Reflecting on the CIAV Conference

This week we've been at the Coalition for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans (CIAV) Conference, conveniently held just down the street from us. It's been a great event, filled with a diverse group of speakers and attendees - veterans, non-profits, government programs, authors, filmmakers, members of the media, and more.

Devin presented on the Warrior Gateway on the opening day of the conference, and we received a number of good questions and feedback about the site. Thanks to everyone who stopped by to chat with us about the Warrior Gateway throughout the week - we always love to hear your thoughts and ideas and explain more about what the site does.

We also heard some excellent speakers and attended workshops that touched on topics ranging from job creation to fundraising to blogging. These sessions were all very informative; it was great to hear not only the expertise of the speakers but the thoughts and experiences of the attendees. We heard a lot about the current issues, challenges, and successes of service providers in the field.

Many of these issues and challenges were similar to feedback we've heard from service providers before -- a need for a good database of organizations working with the military community; the desire to reach out more to one's client base and attract new clients who would gain from your services; the difficulty (especially for small organizations) of maintaining an active, dynamic presence on the Internet.

And these are all ways in which the Warrior Gateway adds value to service providers, addressing these challenges and providing an easy interface for service providers to communicate with clients, and allow clients to easily find and connect with them.

This was the theme of our presentation at CIAV and, again, we were very pleased to talk with so many people about the Gateway. A special thanks to CIAV for your hard work in organization a wonderful event!