One of the most common questions asked of conference organizers goes something like this: “How do I justify this conference? Why should I attend it?” The short answer is: no conference can provide justification. None. Even if some conference marketers make “justify your trip” collateral. Why? A conference by itself is just a gathering of…
To close out my duties as the Digital Customer Experience conference chair, let’s take a look at the top takeaways from this year’s Digital Customer Experience conference. Using my favorite assortment of data blending and visualization tools, I grabbed the entire conference’s hashtags to determine what was most highly engaged. Zendesk’s Dave Dyson showcased why…
At Social Media Marketing World I had the pleasure and privilege of moderating the “How to Build an Analytics Dashboard” session, featuring my friends and colleagues Justin Levy from Citrix, Susan Beebe from Tyson Foods, Louis Gray from Google, and Maria Saltz from Adobe. The job of a panel moderator can be difficult. Moderators need…
I had the privilege of speaking at the Social Tools Summit, on the topic of Scaling Innovation, a thin slice of my new book, Leading Innovation. You can watch the entire keynote here: Don’t see anything? Click this link to go to YouTube. If you’d like a copy of my prepared remarks, you can download…
I have the privilege and pleasure of speaking at the annual MarTech San Francisco conference. What started out as a humble gathering of marketing technologists two years ago by Scott Brinker has turned into a juggernaut of a conference. 1,200 all-access attendees and another 2,000+ Expo attendees have come to San Francisco to learn about…
The opening keynote of INBOUND15 was none other than Seth Godin. In 16 tweets, here’s what he had to say: "Our job as marketers is to amplify things, to double them. That's what we do." – Seth Godin #inbound15 pic.twitter.com/8ThA4bjiUi — Christopher Penn (@cspenn) September 8, 2015 A concise summation of marketing’s role. "Who do…
For many digital marketers, this is the week they come to Boston to be a part of INBOUND15, Hubspot’s annual user conference. This year promises to be bigger in every way, so here are some basic survival tips for the show and Boston in general. First and foremost: do not attempt, for any reason, to…
One of the real world marketing questions I’m asked often is whether events and conferences matter, from a marketing point of view. Do they help to generate business? The answer is a qualified yes – as long as you do it right. First, if you don’t know why you’re going, don’t go. “Because our competitors…
Chris Brogan recently asked, after attending PodCamp Pittsburgh, whether it makes sense for unconferences to bundle together with similar events. The answer to this question depends on goals and strategy. Traditional conferences have very different business imperatives than unconferences like PodCamp. PodCamp is more of a movement, a decentralized idea that isn’t a sustainable business…
