This post comes at the end of an important year for the Quest community. Three key initiatives led our strategy for 2017, and I am pleased to report that each of those initiatives have been greatly advanced and will continue to evolve and impact our community in 2018.

Three Key Initiatives for 2017

Quality content and networking are at the heart of Quest. We produced more content across our print, digital and face-to-face offerings in 2017 than in any year prior. Our community blogs and online customer stories have become incredibly popular as sources of breaking information and benchmarking. Our satisfaction scores for face-to-face and online events are higher than they have ever been, further reinforcing the fact that customers are finding the answers they need from the content we are producing.

Another key initiative for 2017 was the growth of our support for Oracle Cloud customers through our education, networking and advocacy offerings. We have further evaluated the landscape of the Oracle Cloud user’s journey, and have built a strategic plan for how we can better serve customers regardless of what phase of this journey they are in. This is important not just for companies who use Oracle Cloud products as a standalone solution, but for our on-premise JD Edwards and PeopleSoft users who are evaluating what benefits Oracle Cloud products might have for their organizations.

2017 also saw the continued evolution of our digital experience. As I mentioned before, we delivered more content this year than ever before, much of which was presented digitally in blogs, customer stories or webinars. Quest Experience Week, our community-wide digital conference, saw a record number in attendance this year. Our evolution in the digital space has continued to help us expand our services internationally as well. We introduced PeopleSoft International Days, a digital event hosted specifically for PeopleSoft customers outside North America. The event was very well received, and we will continue to provide more ways for international customers to engage with us moving forward.

While the success of our initiatives in 2017 is certainly cause for celebration, we continue to make strategic decisions to prepare us for even more community engagement in 2018.

Announcing New Corporate Membership Structure

We have recently announced our new membership structure for 2018, which includes unlimited member licenses for all Corporate Members of Quest. We made this decision to encourage increased participation from all Oracle users within a company. The community grows stronger with each person who engages with us, so if your organization has or is considering a Corporate Membership, make sure you take advantage of this opportunity to get all your Oracle users involved with Quest by contacting our Customer Engagement team (engagement@questdirect.org). This change in our membership structure along with our continued growth in service to Oracle Cloud customers serves as a foundation for a more vibrant and active community.

Another decision we have recently made is the hiring of a nationally respected digital agency to help us further evolve our digital experience. While there is still a lot of change to come in how community interactions and engagement online are facilitated, the initial scope of work for a significant step in our digital experience has been approved by our board. We are excited to share more with you at our upcoming COLLABORATE conference, April 22-26, 2018.

Finally, I encourage you to consider sharing your story with the community. We are always looking for more customers to share their experiences, and we would love to hear from you. It has been a year of success in our community, and we look forward to even more growth and engagement in 2018!