Blue Socks Spotted at Orange

This year, I had the privilege of being invited to join the team of Planning Center exhibitors at the Orange conference in Atlanta, GA.

As a developer, this was a rare opportunity for me to get in touch with the users of our products, learn from their experiences using the software, and make note of any pain points and areas of improvement. And, well, yes, it also allowed me a chance to be the recipient of much loving and appreciation from lots of satisfied users that just came over to our booth to let us know what a great job we're doing. That certainly felt really good!

I figure I must have talked to a few hundreds of people during the almost three days that we were manning our booth. I don't think I had ever experienced anything quite like it. People kept coming, asking questions not only about our Check-Ins app, which is the most popular one among youth ministries, but about all our apps. They were really interested in what we had to offer!

By the second day, word went out that we had a special kind of swag: Planning Center socks! Super cute and super comfy, made out of the softest organic cotton.

All day long, people kept coming asking if they could get their hands on a pair of our socks! Most people that visited, however, still didn't know about the socks and were greatly surprised when we offered them a pair after giving them a demo of our apps or answering their questions about our products. It was crazy cool to see the look of surprise and happiness on their face! Who wouldn't like a nice pair of socks?

I'm glad I had this opportunity. Perhaps, it will repeat some other time in the future and we'll make more users happy, one line of code and one pair of socks at a time.