I’m thrilled I was able to travel to Chicago last week to not only enjoy the post-election night buzz, but also to attend the luncheon hosted by BMA Chicago on Thursday, Nov 6, 2008. I achieved my main objective of inviting the keynote speaker to come to Seattle to basically duplicate the event for the Puget Sound American Marketing Association during the early part of 2009.
The primary focus of the almost five hour event was what I’m now calling “Learning to Love LinkedIn.” That’s my made-up name for it, because it gives you a better idea as to what the day was about. I think they actually called it something along the lines of “LinkedIn: A Collaborative Nexus for B-to-B Marketers.”
The event included a keynote, 1-on-1 coaching sessions (before and after the lunch/keynote), onsite networking and a special drilldown session they marketed as “focused on educating executives about the strategic and tactical value of LinkedIn.” While Patrick Crane, LinkedIn’s VP of Marketing & Advertising, did a great job for all the newbies in the room as the keynote speaker (and there were plenty), the poor guy (Steve Patrizi) that had to follow Patrick wasn’t left with a heck of a lot of content to cover for the drilldown attended by mostly non-newbies right after.
The small group of us that attended the event together was made up of what I’ll call “power users,” so most of what was covered was pretty much old news to us. Therefore, we ended up bailing before the Q&A portion of the post-lunch drilldown session was over and made our way across the street to discuss the day. I’ll share some of our musings in a future post, but until then, you can find some pix from the event here. I’m all for anything that has to do with increasing adoption and usage of LinkedIn, so the day was definitely worth my time. 🙂