Irene Etzkorn

Chuck Saylor

6.11.13 | Grand Rapids, MI | Configura, maker of CET Designer software, announces the keynote speaker and other lead presenters for the 6th annual CET Designer User Conference being held Oct 9-10 at DeVos Place in Grand Rapids, Mich. Conference registration is now open at www.configura.com/userconference/.

The lineup:

Keynote Speaker: Irene Etzkorn
Simple: Conquering the Crisis of Complexity
Irene Etzkorn is one of the world’s foremost authorities on how to simplify. She is the executive director of leadership and simplification at Siegel + Gale in New York City where she consults to Fortune 500 companies and recently co-authored the book Simple: Conquering the Crisis of Complexity. She shows how having empathy, striving for clarity and distilling one’s message can reduce the distance between company and customer.

“Having explored simplicity's applicability to graphic and product design, I am delighted to have the opportunity to discuss how the tenets of simplicity can also be applied to aspects of physical design,” Etzkorn said. “Any task and any communication can be simplified. I welcome the chance to address an audience that is embracing the concept of simplicity and applying it as a corporate mindset.”

Chuck Saylor
State of the Furniture and Design Industry
Chuck Saylor is the founder and CEO of izzy+ in Spring Lake, Michigan. With four decades of diverse experiences in the industry, Saylor currently serves as president of the board of directors for the Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturers Association (BIFMA). Author of People Power, Saylor holds more than 20 patents and earned numerous design and marketing awards. In 1976, Saylor, Dick Haworth and Harold Wilson were responsible for the design and development of the first pre-wired steel panel system in the office furniture industry. Saylor’s work has been shown at New York's Museum of Modern Art and the Chicago Anthenaeum.

Beth Hulst
CET Designer in the Sales Process
Beth Hulst has been a user and proponent of CET Designer for more than three years. She has worked as a designer for furniture dealerships in California and Michigan, and currently works at Interphase Interiors in Grand Rapids, Michigan. At Interphase, she creates sales proposal templates and bid packages with the help of CET Designer. She will share the tips and tricks that have helped her to take projects in CET Designer from an initial client meeting to an innovative and order-ready solution.

Cate Sword
Tips and Hints with CET Designer
Cate Sword, IIDA, based in Jenison, Michigan, has provided architects, interior designers and furniture dealership design centers with quality software training since 1989. A certified trainer for CET Designer, AutoCAD, 20-20 and ProjectMatrix, she focuses on reducing both the learning curves and the time it takes to produce first-class results. With a fun and interactive teaching style, she shares her easy tips and hints in CET Designer.

Lorna Marcuzzo
CET Designer as a Presentation Tool
Lorna Marcuzzo is a federal designer and analytical consultant at A. Pomerantz & Company in Philadelphia. She was an early adopter of CET Designer and uses the program daily to generate sales for her dealership. Employing video fly-throughs and other CET Designer features, she works with customers to modernize their workspaces. She will share her experience of using CET Designer not just for specification but also as a tool to get customers excited about the potential for their designed workspace.

Emily Siegel
Dealer Process Change with CET Designer
Emily Siegel is a designer and process lead at McCoy-Rockford Business Interiors in Austin, Texas. With a background in business and design, she quickly embraced the advanced technology of CET Designer. She champions integration of the tool into the sales process as a key component of closing deals quickly. Committed to efficient delivery of excellent products and services, her design team credits CET Designer with reducing specification errors and heightening the ability to produce high-quality visuals and swiftly turnaround projects.

Kari Anderson and Jason Lund
CET Designer and the Office of the Future
Kari Anderson is the design lead at Target Commercial Interiors in Minneapolis. She’s used CET Designer for more than five years and presented at the CET Designer User Conference in Las Vegas in 2010. She advocates for implementing process changes with CET Designer to simplify design and business activities. Jason Lund is the director of information technology for Target Commercial Interiors. His team is responsible for the operation of Target’s enterprise technology portfolio including a data center, nine office locations in the U.S. and India, and numerous home-office users. His team has supported the early adoption of many leading-edge technologies including private cloud computing, HD video webcasting and CET Designer. He continues to research and promote standardized, cost-effective end-user hardware options that benefit his designers and their clients.

Brian DeRoo and Jennifer Newton
SmartTools Tips and Hints
Brian DeRoo is the IT program manager for the CET Designer SmartTools Extension at Steelcase Inc., leading a team in the development and support of the Extension. Based at Steelcase’s headquarters in Grand Rapids, Michigan, he has more than 20 years of experience in information technology. For the past 15 years, he has worked to provide design and specification solutions and integration of the solutions into the business systems used by Steelcase and its dealers. Jennifer Newton is a senior designer at NBS Commercial Interiors, a Steelcase dealership in Troy, Michigan. As a CET Designer user for more than five years, she pushed the boundaries of CET Designer early on to determine that it truly is the best software for design and specification. She has worked closely with the Steelcase and Configura teams to provide valuable feedback for improvement of the software. She has worked all sizes of projects, with large projects being her specialty. She uses CET Designer in collaboration with her customers to help them visualize and even participate in designing their environment.

Keith Driesenga
CANVAS Tips and Hints
Keith Driesenga has been the e-marketing specialist for three years at Haworth based in Holland, Michigan, where he responsible for planning and testing the CET Designer CANVAS Extension. His combined interior design and business degrees allow him to understand dealer processes as they relate to design and specification.

Joe Danzer
ProjectSymbols Tips and Hints
Joe Danzer is the product alliance manager at ProjectMatrix in Cincinnati, Ohio. He'll present tips, tricks and best practices when using CET Designer's ProjectSymbols Extension. He'll also discuss current and future enhancements for the software and conclude with a Q&A session.

About the company
Configura’s mission is to set the industry standard in software tools for automating, simplifying and speeding sales and order processes. The company’s software products, including CET Designer®, are used by more than 9,000 people in companies around the world. Well-known European office furniture manufacturers, including Kinnarps and Martela, use Configura software, as do North and South American companies Haworth, Steelcase, Teknion, ProjectMatrix, Spacefile, Spacesaver, Borroughs, TAB, Carvajal Espacios, KI, Inscape, Aurora Storage Products and Solinoff. Configura Inc., based in Grand Rapids, Mich., USA, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Configura Sverige AB, with global headquarters in Sweden and an additional office in Malaysia. More information at www.configura.com.