Conference Reflections: San Diego 2004
by Bill Rose, SSPA Founder/Executive Director

Conference success is all about relevant, valuable content; being able to network with peers; and location. This year’s SSPA Conference in San Diego was no exception as almost 500 attendees enjoyed great weather and camaraderie while they learned how to create and deliver world-class customer service and support. Basing the conference at the Manchester Grand Hyatt on the waterfront of San Diego was a nice added benefit. I hope you were there to appreciate it.

Before the conference officially kicked off, the SSPA’s new committees held their inaugural meetings. The committee chairs and interested members met to discuss each committee’s scope, processes, and planned deliverables. If you’re interested in participating in one of these industry committees, there’s still time to apply and contribute. The three inaugural committees are focused on Offshore Outsourcing Optimization, Support Efficiency, and Support Industry Standards. The committees will meet regularly via conference call to discuss the latest in best practices and trends in these areas and deliver their findings to members. The committee leads are:

• Offshore Outsourcing Optimization: Ed Shepherdson, Cognos’ vice president global customer support
  
• Support Efficiency: Randy Fisher, Progress Software’s vice president worldwide customer service
  
• Support Industry Standards: Randy Selleck, SSPA Advisory Board Member

To apply to participate in one of these committees, go to:

• Offshore Outsourcing Optimization
• Support Efficiency
• Support Industry Standards

Also debuting at the San Diego conference were our Best Practice Sharing Sessions. These unique sessions allow attendees to meet and collaborate with each other on a number of focused topics including outsourcing, efficiency, knowledge management technology and applications, staffing, financial keys for support, and much more.

I’ve tasked the SSPA staff to summarize the results of these sessions and publish them for you as quickly as possible. We’re also looking for a way to continue these session discussions online so all members can reap the benefits. We’ll let you know as soon as they’re available. Each topic will also need a moderator to keep topics on track or create new tracks as necessary.

Adding these new programs to an already robust conference was challenging and not without a few glitches. With your input, we’ve been able to identify the issues and will take the necessary steps to improve all of our sessions and content. While feedback has been very positive, we won’t rest on our laurels and will work diligently to deliver the content you need.

Panels and workshops are also an important part of SSPA conferences and the power panel on Understanding Offshore Outsourcing was packed with information on what works, what doesn’t, and the issues that affect the level of outsourcing success. These overwhelmingly popular sessions are now online and accessible to those who weren’t able to attend. See the photos.

During our Monday evening event, we presented the SSPA WebSTAR Service awards to ADP Dealer Services, Mercury Interactive, Cognos, Network Appliance, and Aspen Technology for delivering outstanding web-based services. A highlight of the evening was a presentation by John Wood, Room to Read’s founder and chairmen. Room to Read is an organization dedicated to bringing the resources for reading including books, libraries, and schools to children in need in Cambodia, India, Nepal, and Vietnam. Thanks to the many generous donations by members, we surpassed the conference goal of $30K and look forward to doing more in Savannah. Thanks to all who contributed to this organization set on changing the world. We’ll have a special space on theSSPA.com website soon to report progress with the new official SSPA philanthropy.

We’ve included some photos of attendees to give you a taste of the conference at <link>. We now have our sights firmly set on providing members with the best possible content and experience at our Savannah conference in Oct. I hope to see you there.

Thanks again for a great San Diego ’04 conference,

Bill Rose

Sincerely,


Bill Rose
SSPA Founder/Executive Director