customers and colleagues. These were great forums for the Blackbaud CRM™ community at large to identify common goals, share lessons learned, and strategize. Some highlights included the World Wildlife Fund’s session which was full of great tips on how they’ve leveraged the direct marketing module to capture all aspects of their marketing program from direct mail, to email, DRTV, benefit fulfillment, and everything in between. By doing so they’ve increased visibility and confidence across the organization.

We also loved hearing about the ways in which Save The Children is using Continuous Improvement Tools to select high value projects and achieve buy-in, as well as numerous examples of using page designer to create targeted workspaces that streamline and simplify processes. We always encourage organizations to utilize page designer to increase usability and enhance end user experience - especially if you can avoid customizations.

In addition, our very own Jill Byrne presented on Blackbaud CRM™ and data analytics and Blackbaud's Bill Walsh presented examples of BrightVine reporting dashboards and other reporting projects.

One fo the most rewarding aspects of bbcon is the networking and ability to bring organizations together. BrightVine hosted an event for Blackbaud CRM™ organizations where dozens of organizations were able to connect and talk in a relaxed setting.

We can’t deny that another great part of our time in Orlando was taking our team to Disney for the Epcot Food and Wine Festival! As part of the fun, the team attended a cooking demonstration with Bravo’s Top Chef fan favorite Sheldon Simeon; went bowling and transformed into rebels fighting the evil empire in the Star Wars themed virtual reality experience, the VOID. The team spent time getting to know our newest team members and recharging our batteries. At BrightVine, we believe in the power of fun. It’s part of who we are and the spirit we bring to each of our projects.

(Pictured: Darryl Fonseca, Tim Lenczowski, Jill Byrne, Steve Otey, Selena Fowler, Susan Hines, Bethany Avery, Ed Crantz, Megan Constantino, Chet Rosson, Rich Muniz, Sara Swiatlowski, Dylan Moses and Stacey Segal. Not pictured: Edwina Derrick, Chad Hujsak, Jordan Winka, Heather Todd, Brian McMickle, Kumar Patel.)

If you weren’t able to attend bbcon, or did attend but didn’t have the time to connect, please reach out today to learn more about how this special team and the tools we’ve developed can help you achieve your key Blackbaud CRM goals today.