3 Takeaways From Activate 2021

The concept of connected, human experiences led many of the sessions and discussions at Activate 2021, held virtually on October 14th. Attendees were treated to incredible presentations and insights on how to create impactful, meaningful digital experiences in the moment – be it through the optimization of teams or technology.

The following are some of the most important themes learned at the event:

Personalized, human experiences matter

The most common thread between every presentation and the insights therein was the importance of creating personalized experiences that make people feel understood.

• CEO Will Hayes opened the event with the importance of refocusing on the human element behind connected experiences, the challenge of making search align with those experiences, and how Lucidworks is tackling this challenge by providing search tools that put the focus back on meaningful experiences in the moment.
• We were also thrilled to host the author of “A Future So Bright” and “Tech Humanist,” as well as CEO of KO Insights Kate O’Neill. Kate discussed the value of focusing on the human element of digital experiences and transformation – and the opportunities that emerging technologies have to facilitate solving human problems at scale more efficiently while offering better human connectedness. She explored this by digging into how meaning makes us human, meaning is what matters, and how innovation is about what is going to matter.

“Experience at scale is culture.”
– Kate O’Neill, author of “A Future So Bright, “Tech Humanist,” CEO of KO Insights

Streamlining operations can foster better connected experiences

This became a major theme across numerous discussions, and many of our speakers dove into the kinds of techniques and tools that support streamlining strategies.

• Product Manager of Customer Service Lesley Heizman drove this home by discussing how connected experiences happen when both customers and employees are able to access the information they are searching for. She outlined how Lucidworks can crawl all of a brand’s data (including customer care tickets) and make their knowledge base accessible on their website, within a portal, or via a chatbot to surface the right answers in real time.
• VP of Product Pratik Patel discussed the importance of optimizing workplace search, and how integrations within common SaaS applications can provide ready access to important information from wherever employees already perform their day to day workflows. Pratik also shared how Lucidworks connects information from various sources and makes it easy for employees to find the content most relevant to them.
• Director of Commerce Applications Tom Allen focused on how brands can help shoppers find the most relevant products and content to drive purchases, creating an effortless commerce experience. He dove into how brands need only upload their catalog and Lucidworks can curate search and browse experiences for each customer, pre-configured to do the work for the brand.

Your technology and people should work hand in hand

We were thrilled to host breakout sessions wherein partners and sponsors gave talks on various topics related to the implementation of technology to solve human experience challenges – and how both technology and the people implementing it can work together. Below were some of the most popular ones:

• Structuring a Search Team for Success: In this session we heard from experienced search practitioners Kate Stepankovskaya (CDW), Anne Vargo (CDW), Michelle Gregario (Aerospace), and Viren Patel (PWC) – moderated by our own Product Manager Katie Boschele. Each took the time to discuss how they’ve seen teams built around search at various organizations, and the different kinds of team structures that have produced the best results in tandem with the technology.
• Billionth-scale Similarity Search in Milliseconds with Milvus: Milvus is the world’s most advanced open source vector database and similarity search engine, used by over 1,000 major organizations globally – including Lucidworks! This session, presented by Zilliz Data Engineer Ryan Chan, showcased the power of Milvus as a cloud native scalable architecture that supports storage and search of billions of vectors. Viewers were given a highlights overview of the SDK availability of Milvus for Python, JAVA, GO, and restful.
• Connecting Shoppers with Relevant Products with Crate & Barrel: Director of Digital Product Management at Crate & Barrel Aaron Veit sat in discussion with Lucidworks General Manager of Digital Commerce Peter Curran to discuss the brand’s journey to implementing Lucidworks as their SLI search solution. Aaron shared how Lucidworks helped Crate & Barrel positively impacted customer retention, loyalty, and revenue growth.

These lessons were just a fraction of the insights covered at Activate 2021. Feeling like you missed out? We’ve got you covered. Stream all sessions on-demand here.

If you want to learn how to participate or are interested in staying in touch with all things Activate, contact the team here.