Tessitura President Jack Rubin and his wife Marilyn wrap a successful flight on the USS Midway simulator at last year's Tessitura Learning & Community Conference in San Diego, Calif. (VT Photo)
Representatives from some of the world’s most prestigious arts organizations and venues are set to descend on the Northern California Bay Area for the annual Tessitura Learning & Community Conference, July 14-18, at the San Francisco Marriot Marquis.
The annual summertime confab is a chance for Tessitura users from around the world to gather and learn about updates to their business software platforms, train and use new product rollouts and, most importantly, share successes and lessons learned with their fellow Tessitura brethren.
“We’re dedicated to presenting best practices from arts organizations,” said Jack Rubin, president of Tessitura. “The relevancy of what can help them run their businesses changes every year and to keep up, we're helping them tackle everything from understanding how to turn data into dollars to developing methods for building new audiences.”
Conference planners are expecting 1,400 attendees this year — with many organizations bringing 12 or even 20 employees including executives and VPs of revenue, development, marketing, finance and even operations. Rubin describes the turnout as “the largest gathering of cross-genre, cross-department, cross-function, cross-size, cross-geography” arts and facility professionals.
TLCC also goes deep on programming with over 200 sessions over its four-day run— often running concurrently in groups of 10 to 15 at one time. Attendees and teams game-plan their strategy for dividing and conquering the most important sessions at the conference, which utilize a variety of formats. Peer-to-Peer Presentations like “Digital Philanthropy,” “Creative Uses in Nontraditional Departments” and “Quickfire Tips and Tricks for Data Analysis” are delivered by users documenting specific success stories, and then discussed with the audience in an open dialogue. Topics are also presented as traditional conference panels, as well as smaller discussion groups. TLCC’s Labs and its Executive Track offer the opportunity for targeted learning.
TLCC is organized and planned by a “user planning committee made up of primarily end users who bring forward ideas and feedback, decide on topics and work on the outline of the presentation,” said Don Youngberg, Tessitura’s VP of Community & Learning Resources and Conference Chair. The planning committee and its various subcommittees include about 125 members, and each year 200 to 300 Tessitura users serve as speakers and presenters.
“One of the trends we are seeing is that more and more people are stepping forward and saying they have new ideas for programming.” Youngberg said. “They’re excited about the opportunity to give back to the Tessitura community.”
“And most people tell us that when they get home, they have an entire year — sometimes more — of ideas and best practices to implement,” added Rubin.
This year’s keynote speaker is author Luke Wroblewski, author of “Mobile First,” which details the importance of building mobilecentric business solutions and understanding the convergence of sales, interaction and marketing into a single touchpoint and device.
“He’ll discuss interacting with the whole consumer, as a customer, prospect and donor,” Rubin said, creating a Tessitura-enabled 360-degree view that “builds engagement, thus building additional revenue.”
Wroblewski’s address will be followed by a deep-dive look at the nuts and bolts of the technology behind “Mobile First.”
Users will also get a chance to participate in Tessitura’s Technology Roadmap, sandbox testing and training on Tessitura v12, “our biggest functional release in history.”
In 2012, the company completely updated the architecture of its ticketing platform, which then paved the way for Tessitura v12 which, Rubin said, “supercharges our functionality across all departments. The first phase is in beta right now — much of what the users will see at the conference is new.”
That includes new graphic-centric configurations, advanced pricing capabilities, and a smart messaging engine for rules-based, automatic updates.
The conference opens with a huge banquet and networking event at San Francisco’s City Hall and Davies Symphony Hall and ends July 17 with a networking gathering at the California Academy of Sciences, which includes a performance by the Tessitura All Volunteer Rock Band — a musical outfit made up of individual Tessitura users.
“It’s a major punctuation mark for the Tessitura community and it encapsulates the giving spirit that takes place every day at TLCC,” Youngberg said.
Contact: Jack Rubin & Don Youngberg, (888) 643-5778