DICE Corp., Bay City, Mich., held its 2016 User Group Conference in Detroit at the Greektown Casino hotel April 25-28, drawing the largest turnout to date.
The company holds the DICE User Group Conference every 18 months for the purpose of informing its clients of advancements with software and to announce any new products, as well as to go over any product and service advancements. “We are really there to inform our clients first of all,” said Amy Augustin, director of marketing and communications, DICE, “and also to teach and train.”
Augustin said DICE brings a great deal of its staff to answer clients’ questions and to make presentations. Clients have opportunities to ask questions and discuss amongst each other after each session. “This year was really successful because we had the largest turnout we’ve ever had, and we had full classes of people staying for the whole session to ask questions.”
DICE holds this conference specifically for this purpose: to give its clients an opportunity to learn. “They talk to each other,” Augustin said. “They’re asking the DICE experts questions, but they’re also learning from each other and sharing information that way.”
On Monday, April 25, DICE hosted a meet & greet, which had the largest attendance for a meet & greet to date, Augustin said.
On Tuesday the sessions kicked off with the keynote address. Augustin said this year DICE also rolled out its rebranding. “We are in the process of rebranding, so that was exciting. We kicked off the first session with a video that was made in house by our creative team.” (Watch it here: http://bit.ly/1YzctYf.) Augustin said this video really grabbed the audience’s attention. Then Cliff Dice, founder and CEO of DICE Corp., went over his vision for the future and discussed some highlights from the last 18 months.
Throughout the conference, DICE also allowed its sponsors, including DSC, Samsung, Bosch and IPtelX, to give presentations.
That evening, attendees enjoyed a dinner at Fishbones, a seafood restaurant in Detroit’s Greektown district.
On Wednesday DICE offered many informative sessions about things such as Matrix Sales, its new sales tool.
“My department made a presentation on Wednesday announcing that we are not only servicing DICE,” Augustin said, “but we are also available to the security industry for creative services, so we can do video — we have a producer and cinematographer on staff, we can create websites, we have Web developers and designers, project managers, technical writers, multimedia specialists — so we have an entire staff that is able to work for DICE’s clients if they have a need for our services.”
That evening, DICE provided three suites at a Detroit Tigers baseball game, including food, drinks, and a great time to relax. “They won,” Augustin said, “which made it even better.”
On the last day Dice made a product announcement about the cloud video recorder, and then held a panel discussion. “We weren’t sure if people would stick around because it was a long day Thursday, but we had full sessions,” Augustin said. “We had our software engineering panel, and we had our OS engineering cloud center experts there. That’s how we wrapped it up Thursday.”
Augustin said that feedback from post-conference surveys was unanimously positive. Over time, Augustin said, the format has evolved from attendees splitting up into committees to its present format, which involves more panel discussions. DICE has found this format to be more productive and informative. “In their feedback this year, people said it was the best-organized, most informative conference yet.”
The 2017 DICE User Group Conference will take place in October next year in Traverse City, Mich., at the Grand Traverse Resort.
