Open Y Summit 2018

This week the team attended the Open Y Summit in Minneapolis, a two-day event designed to encourage learning and knowledge sharing as the Open Y community looks to transform digital experience amongst YMCAs. The event brought together 116 organizations from across North America with ImageX sponsoring as the leading agency partner.

What is the Open Y Initiative?

In the United States the YMCA serves about 20 million consumers. The structure of the YMCA creates a lot of autonomy which can lead to digital waste and redundancy. Open Y looks to solve 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. The Open Y Summit 2018 ran two session tracks, the first for those new to Open Y, the second for organizations who are already live or in development.  Both tracks were packed with inspiring talks on the importance of Open Y, how it can help a YMCA to increase effectiveness and efficiencies across digital, and top tips for maximizing results through UX, data and selecting the best partner. ImageX’s Solutions Architect, Yuriy Gerasymov, led an interactive presentation on the features of Open Y, encouraging delegates to think in more depth about their digital presence, detailing how they could utilize customizations and collaborations within the platform to achieve success. Yuriy also partook in a partner panel session where delegates were able to ask the experts any questions which may have arisen across any of the event presentations. The evening saw delegates and industry partners enjoy more of Minneapolis with networking at The Commons; a great opportunity to connect with attendees in a more informal setting. The ImageX team was excited to catch up with clients in person, along with meeting a number of new faces. Brent Wilker, EVP at ImageX, commented, “It was excellent to see how YMCAs are continuing to invest in the future of their digital experience. With Open Y, organizations can elevate their digital presence to a new level, where Drupal8 continues to hit the digital trifecta; better, faster and cheaper!” The event was truly excellent, we look forward to participating again next year and seeing what 2019 brings to the Open Y community! Check out some of the latest feedback on projects ImageX has completed for YMCAs moving onto Open Y.