What's in a theme?
The scope of Conversations this year is much bigger than it's been in the past. Six tracks, two dedicated to Conversations Mobile. Six different industry forums, with twice as much time dedicated to them than last year. All supporting a company that has grown significantly by every measure in just the last year.
Yada yada yada, *yawn*, stop being a marketer -- yeah, yeah, I know. That's all set up for this question -- how do you bring it all together, so it doesn't feel like a jigsaw puzzle of separate topics? What unites everything beyond the location and the company name? The theme does. And picking one that everyone can agree on is, uhhh, quite a challenge.
Last year we tackled this task by choosing the theme "Elevate Your Experience." This scored in several ways. We at Nuance like to emphasize the importance of "experience": our experience in the industry (our corporate tagline is "the experience speaks for itself"), the importance of the caller experience, and improving what your customers experience when they come to you for customer care. People attend Conversations to "elevate their experience" by learning how speech and other customer care technologies are being used successfully... so we renamed the breakout sessions with titles like "Elevate your Technology Experience, Elevate your Caller Experience, Elevate your Application Experience..." to echo the theme. Finally, the evening events were chosen to "elevate your body", "elevate your mind", or "elevate your soul", with appropriately themed events (circus performers, house of blues) that were... ahem... quite an experience.
So those of you who attended last year may remember the theme. Er... at least, I hope you do. Because wasn't that the point? Not just empty marketing speak, but something memorable. A theme that's descriptive yet inspirational. A broadly positive message, but not so generic that it feels like any other conference theme. (In our brainstorming for 2007, we've already nixed such ho-hum terms as "Realize the potential", "The power of speech", and "Discover the possibilities," all of which sounded nifty at first... but really don't do much, do they?) We've been narrowing in on something that can reflect the growing nature of this business, that can reflect both the rise of mobile applications and the importance of this Care 2.0 world we live in. We've got a few good ideas, but I'll save that for when we've got a winner!
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