The New York-New York Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada was the site of the 2011 Advantage User Group conference and it was a hit!  Attendance was up this year, with 53 people (8 from overseas) representing 26 different clients.  In traditional AUG style, there were major travel woes on the east coast that caused delays, but most everyone made it safe and sound.

The two hot topics were AMB (access management and billing) and BI (business intelligence).  Most clients are either on AMB, implementing AMB, or planning to implement it.  There were ACS presentations by Phil Montgomery and  me (Mona Hidayet) regarding the new AMB features coming in 2011, as well as two break-out round table discussions on implementing AMB and reporting on AMB.  The popularity of the topics was evident, as the conversation flowed fast and strong.  In fact, the last set of roundtables kept going well after ending time, as it seemed that networking really took off.

Corey Mantel presented on BI, another very hot new topic. AUG attendees showed a lot of interest in the new tool ACS has introduced.  BI takes the world of reporting to a whole new level.  Currently implementing BI are Kalmbach and the AMA.  Kristie Fischer (KPC) and Sue Bukovsky (AMA) did an excellent job of presenting what each of their organizations are doing with BI, illustrating to the attendees some of the possibilities opened to them when using BI.

The keynote address was delivered by Ted Blizzard from the Massachusetts Medical Society, who delivered a spot-on, informative talk that got glowing reviews from the attendees. There were two sponsor companies, BillTrust and Silverchair, both of whom gave very informative presentations on what they offer and how they have partnered with our clients.

Dick Hile, Vice President Software Development at ACS, showed a sneak peek of the new interface design and turned his session into an open forum, passing out evaluation sheets to get the most important element of all: user input. "It was a lot of fun to show the latest prototype of our user interface to the AUG crowd," Dick said.  "And it is proving tremendously valuable to hear their feedback at this stage of development.  We have already implemented many of the suggestions we received." It seemed the attendees agreed, as they were as eager to give the feedback as we were to receive it, showing the true partnership between ACS and our clients.

The conference wasn't all business, though, it was Vegas after all!  The fun started in the very first session of the conference, when I passed out actual casino chips to those who answered either Vegas or Advantage trivia correctly (did you know that ~ 230 couples get married each day in Vegas?).  The group headed over to Planet Hollywood one evening for a variety show that got two of our own up on the stage (see photo) providing another great story for the AUG annals.  Levi Hyssong of ACS is on the far left, and seated next to him, in the clown mask, is Clarence Adams from Wolters Kluwer Health.

Plan to attend next year's AUG and who knows? you might be in the featured photo. 

 

The annual AUG conference is being held January 12-14, 2011 in Las Vegas, Nevada.  The focus of this year's meeting is Digital Publishing and Reporting, and the keynote speaker is Ted Blizzard, CIO of the Massachusetts Medical Society.

The conference will be held at:                                                

New York New York Hotel

3790 Las Vegas Blvd South

Las Vegas, NV 89109

www.nynyhotelcasino.com

Rooms are available at a special group rate of $60.00 per night through Thursday night plus a $12.95 per night resort fee and applicable taxes (base rate is $109.00 for Friday night). The cutoff date for these rates is December 20, 2010.

Make online reservations at:

https://reservations.mgmmirage.com/bookingengine.aspx?pid=010&host=offer&code=SCAUGA0111

This is a New York, New York reservations website specifically set up for our group. Choose which date you want to check in and how many nights you'll be staying and click the "search availability" button. It will show what is available for our group rate. If you're satisfied with everything just click "book this room" and it will ask for your credit card information and give you a confirmation code.  Please keep this code as you will need it upon check in.

 

Or by telephone:

Reservations will be telephoned directly to Hotel Group Reservations Department at 800-693-6763. In order to receive the group rate, callers must specify the group code SCAUGA0111.  Rates cannot be changed at check-in or check-out for guests who fail to identify their affiliation at the time the reservation is made.

Conference fees

The conference fee will be $250.00 per attendee and is due by December 15, 2010.  This includes breakfast and lunch for two days.  A special "early bird" rate of $225.00 ($235.00 via PayPal) will be honored if your registration is received on or before November 19, 2010.  No refunds will be given after December 15, 2010.

New this year!  If you'd like to pay your conference fee with PayPal, use this link:

https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=marketing_us/send_money

and email the applicable amount to aug@advantagecs.com.  Please identify payment as Personal/Payment owed. Contact Ev Acton (eacto@advantagecs.com) with any problems.

 We hope to see you there!