It’s Showtime:

I found myself somewhere between Buffett’s Cheeseburger in Paradise and nature’s fury documented in Into Thin Air when the opportunity to attend this year's Event Marketer Summit came about- meaning I was knee deep in my family’s  semi-annual camping trip to Mission Beach.  Mowalla’s creative director, who was originally attending the conference, had to bow out at the last minute and that meant it was showtime for me.

The next morning I pack up the tent and the Family Truckster, and trade them in for a ticket on a redeye and garment bag full of sports coats.  I hit the ground running in Chicago.  After a restful four hours of sleep I was handed my Belinker (an event remote for lack of a better term), event credential and predetermined schedule of sessions to absorb.  If you are thinking that I had no idea what I was in for, well, you are 95% correct. I’d been to Chicago before. 

A Fish Out of Water:

I have produced many general sessions and breakouts for conferences over the years, but this was my first time participating in one from the attendee perspective since college.  It felt like I was the one in front of the crowd instead of part of it.  I guess it doesn't help when you start the conference with one of the top sessions hosted by one of the conference's favorite speakers and you walk in a few minutes late (damn Belinker!) to a packed house.  Did I mention I had a lovely sinus thing going on and a nagging cough that wouldn’t quit?  Cough-cough, sniff-sniff, excuse me.   I’d also like to mention that I’m 6'-4" and felt like I was reduced to 3 feet tall at this point in the game. 

The good news is that I sat through that first session of 50 Great Case Studies (which was great) and said to myself, Mowalla's work needs to be showcased in this session next year.  Here we are amongst some of the biggest brands and marketing agencies in the country and I feel that we have a story to tell and a place to tell it.  I ended that session by saying just that to the one and only Dan Hanover, editor of Event Marketer Magazine (the reassurance of Mowalla’s relevancy from the lecture had brought my height back to normal by then).  Bring on the next session... 

Key Learning:

For the next three days, I continued down the schedule taking away value where ever I could and quickly determined one thing:  ‘Event’ is a very loose term within this space.  I come from a production background, and consider myself an ‘event person’. Mowalla builds experiences from the ground up, literally (I have bill for 400 tons of sand to prove it).  However, when the example of a product floor display inside a Walmart was presented as an ‘event’, I had to take a step back and re-evaluate my definition of the term.  At the summit I learned that events equal brand occurrences to full fledge 360 degree programming – big or small, simple or complex- to most marketers. My production oriented background had lent to my bias about the term.

Beyond my embarrassment and vocabulary lesson, I’d like to highlight some of my favorite things that took place at this year @#emschi: 

o    Best Social Media usage:

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  • EMS promoted the use of their own hash tag for all those tweeting about their observations (#Idigit).

o    Best Speaker:

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  • Paul Kalbfleisch, VP of Brand Marketing RIM/ Blackberry:

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    • Paul’s lecture gets my vote for best keynote.  Blackberry case study of production integration with the Black Eyed Peas / Will-I-Am was fantastic.  Talk about ‘authentic’.  Thanks to him for sharing and inspiring me to push the limits within the live music space.

o    Best Workshops:

• WOM Bomb
• Influencer Marketing
• 50 Great Case Studies
• Fad or Future, Augmented Reality is Red Hot

o    Best Products:

• Tents and accessories:
• Photo Capture Technology:
• Software:

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    • MasterTent tent-weights:  Finally a clean, functional & easy to travel tent weight. I Wish we had these on the SCMX tour.
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    • Post event: Eshots
    • Consumer Engagement: Nomad Logic

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    • Evalu8pro Event Analytic Software
    • Infinite Conferencing

o    Best Party:

• Quatro De Mayo Party

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    • Special Thanks to Britten Meyer Tent company for throwing a sweet celebration down in the South Loop.

o    Best Swag:

• The weekend trip to the Charlotte Motor Speedway courtesy of Spevco (I’m a huge racing fan).

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    •  Now, if I only currently had the need for a custom trailer to take them up on the offer…

Let’s Get Virtual:  

Beyond my personal experiences, if the Event Marketer Summit sounds like something you would have been interested in checking out, you can stop kicking yourself for not attending the physical summit.  The big buzz topic at this year's summit was ‘virtual events’ and what better way to drive the term home than host a virtual version of the conference streamed in the internet.  Check out the EMS Virtual Summit on June 23, 2010 by clicking here.

Stayin’ Classy in San Diego,

Brent Walla, VP Mowalla, Inc.