The year was 2019, and the BeyondTrust team was still unwinding from the high of our first annual user conference, Go Beyond, which brought together more than 150 customers in the Arizona desert. With the dust barely settled, we were already dreaming up how to make the next iteration even bigger and better.
Shortly, after signing the hotel contract for Go Beyond 2.0, things started going “all 2020” on us. By July, it was apparent that COVID-19 was going to be with us all for awhile, and that social distancing and maintaining the health of everyone involved necessitated canceling the in-person event for this year. By then, we were well-aware of the “Zoom fatigue” that our customers were likely facing.
We asked ourselves, how can we make virtual Go Beyond as valuable as possible without being together in person? The only way we could have gotten to the heart of answering that question was to ask our customers who were with us in Arizona for Go Beyond last year.
These customers joined us on a design session to address some important questions: what made 2019 so valuable to them? How can we bring some of the value and learning that they experienced last year and make it even better this year? How can we elevate Go Beyond and make it not “just another webinar?”
The takeaways from this session helped validate a lot of what we already knew: our customers wanted more technical sessions, they wanted to hear from other customers, they wanted time to interact with each other about their products—and they still wanted to experience that fun element too.
We quickly pulled together, polling our wider customer-base on topics that they wanted to see at the event, and our marketing and product teams started collaborating on the content. We also brainstormed a formula of how to facilitate a truly interactive experience for our customers without the awkwardness that often comes with video calls.
Finally, we reached out to some of our best and brightest customers to get them involved and spotlight their stories as much as possible through interviews and panels.
And, in about 8 short weeks, we packaged it all together to present Go Beyond 2020: a customer conference designed by customers.
With far too many sessions to list in this blog, here are some key sessions you can watch now:
Tuesday, October 20
Matt Dircks, Going Beyond for our Customers
Dan DeRosa, Product Innovation
Customer Panel: Beyond the Password
Customer Success Interview: Chick-fil-A
Wednesday, October 21
Dave Giles- Customer Success (with stories from NXP Semiconductors and Royal Bank of Canada)
Customer Panel: The Next Normal for Cybersecurity Priorities
Thursday, October 22
Customer Panel: The Future of PAM
Forrester Research: Privileged Identity Management in the Time of COVID
Customers were also able to dive into dozens of product-specific technical sessions in short, easy-to-digest segments—most of which were CPE-eligible.
Unlike our in-person event from last year, we did not offer BeyondTrust University technical training as part of the program, but we are offering customers who attended $200 off our virtual courses if they sign up before the end of the year.
Thank you to the 1,000+ customers across 59 countries who participated in Go Beyond this year! We can’t wait to show you what’s up our sleeve for 2021.
Kim Richard, Director of Customer Marketing
As Director of Customer Marketing at BeyondTrust, Kim is responsible for the strategy and execution of marketing campaigns to BeyondTrust’s army of more than 20,000 customers. Kim joined BeyondTrust (formerly Bomgar) in 2011, and has enjoyed working on a wide range of marketing programs and events during her tenure. She resides in Florida and enjoys traveling and brushing up on her culinary skills when she isn’t chasing after her two boys.