Here’s your official invite to the 2023 edition of FITC Toronto.

Whether you work in design, or digital development, finding inspiration and learning from industry leaders benefits your professional development journey.

FITC Toronto is your opportunity to gain professional insights and practical solutions to sharpen your skills. FITC is a two-day in-person and online event showcasing the best the world has to offer in design, digital development, media and innovation in creative technologies.

Talks we’re excited about

• Creating Experiences In The Age Of Futurisity with Stephen Martell
• Standing Out in a Saturated Medium with Erin Sarofsky
• Help for Humans with Jared Ficklin

Full event agenda

FITC Diversity Initiative

FITC is offering complimentary tickets for people from underrepresented groups in tech to attend the event, either in-person or online. The program is aimed at those who are unable to secure a ticket through their company or cannot afford a ticket themselves.

Apply for a free seat

Save $100 on FITC Toronto tickets!

Don’t have a ticket yet? No worries, we’ve got you covered. Save $100 off in-person tickets with code “fitcnews” and 25% off your online ticket with code “twittervip”.

Attend online or in person.

The post FITC Toronto, April 17-18, 2023 appeared first on Say Yeah!.

On November 23, Say Yeah partnered with Boost Agents to continue the Disrupting with Digital event series, this time focusing on the benefits cross-organization collaboration has on driving customer experience and service excellence, and highlighting effective omnichannel strategies. Our accomplished speakers shared their expertise on leading transformation initiatives across a variety of organizations throughout their careers.

Keynote speaker, Gina Baillie, Director of Customer Journey Management at World Vision, shared a case study on the organization, highlighting steps it took to break down organizational silos that were causing internal friction and customer engagement issues. Gina highlighted the benefit of the whole team sharing the same goals and maintaining a mutual cultural mindset centered around the customer.

“We need to hire people who can say ‘we’, not, ‘I think it should be this way.’ We need people who can impact and influence not through title. We need people who can build relationships and build trust in relationships.”

~ Gina Baillie, World Vision

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Finding the right footing between stakeholders from across World Vision was accomplished by a series of cross-organization collaboration exercises. The most impactful effort was bringing a cross-functional group of internal division leaders together to map out the digital ecosystem at World Vision and evaluate together how this served and impacted customers. The resulting digital ecosystem journey map quickly highlighted ways the cross-functional groups could better work together to improve customer engagement and more effectively prioritize work efforts.

“Customers have functional and emotional needs; the customer journey addresses that,” said Baillie. The result for World Vision has been cross-organization alignment to prioritize digital channel work that everyone agrees will have a direct impact on customers.

In an age of disruption that demands organizational transformation, it’s important to grow your knowledge and insights by engaging with a variety of industries and expertise. Moderated by the CEO of Say Yeah, Lee Dale, was a diverse panel who shared their wealth of omnichannel experience, and the relating considerations that drive omnichannel success.

Panelists included Cheri Mara from Indigo, Amar Kulkarni from Scholastic, and Leigh Himel from Gravity Partners.

A holistic view

The panelists agreed that the goal of omnichannel is not to check channel boxes, but to put your focus on the holistic experience and understand how to support customers across their entire journey.

Although customers are the focal point when looking at a holistic channel strategy and the variety of interactions and paths a customer may take across a series of channels, organizations would be be naive to focus on the customer alone.

“I think that what we’re starting to see is multiple lenses, and to me it’s business, brand, and customer, and at different points in time those lenses have to move in or out,” said Leigh Himel from Gravity Partners.

Channel silos can be particularly confounding to customers, but they can also present organizational roadblocks. Cheri Mara described her time at Wal-Mart, bridging online and offline purchasing teams to uncover new economies of scale, ordering process efficiencies, and supplier contract negotiations.

Affinity over access

Discussion on the panel led to the idea that coming up with the right solution for your customer should not solely depend on offering a product or service. Organizations need to emphasize why their solutions are the best options as they market.

In a recent article, Seth Godin said: “The buying race is over. Amazon won. The shopping race, though, the struggle to create experiences that are worth paying for, that’s just beginning.”

The panel echoed this sentiment, noting that a holistic omnichannel experience driven by purpose is a key way to differentiate in a buyer’s market.

With a nod to World Vision’s goal of eradicating child poverty, Cheri offered, “It’s not about adopting a child (the product), it’s about eradicating poverty, and when you dial it back to that bigger why and really understand the customer, I think that’s where you can create something very unique and very special.”

“People don’t care about what you’re doing or how you do it—it’s about why you’re doing it.”

~ Cheri Mara

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Framing product and experience

The panel explored how personas and data can help frame content, priorities, purchasing, and product decisions, but panelists cautioned it’s important to not be too insular or numbers-driven in your planning.

Execution matters

While a discussion on data excellence, AI, and personalization pointed to future opportunities to provide even more effective service and products, the panel’s collective experience pointed to a significant challenge in getting there: too often a lack of data maturity and customer intelligence are roadblocks. And acting on old models or shoehorning new technologies into legacy systems can cause more harm than good.

The suggested approach here was to focus on today and what can be accomplished going forward with best practices, rather than looking back.

What you can learn today from customer and staff engagement can be far richer than what historical data tells us.

Get out there, talk to people in your office, at other locations, connect with customers in-store or on the streets. And connect with your peers and professionals from other industries to uncover new insights and processes you can apply to your work.

There’s no better way to get started than joining your peers in the Disrupting with Digital LinkedIn group to continue the discussion on cross-organization collaboration and omnichannel, and to join us at the next Disrupting with Digital event.

Join LinkedIn group  View series details

The post Disrupting with Digital event recap: uncovering the transformational impact of cross-organization collaboration and omnichannel, from online to in-person appeared first on Say Yeah!.

This Friday December 8 is HoHoTO 2017, returning for its 10th year!

HoHoTO is an open invitation for the digital community and related industries to experience a night of networking, dancing, and camaraderie in support of a series of amazing initiatives that are helping to shape a more inclusive professional community.

Since 2008, HoHoTO’s annual party has raised over $400,000 for local charities such as the Daily Bread Food Bank and YWCA Toronto’s Girls’ Centre.

Say Yeah is excited to support Together in sponsoring HoHoTO once again, raising funds to help fund YWCA Toronto’s Girls’ Centre.

Join us as at The Mod Club from 7:30pm to 1:30am to mix, mingle, and dance the night away with your peers from across the digital community.

Along with the Girls’ Centre, your ticket helps support year-round events, including the Girls’ Tech Tour, Disrupting with Digital, and more.

The Girls’ Centre itself is a safe space for girls aged 9-18, of all ethnicities and belief systems. There the girls can access food, activities, and learning programs 7 days a week. They also have the chance to access opportunities in business and technology, which will be further encouraged by your support at HoHoTO, where the girls will get the chance to connect with attendees.

Together’s mission is to shape a more inclusive digital community by encouraging opportunity and diversity to innovation-driven individuals in the digital, entrepreneurial and related STEM fields.

Say Yeah is playing our part at the professional level supporting a diverse team and co-hosting the inclusive professional event series, Disrupting with Digital!

The post Join us at HoHoTO on December 8 to party in support of digital community inclusivity programs running across Toronto appeared first on Say Yeah!.