Configura Announces Dates, Location and Keynote Presenters of 9th Annual CET Designer User Conference
Configura, maker of CET Designer software, announces the dates, location and keynote presenters of its 2016 user conference.
The 9th annual CET Designer User Conference will be held Oct. 18 and 19 at DeVos Place in Grand Rapids, Michigan. A pre-conference welcome event for attendees will be the evening of Oct. 17. The conference previously was held in 2013 and 2014 in Grand Rapids – the city known as the office furniture capital of the world. It has also been held in Las Vegas and Orlando.
“Our users especially love Grand Rapids. It’s where Configura’s U.S. office is based, and our major manufacturer customers are headquartered in West Michigan,” Configura Vice President of Global Customer Experience Tracy Lanning said. “The city has a vibrant arts culture, and its architecture is gorgeous.”
Color expert Laura Guido Clark will keynote the conference that’s expected to draw hundreds of design professionals and office furniture manufacturers. International Association of Interior Designers CEO Cheryl Durst will also speak at the conference.
Laura Guido Clark
Laura Guido Clark, principal of Laura Guido Clark Design based in Berkeley, California, specializes in the skin of products – their colors, materials and finishes. Her expertise extends from manufacturing work for such clients as Toyota, Samsung, LG and Hewlett-Packard to textiles and pattern design for FLOR, HBF, Pallas and Uncommon. In 2011, she founded Project Color Corps, a nonprofit organization dedicated to painting urban neighborhoods with color and pattern to convey messages of optimism and hope.
Cheryl Durst
Cheryl S. Durst, Honorary FIIDA, LEED AP, is the executive vice president and CEO of the International Interior Design Association (IIDA) where she leads the board and members of the organization, and champions and elevates the profession of interior design. Part of the IIDA team since 1997, Durst started her career in sales at Knoll and in marketing at The Washington Design Center in Washington, DC. She is a sought-after speaker on “The Future of Design” and other explorations into the value of design as a social, cultural and economic force. She is the creator and curator of IIDA’s innovative What Clients Want publication series that examines the designer-client relationship. Durst has been called by Interior Design magazine “an ambassador for innovation and expansion, and a visionary strategist.”
In conjunction with the CET Designer User Conference, Configura will also host a developer conference.
“The goal is to bring designers and developers together, so they can talk with each other about what’s possible with the software. Their conversations will be the start of new ideas and features for CET Designer,” Chief Product Officer Nicklas Dagersten said.
Both conferences will also include breakout sessions and tracks specific to space planning and design, and IT and software development. Full conference programming will be announced soon.
User Conference details and registration information are available at http://www.configura.com/userconference. Space at the conference is limited to the first 350 registrants. People with questions are welcome to contact Configura toll free at 866-922-2200 or by sending an email to hello@configura.com.
Free subscription to CET Designer
Configura is offering a free, one-year new subscription to CET Designer for each dealer that sends a user to the conference, a value of $1,000. (Extensions not included; offer applies to additional, new subscriptions only, not renewals. Limit of one free subscription per dealership.)
About Configura
Configura creates intelligent space-planning software for manufacturers, dealers and designers in the Contract Furniture, Kitchen and Bath, Material Handling, Industrial Machinery, and Laboratory and Healthcare industries. The company’s software products, including CET Designer, are used by more than 10,000 people around the world. Configura Sverige AB, the parent company, is headquartered in Linköping, Sweden, with commercial operations in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Founded in 1990, Configura is privately owned with more than 120 employees worldwide and annual sales of more than $13 million USD. More information at www.configura.com.
About CET Designer
Based on technology created by Configura, CET Designer is intelligent, highly visual and intuitive space-planning software that simplifies specifying and selling of products in a variety of industries. It’s a complete solution that quickly and accurately handles every step of the sales and order process. In CET Designer, components that represent manufacturers’ products look and behave like actual products. Users drag and drop components into 2D and 3D virtual environments; behind the scenes, the software tracks components, calculates pricing and prevents user errors. Users can create and generate layouts, quotes, photorealistic renderings, movies, installation drawings, reconfigurations and bills of materials – in other words, everything needed to propose on work and place orders. CET Designer is the future of space planning. More information at www.configura.com/cet.