Day 1
The keynote speaker was a live wire. He looked as if he had just rolled out of a light socket. Sunglasses indoors, middle aged, potty mouthed, and mononymous. He made up his own job title. What a rebel.
So much of this did not calculate. I forced myself to keep my triggers at bay.
He spoke. I swooned. He spoke of cultivating creativity and the bombastic sources in which we can find them. I’ll write a post about that topic someday.
Presenting with incalculable credibility, I embraced his charisma like the marketing sheeple I abhor. I was going to create, honey.
After that intro, the two-day marketing conference was a choose-your-adventure scenario and, if I am being brutally honest, a decisive letdown compared to what I had just witnessed. But be warned – this post is not about my limited learnings from those days. It’s much more useless.
At lunch, I decided to branch off from my fellow coworkers and “network” with new faces. (Note: I do not “network.” I do just enough to keep conversations from becoming stagnant for others in my vicinity.) I’ll be dipped, I was sitting with three of the events’ guest speakers. I feigned unworthiness. They assured me they were just regular people, which was a relief.
I told them where I worked. One of them said to me, “Do you know what healthcare has over every other industry? Limitless customer stories.” Girl, preach.
In speaking with other attendees, I was reminded of my comeuppance: I am no longer the one-man-show as the voice of a brand. Too much pressure. I got it good, by golly. I gave some tadpoles my condolences for their grind and wished them bigger ponds in the future.
I capped off Day 1 with a three-hour session about email marketing. This session was the most fruitful.
The speaker was a CEO from Chicago – a reddish-haired gentleman in his early 40s. He wore a dope dad sweater, joggers and complementary sneaks I can never seem to find in stores. He apologized for his dry-look hairdo – he was trying a new style without product. I wanted to tell him he looked better than his slick-backed LinkedIn profile picture.
Given the line of people wanting to speak with him afterward, a dad-fashion comment at a marketing event would be a silly thing to wait in line for.
Day 2
Now established as a regular person just like the speakers, I was feeling frisky. I let loose and went to some obscure sessions in AI, brand likeability and authenticity.
I’m not a fan of self-labels, but I can think of no one more likeable. No one more authentic. I carry that with me in my professional life. AI cannot touch this. These sessions were merely reaffirmations.
During a bathroom break, a gentleman noticed the company for which I worked. He told me he did contract work for them before they had a marketing team. He had on a branded polo, stretchy slacks, and his hair was crispy. I knew exactly where to take the conversation. I asked him about the $$$ involved in that project. Oh! Oh boy, did that get him going. After telling me of his professional greatest hits, he gave me his business card. His title was “Domain Name Broker.” I had successfully networked.
Later, another gentleman approached me with a similar story – he also had worked with my company as a contractor. By this point, I was wondering if that was a classic sales networking tactic. But after he name-dropped some coworkers, it appeared to be a fun coincidence. This gentleman and I shared a name, and he was one of the speakers at the event. Devastated about missing his presentation, he said he wrote book about the same topic – coming soon. I told him I would look forward to it.
He later added me on LinkedIn with a nice little note. “What a small world,” I told him in reply.
The surface area of Earth is 196,939,900 square miles.
Sidebar
This conference took place in an historic hotel with a classy restaurant on the main level.
My wife and I spent our most recent anniversary at this restaurant – The Town Company – on a whim. With all sincerity, this restaurant is the reason you go to restaurants.
It was a fully fleshed tapas experience. Each phase of the meal comes out one plate at a time. At no point are you questioning which morsel you’re going to try – you eat what is in front of you and you savor it with all five senses. When you are finished, you take a shot of your watermelon-vinegar palate-cleanser concoction and enjoy culinary bliss during the next plate.
We had roasted duck with a peach sauce, a poached egg, a tomato/mozzarella, and other things I can’t describe. I’m not a food reviewer, so I’m venturing into unknown territory.
That is all.
Finale
When you go to marketing conferences, they encourage you to document the experience and tag the event on social media. Indomitable as I am, I captured no experiences. I do not desire clout.
I can only hope that my network is a little bigger and my skills are a little more diverse.
That said, before I departed, I washed up in the bathroom adjacent to The Town Company. I needed a picture of some sort. I took a picture of the blue-brick wall.
I have no use for the photo. “Maybe it will look good as a cover photo,” I thought.