3 Takeaways from the First Pendomonium

It’s been almost 2 weeks since Pendomonium. Now that our team is finally recharged, we’ve had a chance to reflect on an amazing three days. Given it was our first conference, we had a simple goal: get 50 people to collaborate and share stories about how they are thinking about their product’s experience. We took a risk by hosting the event in our hometown, Raleigh, knowing that it would potentially limit the attendance.

Now, looking back, the conference far exceeded our goals and expectations. We had over 160 attendees from all across the US (and one from overseas). The feedback has been very positive, and the event received a 59 NPS.

Here are a few takeaways we had from the event:

1. Raleigh was a hit! I suppose this shouldn’t have been a shock, but we didn’t expect to have so much positive feedback about our hometown. From biscuits to NC BBQ, we exposed everyone to a sampling of local flavors and to offset this, we hosted a morning run that was well attended. Moreover, the real lesson is that people don’t attend conferences for a location — they attend conferences to learn and grow.
2. We have an awesome giving community. Most of the content at our conference came from participants. We had 50 speakers from a wide variety of companies. The content was authentic and based on real-world experience. That said, one of our takeaways was that the session format didn’t allow all speakers enough time for the depth of their content — a learning we’ll improve upon next year.
3. It’s early days. Many of the participants were just getting started on their journey to improve their product’s experience. Only 13% of the attendees had “experience” in their job titles which is right over 20 people — something I suspect we’ll see an increase in over time. I had some deep conversations on how consumer techniques and processes can have an impact on enterprise products. We’re only scratching the surface with these techniques, and I’m excited to see what the future holds.

What’s Next?

Given the early success, we’re going to continue Pendomonium. First, we’ve opened up our Slack community that was seeded with conference participants to collaborate and share ideas. Usage is going well, and we will look to continue encouraging this.

We will be bringing Pendomonium on the road. The Pendo team is working on a multi-city tour where we package up pieces of the conference in different cities. Stay tuned for more details on our first roadshow.

Thanks to all who made the first Pendomonium a success.  I, also, want to personally thank all the Pendozers that worked and executed at a high level — it was a huge team effort.