California Public Information Officers (CAPIO) Conference Recap

By Thao Hill, Director of Strategic Accounts

GovDelivery was honored to sponsor and attend the 2015 California Public Information Officers (CAPIO) Conference in Long Beach earlier this month.  In the spirit of the Grand Prix, which took place the same week, the theme of the conference was “Grand PIO – Moving our Communities Forward.”

Everyone in attendance clearly understood that this was an extraordinary time to be in the field of communications in government – and it showed in their increased attendance and sponsorship from the previous years.  They have a big opportunity to move their communities forward with government-to-citizen marketing and digital communications.

GovDelivery helped kick the conference off by hosting the opening reception, where Scott Burns – GovDelivery CEO, Mike Mancuso – California Account Executive, and I welcomed all the attendees to Long Beach!  Here’s a video posted on the CAPIO Twitter feed.

For California PIOs, communications around the state’s unprecedented drought was a hot topic – educating the public about what was happening and motivating citizens to take action with specific campaigns to draw awareness to conserving water.

There were also some very important sessions that covered how to communicate during a crisis – the Isla Vista mass murders, police shootings that go viral, the Southern California Wildfires, and the Ebola and West Nile health scares (real or perceived).

This was an exciting opportunity for me to experience my first conference as a member of the GovDelivery team for many reasons.  The interaction with our customers was awesome… to hear just how much they love our solution and the top notch service they receive.

We also heard from California PIOs who are currently utilizing social media and email primarily to help get the word out, but have seen stagnant subscriber growth numbers.  We were able to build excitement with attendees about how the GovDelivery Network of over 90 million citizens can help grow their subscriber base – and with this growth would come the ability to motivate a larger majority of their communities to take action.  Text messaging was also a popular topic due to the fact that a large California population still exists today without smartphone capabilities.

Thanks to the CAPIO Conference team, and particularly Francie Palmer, Communications Manager for the City of Rancho Cucamonga, for making us feel welcome and a part of this important industry conference!