The power of the Laserfiche Community was palpable at the “Empower 2010” Laserfiche Institute Conference last week as 1,200 Laserfiche users, administrators, IT professionals, developers, resellers, engineers and staff came together for three days of networking and knowledge sharing. As Laserfiche Founder and President Nien-Ling Wacker pointed out in her Monday keynote address “Agile ECM: The Clear Winner in a New Decade,” 2009 may have been a tough year economically, but it’s at times like these that the Laserfiche Community really shines.

User attendance, Nien-Ling noted, was up 54% from last year. She also pointed out that the Center for Digital Government and Digital Communities magazine recently published its list of the nation’s most advanced digital cities – and 20 of them, including 3 out of 4 category leaders, are using Laserfiche. 2009 Run Smarter Award Winner City of Norfolk, VA, for instance, was among them. Laserfiche Luminary Rosalind Collins, Deputy Commissioner of the Revenue and Laserfiche Administrator for Charlottesville, VA, another winner, was moved. “When Nien-Ling pointed out over half of those digital cities winners are Laserfiche users, it’s like, ‘Wow, we’re all really part of something that’s making an impact.’”

Users focused on maximizing the value of their existing systems as well as expanding the value of their current systems – as well as their value to their organizations. About 200 Laserfiche professionals and administrators took advantage of free Laserfiche Administrator 1 testing offered by the new Certified Professionals Program as well.

The community spirit could be felt everywhere, from the shared expertise in class, labs and case study presentations to the casual conversations at lunch. “After the class about optimizing our system I feel like I can go back and talk to some of our departments,” said Maureen Duncan, Records Manager for 2008 Run Smarter Winner Thurston County, WA. “I can really see where even with Workflow there are some things we’re taking three steps to do we could be doing in one. I’d also like to see how using RME as a records manager I can set it up so each department can help manage their own records.”

Steve R. Harding, Applications Systems Analyst for the City of Eugene, OR, Information Services Division, had the same pragmatic attitude to the conference. He and his nine colleagues from four departments were hungry for the technical know-how and hands-on demonstrations of just what upgrading from their departmental version 7 systems to a single enterprise Rio system would entail in the coming months. They were not disappointed. “I really liked the technical labs where we talked about the SDK,” Harding says.

“And if I couldn’t find a course to answer exactly what questions I have, I’ve been able to make contact with the people that I can call once I get back home. I could spend three days just talking to the developers and engineers,” Harding joked, noting that with the help of he and the city’s Laserfiche reseller, VP Consulting, his department will be upgrading all of Eugene’s custom applications. “We have a vision of what the system will be able to do – we can see where users will be able to search across all the repositories. We’re not there yet, but we’re getting there.”

“Empower 2010” was also an opportunity to see the real-life benefits of using Agile ECM when it is not only a centralized, shared repository, but also a component of integrative middleware between content and other business applications. Collin County, TX, CIO Caren Skipworth, for instance, shared her success and business strategy of deploying Laserfiche enterprise-wide in her “The Three Laws of Agile ECM” keynote Q&A with Laserfiche’s Kimberly Samuelson. “Technology is the catalyst for change, and Laserfiche is a big part of that,” Skipworth said.

Likewise, Chief Jeffrey Beahen of the Elk River, MN, Police Department outlined his 2009 Run Smarter Award-winning Laserfiche integration with the department’s police records management system (RMS). He detailed the cost and safety benefits of being able to access Laserfiche through Elk River’s RMS, from reducing storage needs to giving responding officers the ability to know, say, if a suspect has applied for a gun permit and could be armed. Beahen recounted how Laserfiche helped save a stolen Christmas for one Elk River neighborhood just weeks ago. A would-be-Grinch was breaking into homes and stealing presents, but when police were able to match a suspicious person’s boot with photographs of bootprints taken outside various break-ins, they were able to make the arrest – and return the stolen presents.

“I don’t know how you solve crimes out here in California without snow,” Beahen joked. The spirit of community was spontaneous: an IT administrator from Carmel, IN, expressed interest in a law enforcement user group; several other attendees concurred, and within minutes all were huddled up with Laserfiche staff learning how to post in the User Group forum on the Laserfiche Support Site.

But arguably the most valuable resource at the conference was the expanded Office Hours room, where Laserfiche developers and engineers provided one-on-one consultations on any and every Laserfiche product. No matter how general or specific the topic or concern, developers and engineers solved problems, shared best practices and made life easier, one grateful user at a time.

First-time attendees planning their first installations in the coming year got encouragement and ideas, while experienced users asking just what Workflow and Quick Fields could do for their organizations not only received assessments and ad hoc demos, but sometimes ideas for how to find the resources to implement them. And advanced IT administrators, many asking about Web-based enterprise deployment, were able to sit down with product developers and engineers to have their very specific questions answered. As Tato Munoz, IT Director for D.L. Evans Bank put it, “I walked in with some procedural issues that my organization faced regarding our extensive use of Quick Fields and implementing Snapshot. From the IT perspective, it was great to be able to interface with some of the developers that worked on the applications and receive not only answers, but options.”

“The whole conference was a very gratifying experience with many pluses, but the Office Hours alone would have been worth the price of attending,” he adds.

Tags: Certified Professional Program, Empower 2010, Laserfiche Institute Conference

Posted on Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 at 11:19 am under UserNews. You can comment on this post.