Ami on the Run: Day 1 Keynote [Live Blog]

9:28 a.m.: Diversity is also important to Blackbaud. One fact about Blackbaud, that is unheard of in the software industry, our workforce is 50% male, 50% female. Avg in software is 80/20. We also recently hosted a Women's Leadership Summit and the Women in Tech Conference.

9:29 a.m.: "I am excited about the way that we've rebuilt and restructured our way of doing business" to put our clients at the center. You'll be hearing more about this during our time together today and throughout the week.

9:30 a.m.: "Our goal is to bring unprecedented value." Goals: Improve time to value, decrease operating costs, and increase mission impact. Forrester Research (a 3rd party research firm) looked into Habitat for Humanity in Miami Dade. Using RENXT they accomplished a 181% return on investment, with a 4 month payback. "This is the kind of bar we set for ourselves."

9:32 a.m.: Who has joined Blackbaud Communities? 40,000 peers who use communities and continues to grow. They are in there every day sharing best practices.  We've added chat features for support. New knowledge base with over 50,000 topics chosen by you (the customers). Industry's most robust set of Education resources in Blackbaud University. Customer success oragnization focused on you. 

9:33 a.m.: Time to watch a video about Customer Success. A client testifies that their CSM has helped them with best practices and how best to utilize Luminate Online. The CSM is not just there to give information, but help learn how to think outside of the box.

9:35: Blackbaud SKY. "The only cloud built for social good." Seamlessly coordinate all of the best we do at Blackbaud as your "single accountable partner."  Its revolutionary shift and has increased the pace of innovation. Sky UX: Provides a common user experience across our solutions. Over 10,000 customers now use Sky UX across 6 different platforms. Sky Reporting has now rolled out to all RENXT and Luminate Online customers. Very modern reporting system, and is now moving across our whole portfolio. Sky APIs to help customers integrate better and faster with available tools, like Salseforce and (coming soon) Microsoft Office, OneNote, Dynamics. "It's an open world at Blackbaud....we're increasing the pace of innovation."

9:39 a.m.: Steve MacLaughlin (Vice President, Data & Analytics) has taken the stage to speak about Artificial Intelligence and Big Data. he sites the major advances in AI and big data to gain insights from large amounts of social data. Did you know the numbe one purchase at Walmarts when a storm is approaching is Strawberry Poptarts? Facebook is now capable of recognizing faces in photos accurate up to 97.35%. How can Blackbaud bring these powerful technologies to help our customers? "The social good sciences." AI, Big Data, Analytics, Expertise.

9:42 a.m.: Recently, 134 million charitable donations tracked and analyzed to gather insights for our customers. Using AI we discovered that there's likely 8 billion dollars extra fundraising opportunity available. 

9:43 a.m.: RENXT now offers 48 million smart action tags to identify things like: lapsing donors, people who need attention, etc. without you having to do anything special to make it happen. LCRM/eTapestry: 60 mil constituent records screened. Attentive.ly: 40 million social do-gooder profiles. "Imagine what you can do with this data and insight."

9:45: Video rolls of Microsoft press conference featuring Blackbaud's partnership with Microsoft. 



9:49: Check out Steve's new book: Data Driven Nonprofts. Now on Amazon.

9:50: You're going to hear a lot about integrated solutions this week. New innovation, new features, new functionality is happening every day. No longer do you go live with a product at Blackbaud and it goes stagnant. Fueled by largest engineering and R&D budget in the industry. 

9:51 :Annoucement:  Blackbaud Outcomes, a new solution that connects funders to fundees.

9:52 a.m.: In some cases we buy companies to help us to go faster. Most recently, we acquired Attentively which is now being fully integrated to provide social listing through our digital marketing platforms.

9:53: "We strive to be your long term partner." We've received great feedback in and outside of the industry. Forbes named Blackbaud one of most innovative growth companies and best midsized employers. That says a lot about our culture! And, 25 fastest growing tech companies along with companies like Amazon, Facebook and more. 

9:55: We've also heard from customers who are frustrated. Some customers have left to try out other solutions, but have come back because they see the innovation, and direction we're going. A video now plays featuring the Corning Museum of glass who recently came back to using Blackbaud products (RENXT) after a negative experience with another cloud based solution, hindered by heavy development and consulting needs.

9:58: Aaron Sherinian from the UN Foundation takes the stage."Thank you for raising the attention about those tranformative moments that matter, because we are in one right now." A slide shows on screen:  The emergence of the "Globalista." The new generation wants to know (Re: important global issues) "What ar you doing about it?" "How will we know it's working?"  

10:00: "My daughter is metric driven, because you've made her such."

10:03: "You're not doing it because you're the good guys"  "You're working on these issues because these are the issues that the world has shown, with data, that they care about. New Gen Social Media Pop-up Movements New Philanthropy.

10:05: "Philanthropy has a vocabulary problem." Let's fix it. Aaron encourages the crowd to consider the new faces of the "Entrepreneur." the "Social Media user," the "Philanthropist" and more, because these things are global and diverse, including all genders, ages, and cultures.  

10:09: 76% of U.S internet users use social media. 90% connected young adults in US use social media. "Social media is the fuel, not the fire."

10:11: UN was able to distill huge amounts of social media data to determine the causes that people cared about, and create an overall list of "Global Goals." 

10:12: To succeed in rallying people around a goal, you need a brand and a plan.

10:13: A video rolls that was shown to the global leaders at the UN general assembly, highlighting the crowdsourced global goals to work on between now and 2030. It's incredibly hip, trendy graphics, upbeat techno music. Pretty contrary to what people expect from a UN meeting. This drives home the idea that this generation needs those two key things: a brand and a plan.

10:15: We live in a world where institutions are asking for your help. They can no longer be slow or stagnant.

10:17 a.m.:  94% of customers will support a brand or product if there is a connection to good. This is the new globalista. We're seeing an increase in social good evangelists. "Your support is now your own media channel." 

10:21: "You've got to talk about it if you want to get it done." What you say, what you buy and what you support, shouldn't ever be something you apologize for. Your brand, no matter how new or old, the new globalista wants to know "what are you doing about it?" and "how to do you know it's working?"

10:22: Mike Gianoni brings Rachel Hutchinsson on stage.

10:23: It's Rachel's 17th bbcon! Quick announcement about the social good we're doing at bbcon: Mural painting project in the expo hall. Our murals will hang in DC area hospitals. Everytime you tweet with the #bbcon hashtag, we donate to Bread for the City. (You guys can participate in this at home!) 

10:24: At Blackbaud our corporate citizenship is part of our "daily DNA." Our vision is to power an ecosystem of good that builds a better world.

10:25: Some stats about the Blackbaud team: 300 employees previously worked at social good orgs. 851 hours volunteers annually. 25% staff serve on the board of social good organizations.  "We're not about corporate social responsibility. We're about human social responsibility."

10:27: This year we've participated in global disaster response, given our first $1M gift to IAAM in Charleston, and supported our team in supporting the moments that matter to them. 

10:28: Major annoucnement: Blackbaud Institute for Philanthropic Impact. First report available today: Sustainers in Focus. All info will be freely available to provide valuable insights to help power social good. Visit Blackbaudinstitute.com for more info.

10:30: Mike Gianoni takes the stage to wrap up the keynote. "The faces in this room are the faces of a better world. Thank you for choosing Blackbaud as your partner."