A Social Media Lesson from The Art of Marketing, in Vancouver
Avinash Kaushik’s Autograph: “Happy Analytics!”
Yes, it’s been a while since I’ve last blogged. Why, you ask? I am a perfectionist, and the thought of writing anything less than valuable to you, my dear reader, paralyzes me. Heaven knows that there’s a lot of noise out there, so if I’m to publish something, it’d better be great. Otherwise, what’s the point, right? Or so I think. As a result, I haven’t blogged lately, not considering all the generous comments that you have left in the past.
I have a couple of folks to thank for encouraging me to get back to the keyboard and develop content that is longer than 140 characters: Linda Bustos, the blogger behind GetElastic.com, and Tyrell Mara.
Linda spoke on the topic of blogging for profit and for fun at a Vancouver social media meetup that I’ve recently attended, and she’s imbued me with enough fire in my belly to blog again. Hopefully the flame won’t die… (By the way, Linda… great hair!)
The second person I’d like to thank is Tyrell. He’s recently completed his MBA, was new blood in said social media gathering, and suggested tonight, in a tweet accompanied by a “smiley face” and all, that I should blog about the Art of Marketing conference. And really. How could I resist a smiley face?
The Art of Marketing brought us some very high-caliber speakers:
- Mitch Joel, President of Twist Image, speaker and author of “Six Pixels of Separation”;
- Bill Taylor, Co-Founder of Fast Company and author of “Practically Radical”;
- Avinash Kaushik, one of the only men in the world for whom I’d cook dinner (the other ones being my Dad, my Beau and David Gray), author of “Web Analytics 2.0″ and “Web Analytics: An Hour a Day”; Digital Marketing Evangelist at Google and Co-Founder of Market Motive;
- Gary Vaynerchuk, author of “The Thank You Economy” and “Crush It!”
- Guy Kawasaki, a Canadian in a Hawaiian’s body, hockey aficionado, and co-founder of Alltop.com. Guy has been the chief evangelist of Apple and is the author of several books, the latest of which being “Enchantment”
There were several great takeaways from the event. I would require a very, very long post to assimilate all the great insight in one single entry, so I shall cover only one — it being the very first point that was brought to us, by no other than Ron Tite, the Master of Ceremonies at the conference. He’s the Vice President, Innovation Practice at Euro RSCG, and a speaker in his own right.
