It's been a long time since Jeff Pulver's VON Conference series ended. Back in the day there were at least two if not three or four or five VON's a year. Competitor, TMCNet's IT Expo ran two events as well and literally the conference circuit for VoIP and related industries felt like an every other month activity. There were others that were put on but as publications died off so too did the events. What was great though back then was you got to see your friends more often, as well as you clients. What was bad was between the event expense, the travel and the time away from the office is work was the conferences.
With the sad demise of VON, smartly, IT Expo went to a once a year format, holding its annual gathering in February in Fort Lauderdale. For me that means hours of meetings representing agency clients and companies I serve as the CMO for, moderating and speaking on panels or doing media interviews. To say conferences are nothing but a party, would be a real understatement.
Lots of prep goes into all facets of the event. For SkySwitch, where I've been CMO since last June, it means booth design, messaging, working with the team on booth scheduling, SWAG, working on the news announcemets and logistics. All work that started months ago. Thankfully I have a great team to work withm from founder Eric Hernaez on down, and our efforts at IT Expo will show the benefits of the prep.
For others like Fonative, who I've been advising and counseling, and now act as their virtual CMO also, it means news announcement planning, panel and media relations prep, as well as meeting participation along with founder and CEO Steve Smith. For myself, it's all about preparing for multiple media and analyst interviews, panel prep for the three that I'm moderating and one that has me on the panel speaking too. It also means scheduling meetings both onsite and off, as well as all the travel logistics needed to get to and from those meetings and the event.
Given how big IT Expo will be this year the return of the Blur is upon us....see you in Fort Lauderdale.
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