The 2015 Contact Center Expo and Conference took place in Orlando this week. More than 1,500 contact center professionals from around the world attended for educational growth, networking, and to share best practices.

Here’s a re-cap of some of the conference highlights along with links to additional resources.

Conference Overview

You may want to start by familiarizing yourself with the conference if you didn’t attend.

• Twitter Backchannel (You don’t need a Twitter account to view this)
• Conference Overview
• Session Descriptions

Conference Highlights

Here are just a few highlights from the conference:

2015 Contact Center Awards

ICMI threw an incredible Cinco de Mayo themed party to celebrate the 2015 Contact Center Award winners and finalists.

These awards recognize best practices from individuals and organizations. Award winners included UPMC Health Plan for best large contact center and VF Imagewear Customer Support for best small to medium contact center.

You can see a list of all the winners and finalists here.

#ICMIchat Live

ICMI hosts a weekly Tweet chat on Tuesdays at 10am Pacific (1pm Eastern). 

These lively chats touch on a wide range of topics from customer service to training to workforce optimization. There’s a new topic each week and anyone can join in by following the #icmichat hashtag on Twitter.

On Wednesday, I joined a few #ICMIchat regulars for a panel discussion in the Expo hall. We touched on a few topics including technology, agent experience, and customer effort.

The panel included:

• Nate Brown, Client Services Manager at Underwriter’s Laboratories
• Sean Hawkins, Manager of Technical Support at iContact
• Neal Topf, President of Callzilla
• Jeff Toister, President of Toister Performance Solutions
• Leslie O’Flahavan, Principle at E-WRITE

It was fun to have a conversation in front of a live audience. A few were even live Tweeting:

Erik Wahl’s Keynote

Conferences like this always bring informative, inspirational, and entertaining keynotes.

Graffiti artist Erik Wahl’s keynote stood out on this front. He challenged participants to be a force for positive disruption.

One of the most amazing parts of Wahl’s presentation was his ability to quickly create incredible paintings live on stage.

Here’s his first painting:

Wahl created a moment of uneasy tension when he picked an audience member at random to play a special game of “Fear Factor.”

She was given a sealed envelope and was told the game involved coming up on stage, opening the envelope, and reading her instructions out loud. She was then to do whatever the instructions said.

That’s a pretty scary moment in front of a huge crowd, but Wahl turned the tables a bit. He told the audience member that she could select anyone she wanted to take her place.

Ultimately, she decided to go for it. In a fun twist, the instructions in the envelope informed her that a painting of U2's Bono that Wahl had just created on stage was her’s to keep!

On a personal level, I gained a lot of new ideas, contacts, and information. This is a great conference and I'm already looking forward to next year.