The 2018 Visitor Experience Conference was held in San Antonio, TX, October 7-9, 2018.
As visitor experience and engagement professionals, a vital part of our job is to make our guests feel welcomed and wanted. We ensure that our institutions are relevant and that each and every guest understands their value and importance to us. It is in this spirit of welcome and belonging that the 7th annual Visitor Experience Conference focuses on best practices, the sharing of ideas, and working together to build up a museum community that fosters a sense of inclusiveness, engages with new communities, and embraces all of those seeking a space in which they can learn and grow. Join us for VEX18 in San Antonio, Texas this October.
San Antonio is your museum, VEX is your conference, and you belong here.
About the 2018 VEX Conference & Schedule of Events
Sunday, October 7, 2018
Welcome Y’all Evening Event, 6:00-9:00 pm
County Line BBQ, 111 W. Crockett St. #104 • San Antonio, TX
Kick off #VEX18 with fellow attendees on the famous San Antonio Riverwalk. This is a perfect time to meet people from across the country before your full day of panels and sessions. Enjoy authentic Texas fare, drink tickets, and the return of Battle Decks! Ticket includes food and beverage.
Monday, October 8, 2018
Panels, Sessions, and Keynotes, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm
Witte Museum, 3801 Broadway St, San Antonio, TX
Take in a range of sessions, panels, interactive workshops, and thoughtful keynotes at the Witte Museum. Details on individual sessions can be found here.
Garden Party at the McNay, 5:30 – 9:00 pm
6000 N New Braunfels Ave, San Antonio, TX
Unwind after a full day of sessions. Join us at the VEX Garden Party at the McNay Art Museum. Guests will enjoy a Mexican buffet, drinks, and music in San Antonio’s modern art museum and sculpture garden. Ticket includes food and beverages.
Tuesday, October 9, 2018
Post Conference Workshop: Engaging Latino Audiences, 8:30 – 11:00 am
Wyndam Garden, 103 9th St, San Antonio, TX
Salvador Acevedo will lead participants of this workshop through his work with engaging Latino audiences and his study, LatinXPerience. He will work through how “experience” is defined for different audiences and how arts and cultural organizations can meet these definitions. Attendees will learn to implement this work at individual institutions.
Light breakfast included.
Post Conference Workshop: Visitor Journey Mapping, 8:00 – 10:30 am
Wyndam Garden, 103 9th St, San Antonio, TX
Join conference favorite Jessica Sharpe, Director of Visitor Operations and Membership at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, for a workshop intensive on Visitor Journey Mapping. Cultural institutions can use journey mapping to illuminate the holistic visitor experience. Participants in the workshop will explore ways that this work can help unify an organization, work on a framework for cross-departmental involvement in the visitor experience, understand the stages of the visitor journey, and touch-points with how a visitor interacts with your organization.
Light breakfast included.
Post Conference Workshop: Moving Us to Action: The Inzovu Curve Workshop, 2:00 – 4:00 pm, Wyndam Garden, 103 9th St, San Antonio, TX
Join Jason Ulaszek, founder and chief design officer of Inzovu. He’ll bring his expertise in experience design in the for-profit world and show how he used it to help develop a concept for the next generation of museums and memorials through his work at the Kigali Genocide Memorial. Through this work learn how he created an experience that spurred visitors to create change. Gain new insights on the characteristics required by these institutions and leverage the Inzovu Curve, an emerging model for thinking that can guide visitors toward a shift in identity, to map and assess the visitor experience of your institution.
Visitor Experience Group 