Given my role as Conference Director for Australia's most significant open source conference next year - linux.conf.au - I decided to attend AIME, and was lucky enough to be accepted as a Victorian Hosted Buyer. Being a Hosted Buyer is an interesting mix of perks and obligations, but I got a lot out of it, and have some fresh ideas on how 'to do' expo.
Kathy Sierra recently spoke about merging the strategies of education and marketing, which was probably the spark that has brought me to consider merging the kind of marketing the MICE sector does, with the kind of marketing we in the small business tech sector do. Her latest blog entry talks about the "loveocracy success secret", which is a pretty fundamental concept. What's good for users (or customers, or clients) should also be what's good for the business.
I've been going on about the importance of business as experience for a while now, and am convinced that 'events' are an important foundation for building value for our clients and customers. They are also an important avenue for our own
professional and business development.
I'm going to put my thinking hats on and see how I can turn my experience at AIME into a positive action strategy for OSIA's involvement at OpenCebit.
