October 14, 2015, 10:00 am to 4:00 pm
Virtual Event by American Marketing Association
Can you say you attended an event if you never left your apartment? After experiencing the Digital Marketing: Strategic Inspiration from the Experts virtual conference on Wednesday, I believe it is possible. I went into the event not knowing what to expect. While I received multiple build-up emails, I could not picture the promises made to me. How could I network online? How could I interact with the keynotes? What does it mean when they say chill in the lounge?
It was a surprising, enlightening experience! However, I had some trouble getting to the enlightening part. I was blinded by frustration in the beginning. My login would not cooperate. It took me about 7 tries to finally be routed to the conference. It was a little bit bad programming and poor consumer work. I would click the forgot my password button, which would link me to send an email, however the forgot-my-password-email was slow to come in. So I would believe the computer misrouted and would try again. This would resend another email and when the first email finally came in that password was no longer valid. It was a vicious circle of impatience.
When I finally made it past the evil login page, I was happily surprised. For a conference topic's linked to the digital world, the expectations were high. The main backdrop was a lobby of a conference with a menu screen. I had the option to go to the Presentations, Chat, Agenda page, or learn more about the company who created the website: Marketo. My first stop was to the presentations. I "sat" in on "What the Sex Pistols Can Teach You About Marketing." What I liked most about the presentation was how personalized it was. The screen was split so on the right side was the speaker's PowerPoint and on the left was the chat box. The speaker added his own pictures to relate his thesis to the viewers. I found his point that everything we are doing is really just software a little frightening. Think about it, I did, I am almost completely reliant on the software I use throughout my day: my music, my research, my homework. Almost everything is software, therefore the new marketing strategy has to take into account this new type of experience. Marketing is now a media presentation. What made the conference even more unique was there conversations going on throughout the entirety of the discussion. The chat was used for: questions for clarifications, reactions to viewpoints, and comments of where to find more information. Not only did this make the conference more interactive, but also a unique experience since you could not do this at a live conference. Oh, there was also a sidebar reminding to use your social media throughout the day. You could click a button and automatically link what you were sitting in on to your twitter account. It was nice to see the AMA did its marketing due diligence.
After the presentation, I checked out the lounge. The lounge was a place where attendees could go to have side conversations. While I just read what everyone was typing, people were having really useful conversations. The main topics were what marketing software people were using and asking for advice on a project. It looked like a giant instant messaging group chat. On the chat you could only see the name, but before you entered there was a list of attendees with their company. Having that information helped spark networking opportunities and, in my opinion, reminded me that there were real people on another screen attending too. I think next year they should take it a step further and have the option to start a chat with an individual. It would make it easier rather than having to find an email, leave the conference page, open your email and start the separate conversation there.
Unfortunately, I had to leave my post at the conference to go to practice. The day before, I thought I beat the system cause I was going to pull up the presentations on my phone so I could continue listening along right up until I had to leave. To my disappointment, the program would not work on my phone. The website on phone view looked like it was attempted to comply with phones, however someone ran out of time. I could log on to the chat, access the files of handouts and resources, but could not pull up the presentations.
Thankfully, I and American Marketing Association had a backup plan! All of the presentations can be found on demand until January 14, 2016. Thank goodness because I was able to get through a majority but not all of the presentations. It will be nice to return and relearn what was said during some of the talks.
I want to close with some of the other great presentations I heard: "How Reebok Uses Employee Generated Content to Amplify Advocacy," and "Attract More Customers with Inbound and Outbound Marketing." A definite unique, learning experience!
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