Acclivity's 14th Annual Partner Conference
This past weekend Acclivity hosted its 14th Annual Partner Conference in nearby historic Morristown, NJ. This annual event is attended by our leading Certified Consultants and VARs for AccountEdge and Checkout, our award winning Mac POS system. While it might not sound like a party to have a roomful of computer and accounting geeks, it really is a fun group - if the pictures are to be believed. This conference enables us to develop, enhance and renew relationships we've had with many of our best partners, some going back almost 20 years.
This year, we spent 3 full days training, listening, discussing and celebrating the future with our partners. We share with them our product plans and our sales and marketing ideas and work with them on growing their business in sync with ours. They got to see firsthand how cool Checkout v3 is and mingle with the (jet-lagged) developers from Sofa at a special full day Bootcamp, highlighted by the largest pizza delivery to the Morristown Hyatt, ever; 26 thin crust NJ pizzas, mmmm....thanks to the folks at Star Tavern and Pizzeria.
Our theme this year was "MYOB is now Acclivity" and marked the start of the formal transition away from MYOB and toward Acclivity, and what that means for our products, customers and Partners.
These conferences are a great way to listen to our partners, get direct customer feedback, learn about their businesses, discuss their challenges, and work with them to seek mutually beneficial results. It's a unique relationship in the software business. It also means we get to know our partners on a personal level and treat them like part of the family, because they are. This year, we took a bus trip back to our home office so the entire Acclivity team could get involved. It made for some funny moments as our partners participated in a scavenger hunt (who knew there was a picture of Kurt Russell in our offices, or that a bottle of seltzer or a rocking chair could be so hard to find). They also spent time listening in on tech support calls where one person had a shock when one of their clients called in while she was listening. Talk about bizarre. Folks also got the chance to speak one on one with our developers, isn't that the dream of every consultant or customer? We hear it all the time, "if I could only talk to the developers, they would understand."
A great time was had by all, until next year, we say thanks to all who attended.