Back to Basics: The Motionsoft Technology Summit’s Plan to Help You Get, Know and Keep Members

(Editors’ Note: Club Industry is the media partner of this year’s Motionsoft Technology Summit.)

A health club’s technology executive plays a vital role as an advocate for new technology that will move forward their company’s corporate strategy. To be effective, they need the latest technology information from some of the most well-respected companies and individuals in the fitness industry. What better way to gather that information than in a collaborative venue? Offering that venue for the past five years has been the Motionsoft Technology Summit.  

This year is no different. Motionsoft will present its sixth annual Motionsoft Technology Summit Sept. 16-18 at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC, with the theme of “Back to Basics: Practical Technology Solutions That Help You to Get Them, Know Them and Keep Them.” Attendance is limited to C-level fitness industry executives and owners and is capped at 200 people.

“I am particularly excited to hear about some of the innovations our sponsoring partners are unveiling this year,” Al Noshirvani, chairman of Motionsoft, told Club Industry.

Also of interest to Noshirvani are the panels on which the club operators who have implemented these solutions will speak.

“It has been so great to see how open our attendees are to sharing best practices,” he said.

This year’s summit will cover topics such as the leadership role of today’s CIOs and CMOs, the promise of artificial intelligence in health clubs, delivering technology that engages people, where mobile technology is taking the industry, digital marketing trends and tactics, and the next generation of payment technologies. In addition, the team from Integrity Square will present a report on the state of the HALO (Health, Active Lifestyle and Outdoors) industry.

This year’s event again features two keynote speakers. Paul Bedford, principle at the Retention Guru, will present the first keynote, sharing details from his latest study about motivation and member behavior.

Tim Ogilvie, founder of Peer Insight, author and visiting lecturer at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, will offer the closing keynote. Ogilvie has helped pioneer the emerging methods of design thinking, including co-authoring two best-selling books on the subject: Designing for Growth and The Designing for Growth Field Book. He has worked with organizations such as Intel, Starwood and Procter & Gamble.  

(View the full agenda here.)

The event started after Noshirvani attended a CEO event put on by his company’s first investors, Edison Partners, where one of their founders had talked about the importance of connecting with both current and prospective customers beyond just the day to day business relationship.

“Blogs and social can help but there is still nothing like face time—and I don’t mean the one on your phone,” Noshirvani said. “I came back from that event and started planning the first summit.”

Attendance to the event has grown each year, he said. Last year, 150 executives attended, and this year Noshirvani said he expected to hit the cap of 200 attendees.

“The content has also evolved each year,” he said. “Education is a much bigger part of the event. For example, this year, we have set aside a two-hour block where we are teaching people about ‘ideation,’ which is essentially a creative process of generating, developing, and communicating new ideas. We hope people can use this when they get back to the daily grind.”

Sponsors of the 2019 event are Myzone, Promotion Vault, Intouch Technology, FitnessBI, Listen360, Silicus, Styku, eGym, EPSILON, Zeamo and Aldous & Associates. Fitness partners are Sweat Box and VIDA Fitness.

As part of the summit, Motionsoft is sponsoring four podcasts through Club Industry that will detail more about four of the topics to be covered at the Motionsoft Technology Summit. The first podcast will launch in May and will focus on the importance of data in the health club world today.

The Motionsoft Technology Summit registration deadline is mid-August, unless the event fills up before then. To register, click here.