Alert’s 34th User Conference Features Brainstorming, Classes
Alert Management Systems recently hosted its 34th annual User Conference in Colorado Springs, Colo. Alert’s client base of successful rental operators met to learn about new features in Alert’s upcoming revision release, meet with vendors, network with peers, take classes, and vote for desired enhancements for future development.
Stan Tamme of Signature Party Rental in Santa Ana, CA said of the event, “This is my first conference and it shows that Alert wants to make a product that is client-driven. Alert listens to the ideas that are wanted, needed and/or not needed, and then makes the amendments through a vote or what makes sense.” This year’s three-day conference featured 35 class sessions, which included classroom lessons from Alert staff, presentations led by Alert partner vendors, roundtables of Alert users brainstorming enhancements to their rental software, and one-on-one meetings between Alert users and staff. The Alert User Advisory Board, an independent committee made exclusively of Alert users, helped drive the agenda of the conference.
“We work diligently year-round to ensure that this event proves to our clients that we are truly in partnership and work in a collaborative way with them,” noted co-president/chief operating officer of Alert Management Systems, Mary Crosslin. “Our entire staff attends this event each year. It’s vitally important to us that both our clients and employees know that we’re in this together and that we’re one small business supporting hundreds of other small businesses.”
Next year’s Alert User Conference will be held in downtown Colorado Springs, Colo., at the Antlers Hotel from November 1-3, 2020.
Alert pioneered the industry’s first User Conference in 1985, the company said, when Alert users gathered with Alert staff to trade ideas, work together to decide what features to introduce in the annual enhancement, and network. The event was so successful that the tradition continues today.
About the Author
Michael Roth
Editor
Michael Roth has covered the equipment rental industry full time for RER since 1989 and has served as the magazine’s editor in chief since 1994. He has nearly 30 years experience as a professional journalist. Roth has visited hundreds of rental centers and industry manufacturers, written hundreds of feature stories for RER and thousands of news stories for the magazine and its electronic newsletter RER Reports. Roth has interviewed leading executives for most of the industry’s largest rental companies and manufacturers as well as hundreds of smaller independent companies. He has visited with and reported on rental companies and manufacturers in Europe, Central America and Asia as well as Mexico, Canada and the United States. Roth was co-founder of RER Reports, the industry’s first weekly newsletter, which began as a fax newsletter in 1996, and later became an online newsletter. Roth has spoken at conventions sponsored by the American Rental Association, Associated Equipment Distributors, California Rental Association and other industry events and has spoken before industry groups in several countries. He lives and works in Los Angeles when he’s not traveling to cover industry events.