A Digital Marketing Week Extravaganza in New York
Along with a couple hundred other people, I was at the artsy 92Y Tribeca in NYC last night on Hudson St. listening to Pete Cashmore of Mashable and Steve Rubel of Edelman Digital talk about social media. As the social media panel was concluding (Cashmore was moderating), there was a question from the audience that got the panel into a little bit of playful one-upmanship on whether the place to be for digital marketing is NY or the Bay Area. Steve is clearly a New Yorker – through and through, while Pete’s accent sounds as if he is originally from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, otherwise known as the Pond here.
And I collided with a few former and always interestingly-challenging former colleagues of mine via Sun Microsystems, one of whom also lived in SF (lives in NYC today) and another who went to Stanford. It’s funny how this pseudo-diatribe over a little geography can stimulate so much intellectual and geographical fervor.
Although I lived in San Francisco for 7 years – and it’s still my favorite city outside of New York – it was pretty hard to compete with all the goings on around marketing and technology- at least for this week – in NY.
For me at least, it started with 2 days at the distinguished Hudson Theater in the Millennium Hotel where Federated Media managed to do it up by having their Summit on Conversational Marketing (aka social media). Quite a few West-Coasters were there including their own CEO from the Bay Area’s Marin County, John Battelle, as well as Reid Hoffman, CEO of LinkedIn, a VP of Marketing for Intel, etc, etc. It was this kind of bi-coastal digital marketing interaction that made the week that much more stimulating.
Monday night actually ended with me attending my MENG, Marketing Executives Network Group, meeting at the Met Life Building where I listened to the CEO of Crenshaw Communications discuss the latest issues and trends in Public Relations. But more on PR in another blog as it’s worthy of one.
This week is Internet Week NY, so catch some of it if you still can, as it actually ends Monday night the 8th. It’s great to be part of an environment that is hi-energy and on point when it comes to the world of media and communications. And I must admit, there is a big piece of me that is still San Francisco.
Enjoy everyone!
