Acquia Engage 2017
Last week, October 16 - 18, the Acquia Engage conference brought together some of the very best and brightest minds in digital. The conference was a full 3 days of sharing ideas, creating new connections, and inspiring. ImageX was there in full strength taking part in sessions that were truly inspiring. Engage is the conference that showcases how Acquia customers and partners are tackling complex and interesting digital challenges to innovate and create forward-thinking digital experiences.
The event was organized in three tracks: Build, Share, and Inspire. The conference was absolutely full of great presentations from an extraordinary lineup of organizations such as NYU, YMCA, Johnson & Johnson, Whole Foods, and many more.
At this year’s Engage conference, outstanding leaders in digital transformation took center stage to share strategies, revelations, and critical lessons learned in the ever-evolving quest to deliver the best-in-class digital experiences of the future. One of the more notable sessions our team attended was the fireside chat Communities: Making a Difference with Drupal. This session was hosted by Lynne Capozzi and featured Nathan Maehren, senior vice president of digital experience for the YMCA of the Greater Twin Cities, and Dr. Jeffrey Burns, chief of critical care and chairman of the iCU Governance Committee at Boston Children's Hospital.
We were excited to see just how much of an impact technology can make on organizations like the YMCA and OpenPediatrics, “This is really the true nature of the open-source way - provide a common, high-quality platform for sharing knowledge and improving outreach. Everyone who is involved in Drupal should be proud of their work helping these two great organizations.”
The OpenY Initiative
In the United States the YMCA serves about 20 million consumers. The structure of the YMCA, which is more like a loose federation, creates a lot of autonomy. This also leads to digital waste and redundancy. OpenY addresses and solves the YMCA’s digital challenges while providing a better digital experience for the customer. Drupal 8 gives the YMCA an evolving platform and a dedicated community of developers. OpenY also has a significant impact where it can really matter - with budgets and accessing talent. Drupal helped OpenY hit the digital trifecta; being able to do digital better, faster and cheaper.
OpenPediatrics.org
Experts from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were recruited to build a platform that gave doctors access to the information they needed to care for critically ill children. OpenPediatrics.org is now used in every territory in the world, including North Korea. It provides critical medical information to global organizations including the World Health Organization and Doctors Without Borders. Drupal was chosen because it could be used to create a platform that was secure and extremely scalable.
The Future
In a digital-first, mobile-first world the customer experience is first. It’s the sum of every touchpoint and interaction over a customer’s entire journey with your brand. The need for your digital experience to meet and exceed the customer’s expectations is paramount to success. A great experience can solidify loyalty. Acquia showcased their product roadmap and expansion of offerings at this year’s conference.
On its immediate horizon, Acquia is providing solutions through Acquia Lift, Acquia DAM, Acquia Cloud, and Acquia Journey that will help customers address their digital challenges. One of the more exciting aspects of their roadmap is Acquia Journey. This is Acquia’s journey orchestration solution. “It was exciting to see Acquia Journey in action” commented ImageX Senior PM Sarah Wall, “Dave Ingram showed a packed room how fast and easy it was to create a customer journey and it was cool to see the live interaction with audience members on Twitter!” Acquia Journey enables your brand to plan, orchestrate, react to and trigger real-time customer experiences. Forget one-size-fits-all solutions. Today the right information must be delivered at the precise moment.
This year’s Engage conference was incredible! ImageX is proud to have taken part in building, sharing, and being inspired by how Drupal is being used to transform the world. ImageX CEO Glenn Hilton was thrilled by the bustle and energy at the Engage conference, “We’re excited by Acquia’s unprecedented commitment to building digital ecosystems of the future, and driving steady progress and transformation in the digital space.”
