Experiential Marketing
Event Launch & Management | Unconferences | Booth Design & Sponsorship management | Workshops & Training | Awards programs & Special Events | Customer Advisory Board meetings
I have more than a decade of live event management experience. I started in event content, working with conference advisory boards, editorial contacts and marketing to set event positioning and content for a series of conferences focused on the software development community, I recruited industry experts as speakers, designed custom experiences and extended the events' footprint beyond the onsite experience, into online content and training. By 2009, I was the general manager / conference director for the SD Events group, leading the entire cross-functional team behind 3 large-scale events a year, while advising other divisions on conference best practices.
At Conteneo and the Innovation Games® Company, I managed both our training business and marketing. Our marketing mix included a sizable quotient of face-to-face and virtual events, including annual user conferences, certification workshops, webinars, unconferences and meetups. In 2015, I launched the global unconference program Playcamp, as a marketing vehicle to build our global community of collaboration architects. In 2015, there were 11 Playcamps in 10 cities around the world, including London, Paris, Vienna, San Francisco and Santiago, Chile.
I also have experience on the agency side, having worked in corporate marketing and communications for the experiential marketing agency Immersa Marketing and Champion Exposition Services, then part of Wheelhouse Solutions, now part of FreemanXP.
At Conteneo and the Innovation Games® Company, I managed both our training business and marketing. Our marketing mix included a sizable quotient of face-to-face and virtual events, including annual user conferences, certification workshops, webinars, unconferences and meetups. In 2015, I launched the global unconference program Playcamp, as a marketing vehicle to build our global community of collaboration architects. In 2015, there were 11 Playcamps in 10 cities around the world, including London, Paris, Vienna, San Francisco and Santiago, Chile.
I also have experience on the agency side, having worked in corporate marketing and communications for the experiential marketing agency Immersa Marketing and Champion Exposition Services, then part of Wheelhouse Solutions, now part of FreemanXP.
Sponsorship program & booth design
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The Every Voice Engaged Foundation was a silver sponsor for the Agile 2015 conference. As a nonprofit focused on helping communities solve wicked and technical problems through collaborative civic engagement, we wanted our booth and sponsorship program to reflect our values.
Instead of focusing on an individual organization, we created a community collaboration booth, spotlighting 13 of the organizations we have worked with on civic engagement projects. The low-cost booth design was inspired by Lucy's Psychiatric booth from the Peanut's Cartoon. To drive interest during the event (and after), we conducted onsite, on-air interviews with our booth partners about the mission of Every Voice Engaged and how they are supporting it's initiatives. The project also included a keynote from our executive director, online engagement before the event through a 24-hour day of online forums on civic engagement using Conteneo's Idea Engine platform, and digital and social marketing efforts. |
Event Design & Production
I've organized large-scale conferences and trade shows (200+ sessions and expo floors), unconferences, executive summits, customer meetings, workshops and training classes, working on the entire event lifecycle, from conception to execution. Here are a few examples.
Playcamp: A global, community-driven unconference series.
Executive Summits & User Conferences
At Conteneo & the Innovation Games Company, I organized annual user conferences, executive summits and focused workshops (on such topics as Civic Engagement and Serious Games) to build brand awareness, generate leads and build community ties.
In February 2016, we hosted a two-day summit at Microsoft's Silicon Valley campus, focused on civic engagement and technology. The event preceded, the 5th participatory budgeting event that Conteneo and the Every Voice Engaged Foundation had produced for the City of San José, CA.
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We held three Innovation Games Summits in Silicon Valley, Amsterdam, and Lehi, Utah, focusing on the Innovation Games community and how leading organizations were putting the techniques to work.
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Conferences & Tradeshows
I was the conference director / general manager for the SD Events Group, organizing 3-4 conferences and roadshows a year for the software development market -- the largest of which had 2000+ attendees. I started out in content, working with the advisory board and marketing team to come up with the event focus and recruiting industry leaders to create and present sessions. By 2009, I was the general manager, managing a cross-functional team that handled everything from logistics to sale and marketing to content.
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Events that my team managed and/or launched included:
Want to know what SD West was like?Check out the highlight real from 2008 (and see how far video of production has come). This week-long conference for software developers, featured more than 200 technical sessions in 13 tracks, and featured a co-located joint venture Stroustrup & Sutter on C++. It was the go-to conference for technical training for more than 20 years.
SD West 2008 HighlightsPosted by Dr. Dobb's Events on Monday, May 5, 2008 |
