In my many years working at EasyWorship, I have been to many conferences and talked about, sold, did training for, and supported EasyWorship. That is our primary goal when setting up a booth in the exhibit hall when attending conferences; to meet people face to face and find out first hand what current and future customers love, hate and want in their presentation software. If I put myself in the customer’s shoes, I think going to a conference would be something I would want to be encouraging spiritually and emotionally, and if there was something extra I could get out of it, like software or hardware that could help us improve our church, that would be plus.
This was our first year as EasyWorship setting up a booth at the Experience Conference at DisneyWorld in Florida and I wasn’t really expecting anything different as an exhibitor. But things changed when we found out a few days before we were to arrive that Hurricane Dorian would probably be making landfall in the center of Florida about the time the Experience Conference would be starting. We had our plane tickets and rooms booked a few months ahead of time and we were all ready to go. We watched the weather closely and it was not looking good. Four days before the conference start, the Orlando airport announced that they would be preemptively closing the airport on Monday morning, the day before Experience would begin, in preparation for Dorian. The Experience Conference organizers had no choice but to officially cancel the conference, but told us that for those that still wanted to come, they would still get together and have a ‘mini-conference’. This was the 9th annual Experience Conference and they were expecting around 1300 attendees.
Now, two days before the conference was to begin, all the path predictions for Dorian show it will not make landfall on the Florida coast, but will just skirt along the east coast as it heads North. Knowing they were still going to have a mini-conference and Dorian was not going to make a direct hit, we decided to go as did about 400-500 attendees and about 30 other exhibitors. Even though we were at a Disney resort, there weren’t very many people there so it was a small, intimate setting for worship and fellowship.
I know there was a lot of prayer poured into this conference and even for the previous eight before this one. The organization for the Experience Conference begins early in the year with around 50 worship leaders from around the country that get together to plan this event. It is “a worship conference created by worshipers for worshipers”. There are lots of meetings and prayers throughout the year that make sure God is the center and focus of the entire event.
Everyone on the ministry team was amazing. Even just as an exhibitor, they were concerned about our well being. They were extremely grateful that we were able to come and provide a solution that worship leaders are looking for in projection software. We had as many ministry team members approach us and ask how we were doing and thank us for being there as we did customers asking about EasyWorship. It truly was a personable experience.
Not only was the exhibit hall a success with lots of different vendors that have just about anything you need to keep your church up to date with technology, but the main morning and evening sessions were packed with high energy and passionate worship even though none of the highlighted bands were able to come. There was also comedy and wonderful teaching of scripture. There were also many break-out sessions available that were relevant to any size church or denomination.
I can’t give enough praise and thanks to the staff and ministry team of Experience Conference at Disney for everything they did for the exhibitors and attendees to make this ‘not-so-mini-conference’ happen.
And, in the midst of this storm barreling down on Florida, the weather turned out to be beautiful the entire week and the mood of each person there was nothing less than excited to be there to see what God had in store. I believe God wanted this conference to go on and wanted everyone that was there to be present with Him and to have an “Experience” with Him like never before.
If you would like to find out more about Experience Conference 2020, you can visit the website https://experienceconference.com/. We would be excited to see you there!
