Last year’s Global Alert Conference, held at the Time Warner Center in New York City, was bigger and better than ever! The event was attended by some of our most collaborative clients who interacted with our staff and other presenters to provide a rich and engaging two-day program that was enjoyed by all.

Danielle Putis and Tony Schmitz kicked off Day 1 with a welcome to visiting customers and a sneak peek of the 2011 Send Word Now roadmap. CTO Alex Tsepetis gave a technological overview of our development process and service operations, while Marnie Barber, Director of Customer Support, introduced participants to our newest and upcoming software features from a customer support perspective. Howard Price of ABC and Roberta Witty of Gartner led industry discussions about "The Power Behind the Tool: Planning, Practice, and Partnerships," and Gartner’s Emergency/Mass Notification Services Marketscope, respectively.

The afternoon concluded with a mock table top exercise that simulated a major hurricane. Participants were asked to break into groups and improvise a response to the catastrophe and present their findings. The curriculum included information from the FEMA Tabletop Exercise templates, and it encouraged conference attendees to think critically about crisis planning, response, and communication, while learning about new strategies from colleagues in the industry. After the table top exercise, we took a break for the evening with a casual cocktail reception, giving customers a chance to connect not only with each other, but with Send Word Now staff members as well.

On Day 2, attendees benefitted from Marnie’s insight on Send Word Now Best Practices, and demo presentations from integration engineers Christy Pasion and David Grischuk. Christy gave conference participants a chance to view our fully integrated IMS product while Dave highlighted the many uses and advantages of our group contact management functionality. Mike Raber of TeleCommunications Systems, Inc. spoke about the Personnel Accountability Process and Gregory Angst of CenterPoint Energy presented a session on Daily and Emergency Energy Utility Messaging Applications. Andrew Baker, our Director of Service Operations, wrapped up the agenda with a comprehensive overview of our platform metrics. It was quite an informative afternoon!

We’d like to thank all of our attendees for coming out to the conference this year, and we do hope that those of you who were unable to join us in 2010 will attend next year’s conference at the Time Warner Center, to be held October 4th & 5th, 2011. See you there!