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CEdMA Spring Conference, May 16-17, 2023

Innovating  on Your Customer Education Strategy

Conference Details

Join us in person for CEdMA Spring Conference – a gathering of Customer Education practitioners, innovators and thought leaders. Be inspired by our breakout session speakers, keynotes and real-life customer education transformation stories. Gain new ideas, enhance your industry knowledge and network with the CEdMA community. It’s all happening on May 16 – 17 at the Boston Marriott Newton. We hope to see you there!

Conference Themes

This year’s conference theme is "Innovating on Your Customer Education Strategy.” We know our members are doing great things and we want to showcase their products, programs, successes and lessons learned. We're planning two tracks at the conference and here are topics we're working on:

Strategy

  • Aligning programs to organizational goals and/or proving program value
  • Partnering with leadership
  • Developing high performing teams
  • Measuring team output and business impacts
  • Using new technology, like digital adoption platforms, to create value and impact
  • Pricing structures in Customer Education

Building Learning Experiences

  • Adopting new educational approaches and creating new learning experiences
  • Designing and producing with efficiency
  • Using AI for content development
  • Improving the VILT experience
  • Getting and incorporating learner feedback
  • Design Thinking successes

We know that sharing our experiences, successes and lessons learned with our peers helps strengthen our community as a whole. 

Our Agenda

We're working with Sponsors and Speakers to bring you an engaging and exciting event. Based on feedback from previous events, our Agenda includes:

  • Ample networking breaks to meet your peers
  • 15 minute transition times between many sessions to refocus or check your emails
  • Show & Tell sessions where our peers show us their solutions and tell/answer our questions

Here is the full conference brochure with all sessions, speakers and activities

Monday, May 15th

Time

Event
4:00pm - 6:00pm 
Registration
4:00pm - 6:00pm 
Welcome Reception

Tuesday, May 16th

Time

Strategy

Learning Experience Design
7:00am - 8:30am 
Breakfast with Sponsors
8:30am - 9:00am
Welcome and Introductions
9:00am - 10:00am
Keynote: Lessons in the Journey to a Mass-Scale Free Learning Site

Raghu Viswanathan - VP of Education, Academia, and Documentation, MongoDB
10:00am - 10:30am
Networking Break
10:30am – 11:15am
Five Ways a Certification Program Can Grow Your Technology Business

Buzz Walker - Chief Revenue Officer, Kryterion
Beyond the Education Tech Stack: How Braze Uses Structured Content to Work Smarter, Not Harder   

Matthew Chamberlain - Manager, Education Technology, Braze   
11:30am - 12:15pm
Super-Charging Customer Education: How a Headless LMS Powers Customization and Growth

Jessie Gold, VP of Product, Thought Industries
5 to 50! Effective ways of building a white-glove customer education program (and scaling it up!)  

Sylvia Pereira  Senior Learning Experience Designer - Customer Education, Alteryx
12:30pm - 1:30pm
Lunch with Table Topics
1:30pm - 2:15pm
Output from the 2023 update of the CEdMA Member Techstack SurveyTech

Mike Dowsey - Librarian, CEdMA
The Influence of Learner Feedback/Metrics on Future Course Design 

David Sacco - Learning Experience Manager, Red Hat
2:15pm - 3:15pm
  Networking Break
3:15pm - 4:00pm
Customer Education & Marketing 

Shannon DeLange - Customer Education Manager, Vanta  
Building a User Research Practice in Customer Education

Silvie Liao - Manager, Learning Technology, Contentful   
4:15pm - 5:00pm
Show & Tell: Your Tech Stack
Show & Tell: Your Academy, Courses, or Badging
5:15pm - 5:30pm
 Day 1 Wrap Up
6:00pm - 7:30pm
Dinner 

Wednesday, May 17th

Time

Strategy

Learning Experience Design
7:00am - 8:30am 
Breakfast with Sponsors
8:30am - 8:45am
Welcome to Day 2
8:45am - 9:30am
5 Key Concepts for AI in Learning

Kristine Kukich - Director, Customer Marketing, Thought Industries
9:45am - 10:30am
From Cost Center to Business Impact: Unleashing the Value of Customer Education - A Case Study

Daria Lenina - Senior Manager, Customer Education, GeoComply
Having a great LMS as a strategic enabler to customer education: The Siemens EDA Experience

Bonnie Willoughby - Director, Learning Services and Deb Taylor, Operations Manager, Siemens EDA
10:30am - 11:00am
Networking Break
11:15am - 12:00pm
Panel Discussion: Generative AI in Use
12:00pm - 1:00pm
Lunch with Table Topics
1:00pm - 1:45pm
Show & Tell: Your Metrics
Show & Tell: Your Design Tools
2:00pm - 2:45pm
Keynote: The Future of Customer Education and CEdMA
2:45pm - 3:00pm
Farewell

Boston Marriott Newton

2345 Commonwealth Avenue, Newton, Massachusetts, USA, 02466

Conference attendees enjoy a special rate of $209/night by booking here. Valid until April 24, 2023. 

We strongly recommend that you use our link to book your stay as it also includes discounted parking and rooms in our pre-selected room block.

Thanks to our official sponsors:

If you are interested in being a conference sponsor, please reach out to sponsors@cedma.org

Gold Sponsors

   

Silver Sponsors

         

Bronze Sponsors

      Surpass Assessment     

In Spirit

Registration Information

Conference fees:

  • Members: $995 
  • Non-Members: $1195  

Register Here Today!

You'll get:

  • Inspiring keynotes
  • Breakout sessions, panel discussions & workshops
  • Multiple networking opportunities
  • Exhibitor hall

Why Attend?

Why Attend the CEdMA Conference?

by Kristine Kukich, CEdMA Board

Networking

By far, the most common reason to attend the CEdMA Conference is to meet others who do what we do. Immersing ourselves in customer education with others that build, market, develop, instruct, strategize within their programs allows us to share in ways that regular daily interactions don’t. We can talk about specific programs, celebrate successes, commiserate on failures, and learn from each other.

CEdMA has a strong board of trustees that bring significant knowledge to the conference, along with the speakers over the two days. This will give an opportunity to meet and talk with some of the most noted professionals in customer education, as well as meet practitioners new to the space and speak from your level of expertise.

Last year I was so impressed with the people I met. Some were new to the practice, some were experts. Some were colleagues I’ve known for many years, others are colleagues I will now know for many years.

Expand, Learn, Improve

The sessions this year are divided by strategy and practice, which means you get an opportunity to level up based on where you want to go with your practice of customer education. Expand your knowledge by interacting with the speakers, having lunch with someone new and discovering they just rolled out the same type of program you’re agonizing over right now, and joining a discussion group on your latest success.

Take notes, have conversations, learn how to improve your program and expand your influence.

Last year I was immensely impressed with the presentation by Shellie Grieve, and thrilled to get a chance to talk with Cynthia Stegall, and catch up with Debbie Smith and Dirk Braun.

Learn about latest trends

Take an opportunity to note what’s hot right now (AI anyone?). What tools are people using? What does their tech stack look like? How are they leveraging more with less? These are the questions I always ask, and these are the types of questions the speakers are answering. 

Last year I was excited to see the progress AI is making in the various ways we use machine learning in customer education. I’m super excited to see what this year brings.

Meet the stars

The conference is small enough that you can really have great discussions with the speakers and ask meaningful questions that pertain to your practice. Lunches, dinners, networking, will all give opportunities to meet with the names that you want to meet. 

When I first started attending CEdMA conferences, I was lucky enough to meet Adam Avramescu, Daniel Quick, Debbie Smith, Sharon Castillo, Niyati Shah, Lauren Thibodeau, Donna Weber, and more. Some of them became people I worked with, or clients, but mostly, they’re consistent resources for anything I do moving forward.

Transfer the knowledge

And all of these things can turn into knowledge and activities you take back to your team to build better, stronger programs. Connections you make here, whether through people, or content, will help you plan, enhance and execute when you return to your team.

After my first conference, I had to present what I had learned. Now, I am fortunate to be able to call on the people and resources to help research and build new things. 

And that’s why I attend the CEdMA conference whenever I can.

SEE YOU AT THE CONFERENCE!