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;

brightwhite :

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

walkinggal :

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.

I was thrilled when the 1st AIM conference was held in NS last year. Although I found out about it too late to attend.  The 2nd Atlantic Internet Marketing Conference will be held in Moncton, May 4-6th 2008. I will definitely be attending.

From their website;

Who should attend AIM 2008?
From management, to the team that makes your website work, AIM 2008 will open your eyes to what you can and should be doing online - and how to get it done right. AIM is for anyone who needs to learn how to succeed online including:

• Marketing Executives
• Marketing Managers
• Media Buyers
• Tourism & Travel Operators
• Designers & Programmers
• Project Coordinators
• Business Owners
• Consultants & Strategists

The line up of speakers at this point looks very promising. Ken Munro, the General Manager at Yahoo, Jordan Banks from e-bay, Jay Mitchell from AOL as well as 28 other industry experts.  I was also especially pleased to see some Atlantic Canadian speakers including a few women speakers (although still a small percentage) . Cheryl Chappel, Vice President - Integrated Marketing, Bristol Online, Krista White, Cossette Atlantic, Sarah Oldford, Online Media Manager, Colour, Wilma Hartmann, AppleCore Interactive, and Stephanie Lummis, ISL – Internet Solutions. If you follow the web 2.0/marketing conference circuit, you’ll often hear that one of the complaints is that there are not enough women in the speaker list. I’d like to see more women speakers but this is a good start.

I think 2008 is going to be one of the best year’s yet for Atlantic Canadians with conferences in online media. If you haven’t already don’t forget to register for The Power Within and Online Revealed. In the New Year, we’ll also hopefully have news on an unconference event as well.

I’m surprised that Dairy Queen hasn’t taken advantage of some interactive web functions. My son turns 11 this weekend. Every year, I take a topic that my son likes, scour the net to find the right image and then take it into my local Dairy Queen for them to prepare a customized frozen birthday cake. This year, I’m busier than ever, so I called my local Dairy Queen and asked them if they had an email that I could just send the photo and instructions to. They didn’t offer that option and I had to go in to the store to place the order.

Imagine how cool convenient it would be to be able to go online to Dairy Queen and interactively;

1. choose your cake type and size

2. then choose from a variety of suggestions for items to write that are more creative than just Happy Birthday or Congratulations.

3.  a selection of styles of cake printing fonts/colours that can be used

4. pre-set images searchable by topic (sports) /age etc. if you didn’t have a particular image in mind

5. able to upload your own artwork/photo for your own theme

6. then move all these items around on a virtual cake to see how it could look.

7. When done, save, place your order and based by location, a pick up place is identified or self-chosen.

Then all I would have to do is walk in, pick it up and it’s done.

Oh and if I wanted to take this a step further, have a save a cake virtual option as well so that I can make virtual cakes for my facebook friends. Facebook app Dairy Queen?

UPDATE: This is what I took into DQ, printed from the web.

I told them to take out the girl and overlay the compass in it’s place. I just got back from picking it up and they did a pretty good job with it. They really are missing out on having customers able to just email the images to them from the web. I suspect it would spark a lot more creativity for their cake line.