Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Though I was very busy last week and only made it over to the Online Marketing Summit Conference in the afternoon, I felt that my experience was well worth documenting. After getting a call from a friend and colleague that I should really take the time to drop by, I headed downtown to catch the last two sessions of the day. Having attended some rather large and reputable Internet marketing conferences, I must admit that my expectations were not very high. Let me tell you that I was pleasantly surprised.

With an attendance of only a few hundred people, I felt like the size was one of the greatest assets of the conference. It was a tighter group of folks, and guess what? they were mostly from Seattle. In terms of networking, it was great to meet people close by (both in house and agency side), rather than having to completely depend on things like Facebook to stay connected.

The first session I attended focused on Social Media Communities, and I was very impressed with the various industry examples and excellent ideas and advice about creating online communities from the session's speaker, Barry Tallis of Jive. The following session, and final for the day, was an expert panel designed to field questions on just about anything Internet marketing related, which took on the form of a great SMM discussion. This was one of the best conference panels I have seen in a while. The responses were candid and genuine, and minus all the BS. Panelists included:

Shane Atchison – CEO & cofounder of ZAAZ – Is a long time industry expert, going back to the creation of ZAAZ in 1998. Some of their clients include Starbucks, T-Mobile, Disney, Fox Television Network, Microsoft Corporation, and National Geographic, just to name a few…

Liza Tewell - REI.com Online Editor – REI has long been a major player in online commerce and social media spaces. I found Liza’s comments to be very insightful from a client perspective, and it was great to see the level of interest REI has in the social space.

Olivier Chaine – CEO & Founder of Magnify360 – Another fantastic mind in the social world of Internet Marketing. He has spent many years on both the client and agency side and he made for substantial addition to the knowledge base.

Matt Holleran - vtrenz - an iMarketing Automation for salesforce.com's AppExchange.

What a great group! Questions to the panel were rewarded with a cocktail of the asker’s choice, for which I received my shot of Tequila. niiice…

The "drinks/networking" event afterwards was extremely down to earth and enjoyable, complete with raffles and plenty of eats (the cheese was the best), and I really felt like it was easy to connect with some great people. This was definitely the best 5 hours I have spent at a conference this year. And after speaking with Aaron Kahlow and Jimmy Huh of BusinessOL.com (Conference hosts), I found out why. Their goal is to create educational sessions without all of the ridiculous product and service plugging. Each speaker is required to submit their material in advance so that any overt marketing ploys and otherwise useless pieces of information are edited out. They are trying to bring the bare bones truths of the industry directly to the attendees.

I realize some of the sparkle of OMS is directly related to the smaller number in attendance, but I hope they find a way to keep that close knit feeling as they will undoubtedly grow. I love the concept and I urge everyone to check it out, especially if it comes to a city near you!

About the Author: Peter Hamilton is the Project Manager in charge of the Seattle office of ArteWorks SEO. His interest and experience in Internet marketing is largely focused on the social media optimization and multi-media facets of exposure. To learn more about reputation management and this search engine optimization firm, visit www.arteworks.biz.