There’s an element of risk when you do something new – be it start a business, launch a blog, go back to school, buy a house…or create a new conference.
This is probably why the mesh gang spent a long time thinking about whether we wanted to create a marketing conference. In theory, it made a lot of sense because people attending mesh made it clear they wanted an event that would give them insight into the tactics and tools to do marketing online.
In practice, however, running a conference is a lot of work, especially for people like us who have full-time jobs and family commitments. At the end of the day, we decided a marketing conference was a natural extension of mesh, which we started in 2006 simply because we wanted to have a place to talk about all the exciting things happening on the Web.
With the first meshmarketing conference now in the books, I can honestly say it was well worth the effort. The speakers were terrific, the venue (CiRCA) worked, and the more than 200 attendees were engaged and enthusiastic. Having spent the summer working away on getting everything organized with the amazing help of our event planner, Sheri Moore, it was an exciting and gratifying day.
For me, the highlight of meshmarketing were the eight workshops that happened in the afternoon. In many ways, the workshops were the reason we started meshmarketing. We wanted to have speakers who could give attendees valuable insight and, as important, a tangible list of things to do when they got back to the office.
From what I heard, the biggest challenge facing many people was deciding which workshop to attend, which is a great thing to hear about you’ve creating content for a conference. We filmed some of the workshops, and they will be posted online soon.
We were also very pleased with Hugh MacLeod’s keynote. It was one of the most cerebral and thought provoking keynotes we’ve had at a mesh conference. To me, it was one of those presentations that you think about afterwards, and then start to realize all the great ideas that Hugh offered in his own unique way. The two panels also worked well, and helped set the stage for the workshops later in the day.
In many respects, meshmarketing felt a lot like the first mesh because it was new and no one knew quite what to expect. In the end, the speakers and the mesh-like enthusiasm of the attendees played key roles in making meshmarketing so exciting and personally rewarding.
See you at meshmarketing ’10!
