This week we attend the Inbound Marketing Summit in Boston at Gillette Stadium.  The guys at New Marketing Labs did a great job of putting together a quality conference.

For us, it was great to meet people that we’ve connected with online and put a face with a name as well as meet a lot of new people that we can learn from.

As with all conferences, there were a few hits and a few misses but I’m sure that everyone has a different take on what those were.

Some of the panels and presentations that really stood out and offered value to us were:

• “Turning Social Into Steak – How to Isolate and Evaluate Social Media Performance” by Chris Penn at Edvisors
• “Startup Marketing: Tips From the Trenches for Entrepreneurs” by Dharmesh Shah at HubSpot
• “World Without Media: What Will Fill the Void” by Paul Gillin at Paul Gillin Communications
• “How To Build Effective Email Marketing Programs” by the guys at iContact, Email Data Source, and RatePoint
• “Marketing Convergence: The Realization of High Tech and High Touch in Today’s Social Environment” by John Jantsch at Duct Tape Marketing
• “The Social Inbox: Extending the Reach of Email” by Greg Cangialosi at Blue Sky Factory

I’ve linked to their presentations where available. Brian Solis also introduced a visual of the Social Media Compass which will be in his new book next year.

I’ve also added some of the pics we took at the conference and networking event here.  Included in those pics is one of the best ads I’ve seen in a long time from Kaspersky.

Finally, I managed to snag one of the 50 early copies of Dharmesh Shah’s new “Inbound Marketing” book.  I’ll probably do a review of that in the near future.

Last night we attended a great event hosted by Social Media Club Chicago and crowdSPRING (@crowdspring) at their new office.  The drinks and food were out and there was a great panel discussing Chicago’s hospitality Social Media scene that included:

• Theresa Carter from The Local Tourist, @thelocaltourist
• Andrew Mason from Groupon, @groupon
• Mike Evans, GrubHub.com, @grubhub
• Dawn Reiss, @dawnreiss

It’s always great to catch up and meet with other Chicago entrepreneurs.  By the way, crowdSPRING’s new office is SWEEET.  They definitely raised the standards for the ideal startup office.  Congrats to them.

You can see all of our pics here.

In the spirit of, “All work and no play…”, some of our team ran the Race To Wrigley 5K this Saturday.  If you live in Chicago and haven’t heard of it, it’s only in its fourth year.  The hardest part was getting up for an 8am race on a Saturday morning.  The crowd was good, the weather was perfect for running and everyone had a great time.  Part of the race actually went through the Wrigley Field concourse.

After our Race to Wrigley, we all raced to Rebel’s for brunch and a reward beverage or two.  We were surprised to see that it was the only bar on Clark that opened for the race and the place was packed with runners and their supporters.

Our team is always up for a 5K that ends in beverages and/or a band so if you’re another small business in Chicago and want to get together for a race, let us know.

Today, we attended MarketingProfs’ Digital Marketing World conference.  As with most professional conferences, we;

• Met other professionals with similar interests and exchanged cards
• Visited vendor booth on the exhibition floor, chatted with them, and saw what they had to offer
• Put in our information at some booths for prizes or SWAG
• Saw some great speakers and presentations along with a few OK ones.

 The difference is that we attended this conference from our desks as this conference was virtual.  I know what you’re thinking, “Virtual? C’mon.”  It’s not like some Sims or Second Life thing where you create some tricked out avatar and it shows you walking around, sitting down, or back in your hotel room sleeping off your fun from the previous night through one or more of the presentations you thought you could skip.

The expo was powered by another Chicago company called InXpo.  The site allows vendors to create booths and distribute materials, people to chat, email, and exchange cards (.vcf files), and presenters to give presentations from multiple locations to hundreds of people.  All in all, I was pretty impressed with InXpo and MarketingProfs for how it was organized.

While I am still an advocate of meeting people in person when possible, there are definitely some advantages to attending a virtual event:

1. T&E costs are much lower. Try $0. Great for most 2009 budgets.
2. No lost time getting too and from the event.
3. Much more of a “green” way to attend an event
4. It keeps you focused on why you’re there and what you want to get out of it
5. Instead of rudely trying to sneak a few emails in on your blackberry during a presentation and thinking others don’t notice, you can type away on your laptop without annoying anyone else.

I can definitely see this as a trend for some conferences or by organizations like MarketingProfs that have numerous events a year and are fully aware that their communities can only afford to attend so many in person.  As with all events, the key will be to make sure that there’s quality content and networking opportunities for attendees as well as the opportunity for those that buy booths and present to reach their target audience.

With that said, there will never be as many funny stories or genuine connections that real world conferences (sometimes induced/assisted by after-parties with alcohol) allow for.  I believe that virtual events will end up being a great supplement for professionals to coordinate and get together in between the annual quality events we all look forward to.

Last week definitely ended on a high note.  Thursday night, we were one of the demos at TECH cocktail 10, which took place at a very packed John Barleycorn’s in Wrigleyville.  Over 500+ people attended. Not only was it a great event to get the word out on our site, but it was great experience for getting our pitch down.  When you’ve got less then two minutes to explain/yell what you do and how you add value in a crowded bar, you’ve got to make every word count.  We made a lot of new contacts, heard about some great companies, and went through a lot of cards, even if you exclude what Ron May took.  It was a great event and we want to give a big thanks to Eric, Frank, the TC team and all of the sponsors.  If you want to see what you missed, there are some pics of the event here. 

Friday night we made it out to the Facebook Developer Garage Chicago event at Where I’ve Been’s office in Bucktown.  The night started off with drinks, food, and socializing and then went into the presentations.  Sachin Agarwal gave the first talk on how Dawdle uses Facebook with the blunt finesse that only he can pull off in a crowded room.  Jennifer Beese, the Social Network Manager at The Printed Blog, followed up after that.  Ben Parr gave one of the best (and loudest) presentations I’ve seen in awhile and then Luke Shepard, of Facebook, talked about Facebook and how to best use Facebook Connect.  For those interested, there was a cool sidebar with Keith Schacht, from Crafted Fun and Craig Ulliott, from Where I’ve Been.  As two of the top Facebook apps out there, they both shared a lot of good ideas and lessons learned.  Thanks to the team at Where I’ve Been for being great hosts. 

It’s awesome that events like these are continuing to grow in Chicago and we’re glad to be a part of them.