In these unprecedented times, organisations are being asked to make significant changes to the way they typically do business. Symplectic is not exempt from this, as our team have been working remotely during the lockdown. Every year we host user meetings in three regions around the world. In January, before the pandemic hit, we hosted an in person user meeting in Australia, however as the news began to unfold around the COVID-19 pandemic our team quickly realised that may be our final in person event for 2020.
On 16 June 2020 the Symplectic team hosted our first ever virtual user meeting. This meeting was to support our clients in the EMEA region (although we did have a few clients join from the APAC region as well!). The event was held over the course of two weeks, in two hour sessions held every other day.
During the first day, we kicked off the event with a welcome talk from our CEO, Jonathan Breeze. Jonathan discussed the latest updates that are happening within Symplectic and highlighted some of the exciting changes and expansions coming to our product Elements. After Jonathan spoke, our VP of Product Development Kate Byrne gave an update on our next major release Version 6 which is set to come out later this year. We finished up the first day with a talk from Liam Cleere of University College Dublin talking about the positive impact Elements has had at his institution.
“The user meeting provides an excellent opportunity to hear feedback on recently released and upcoming functionality. The questions, ideas and discussions that come about help us build better software!”
Sam Gibbons Frendo, Product Manager
On the second and third day of the conference we drilled down to more detailed sessions and gave highlights on some of our more recent product updates. For example, Sam Gibbons Frendo, Product Manager, walked clients through the latest ORCID write integration and Nick Anderson, Senior Client Success Manager, gave a brief demo of the exciting changes we have made to Discovery Module over the last year. Finally, John Fearns, Chief Technical Officer and Co-founder, ran a workshop on building dashboards (if you are an existing client you can access this tutorial on the support site here). Our client speakers, Catherine Sharp and Melissa Thorneycroft, further highlighted the impact Elements has had on their institutions. At University College London, Catherine Sharp shared their impressive adoption of the ORCID write integration – two weeks post launch 515 researchers were already using the tool!
“It’s always super valuable to connect directly with clients – and doing so remotely proved no different. Hearing their questions and comments, and from those that presented on their experiences, helps to keep our focus on useful functionality prioritised by our clients. And post-conference drinks was great – even virtually!”
Manya Buchan, Product Manager
On the final day, we focused on the REF. Manya Buchan, Product Manager, ran an interactive session on REF. The achieved intent of the session was to gather useful insights and recommendations from a group of peers. After the final session we hosted a virtual drinks reception to thank our clients for attending. Overall, our first virtual meeting went well and we are very much looking forward to our next virtual user meeting in North America.