It has not even been one month since Amlink Technologies merged into Certain Software, but it already feels we have been together for along time - there are so many similarities in management vision and philosophy. During the first week of April, the executive team from Amlink met with the senior management team from Certain to create the foundation for the executive leadership team for the merged Certain.  Trevor Gardiner, the CEO from Amlink is taking on a leadership role with the new Certain as COO and will continue to lead the events™ product team.  One clear directive for the merger, as stated by Jim Pappas, Certain’s CEO is that the merged company acts as one global organization, with two great product lines and two great product teams, events™ and Certain Registration™.  That clearly came out after our first week together.
 
The Executive Merger Transition Committee (EMTC) will oversee the nuts and bolts of the merger.  Led by Dr. Rick Borry with Trevor Gardiner, Ken Voss, EVP of sales and marketing and Chris Buckley the team will oversee the strategy for organizational infrastructure and product strategy.  Amlink brings deep functionality with events™, including membership management and continuing education (CE) and is ready to release a new version of events™ in May.  Certain Registration™ will also release a new version in May which includes session level waitlist, barcode on confirmations and will be debuting on-demand training modules.  So there is a lot of exciting and ongoing developments along both product lines.  As we move forward, we will look at how we bring the best of both product lines to our customers.  But for now, it means two great solutions for meeting and events professionals with additional functionality, more choices for deployment and pricing options.

We are all excited about the opportunity to grow with the industry, to be the global provider of technology for the meetings and events industry.  With 5 offices around the world, and with a new Sydney office scheduled to open in May, we now have over 150 employees and process over 6 million registrations in 2008.  All to better serve our customers with the best service and support in the industry.  It has been a whirlwind, and will continue to be very exciting times for the New Certain. As always, we will still keep our focus on our first priority….our customers. 

Last week we moved to a new office in the heart of San Francisco's South Financial District at 75 Hawthorne St.  It is great having all of the different departments together since we moved from two offices into one spacious office - now, IT, development, product management, and sales and marketing are all together. We can share the latest and greatest about online registration forms and event builds around the water cooler!    

I am excited to launch this corporate blog for Certain Registration.  It is a first for us...look for blogs from product management, IT, training, and, of course, our chief software guru, Dr. Rick Borry, to follow.  Our intent is to share with you some thoughts and tidbits we come across in the world of online registration for the meetings and events industry, and for conferences and training programs.  Some things will come from best practices from our customers, some from events and tradeshows, or general things we pick up along our journey.  As far as events go - some members of the Certain Registration team just attended the ASAE Tech show in Washington DC this week, and another team is off to MPI-PEC in Houston next week.  Rick Borry is going to host a table on online registration there at the technology breakout, next to the APEX folks. The government team is at the NATCAP chapter in Washington DC so it is proving to be a busy start to February.  All for now, Kimberly