This past week I attended AIM (Atlantic Internet Marketing) conference in Moncton. Organized by Rob Swick and Peter Sickles of alpha search.
We started off with some networking events on Sunday. Several of us joined in for a game of foam ball (paint ball with foam balls instead). We donned our helmets and airguns and snuck in behind bunkers as we got to know each other by pelting each other with foam balls. My first hit was Peter Sickles and that’s how I got to know him. The bruise on his arm evidence in the coming days;)
As usual with conferences, we can never attend all the talks and have to narrow down to a choice for each time slot. Some of my favourite talks from this year were:
Actionable Analytics/Writing for the Web by Stephanie Lummis of ISL
Website Usability and Conversion by Rob Swick of alphasearch.ca
The Authentic Web also by Rob Swick and Jeff White of Brightwhite Design
Marketing yourself as a free-agent on the Internet by Harold Jarche of Jarche Consulting
Location Marketing by Malcolm Fraser of ISL
The panel critiquing websites was very popular with everyone. Those who offered the sites up for examining have got courage.
There were a few of us twittering the events. A quick tweetscan picked up these;
watching peter sickles review a aim conference attendees website
2008-05-06 07:07:10
jbignell :
Great day at the AIM Conference, now off to play rubber ball!
2008-05-05 17:12:48
listening to Rob Swick from alpha talk about Gary Vaynerchuk’s how to cut through the noise, http://garyvaynerchuk.com/
2008-05-05 15:22:04
Some suggestions for next year’s conference:
1. offer more advanced talks/seminars
2. topic suggestions - monitoring your personal/company brand online, social media measurement, e-commerce conversion, advanced web copy (writing for personas)
3. more case studies
4. more booths? with more swag;) Note to the Yahoo table, we were so disappointed the yahoo swag didn’t make it in time;)
I have to say that the atmosphere of the conference was fabulous. I made lots of new friends and contacts. We’re connecting up through twitter, linkedin and facebook and I hope to meet up with everyone at next year’s conference.
May 13th, 2008 at 9:54 am
Thanks for the plug. Let me add one more suggestion - more “whitespace” or time between sessions.
May 13th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
You’re right Harold, some white space between sessions would be good. Sometimes it was hard to find time to expand on conversations.
May 14th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Thanks for the review! It was a blast (literally!) being in Moncton… and being there with the community of people who work in this field is just awesome - and half the reason we do it.
I’ve put your excellent comments in with the others I received. They are all consistent with others I have seen… we need more higher level talks. We had planned that for this year but didn’t have enough jump on it to pull it off. Having seen what worked in Moncton we have a much larger pool of excellent presenters to draw on for next year. (We will be back in Halifax next year and are scouting locations and making plans now. )
I think 2009 will be “the big one!” now that we’ve reached out to NB, and people here who didn’t make the trip will be eager to come back. We want to accelerate our schedule by several months to get in more companies involved (and more good swag!!!) and have more promotion time. If you or your readers have any ideas for a cool keynote speaker from outside we are looking for someone with some sex appeal. I have actually had some conversations with a guy whose last name starts with the word “God” and will contact him as soon as I have tentative dates. You never know….. will keep you posted!
May 14th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
Thanks for stopping by Rob. Wow having “him” there would be a fabulous coup for Atlantic Canada. Looking forward to 2009 already.