Internet Strategy Forum Summit 2009

This is not my typical post, but interesting for many of us all the same...
I had the opportunity to attend the Internet Strategy Forum Summit on Thursday July 23rd, 2009, and these are from my notes and some relevant and related links. Don't take the gaps in my notes as a sign of unimportant content -- rather I volunteered at the event, which distracted me some times, and of course I networked with friends and colleagues, which created other distractions. For only $200, this is an event was and has always been well worth the cost.

(Speaker list: http://www.internetstrategyforum.org/events/Internet_Strategy_Forum_Summit_2009_Agenda_as_of_07-14-09.pdf.)

Katherine Durham, HP, VP of Marketing, Imaging & Printing Group

Shifting the Digital Marketing Mindset to Harness the power of an Integrated Approach

"Flat is the new up."

"If content is king, context is queen"

Marketing Mix by Stage in Funnel: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremiah_owyang/3749801824/.

See notes at from Sarena Regazzoni: http://ow.ly/15ICLg.

And notes from Jeremiah Owyang, Forrester, who spoke later: http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2009/07/23/how-hp-integrates-digital-and-social-kathy-durham-vp-marketing/.


Sheila Tolle, Intuit

Combining eCommerce and Community: It’s a new normal and there is no going back.

People have always talked, now it's just quicker and permanent

B2B is still B2C, i.e. person-to-person

In their QuickBooks client, they have integrated their community. Looks similar to the Help window that emerges on the right next to MS Office products -- easy to open/close; right next to the product you're working with. [Seems like something we should add to our product roadmap.]

5 Recommendations for Social Media

1. Listen
2. Become part of the community
3. Live your higher purpose, i.e. see your mission statement -- its not just about selling widgets
4. Create amazing experiences
5. Embraces the chaos
   

Social Media. Start listening and have a response strategy -- be there ahead of time, so if you need to respond (to something negative that has gone viral), you're prepared. See this for an example: http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-dominos-2009-4. In this case, Dominos was ready.

Social is an opportunity to hear from your customers and it's so much cheaper than bringing in a bunch of customers for testing.

Also see notes from Sarena Regazzoni at: http://ow.ly/15ICLg.


Lisa Welchman, Founding Partner, WelchmanPierpoint

A Gossamer Ceiling for Corporate Internet Executives?

[I used to listen to a podcast she produced on content management. I think she's very competent and knowledgeable in her field.]

Lisa discussed some of the findings from the ISF annual survey on Internet Strategists -- her company sponsored the research.

And back to basics: Be systematic about your web / digital work

1. Develop a strategy
2. Must have web governance. It's what makes thinks like Wikipedia work.
3. Success requires (execution)
   
1. Product Manager
2. Program Management
4. Measure

Jeremiah Owyang, Sr. Analyst Social Media, Forrester

Between these two posts, it seems to cover what he covered in his presentation.

Contextual Ads Blog post: http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2009/06/18/contextual-ads-based-off-social-network-profile-twitter-and-facebook/


Emerging Social Eras (read blog post on this at: http://blogs.forrester.com/marketing/2009/04/the-future-of-the-social-web-in-five-eras.html)

1. [missed it]
2. Social application framework
1. B2B on LinkedIn
2. Go to where your customers are
3. Corporate websites fragment to communities
3. Social colonization: your friends go with you
   
1. You use Facebook Connect or OpenID instead of your own sign-on solution / How you get Leads will be different, but the accurracy will be much better
2. Whether you want it or not, your site will have a community around it; when a user visits, they can see/get feedback about it from their network
3. See Yahoo!s new home page (http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremiah_owyang/3743073022/in/photostream/ - and old: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremiah_owyang/3743073244/in/photostream/) that just launched as an early example -- Portals are embedded within the Yahoo! Portal.
4. Social Context
   
1. Social contracts - user opts in for exchange of something else
5. Social Commerce: comunities define furuter products

Johan Jervoe, VP of Creative & Digital Marketing, Intel

Consumers will/are deciding how they want to consume information

Differentiation is as much about doing things differently as it is about doing different things.


Vendor ROI Panel

Craig Macdonald, Covario
Phil Lodico, FairWinds Partners
Justin Kistner, WebTrends
Eric Atkisson, FatWire
Jeff Cram, iSite Design

Craig Macdonald got the conversation really going over how businesses waste so much time of their own and vendors with long RFPs. They have gotten so bad that he no longer responds. This led to a lot of good conversation, which brought out important points about knowing your use cases before shopping for a vendor. Made me think about how bad most organizations are with requirements gathering.

Some advise / lessons did emerge (which weren't new to me), including:

1. Start small (but with the end in mind).
2. Don't over buy technology.


1. Save some fo the money to help you install, configure, operationalize.
2. Don't buy features and functions that you wont use for another 2 or 3 years. Priorities will change, and what you thought you would need, many never come.


3. Everyone thinks they're different, so they think they need a custom solution, which increases cost, but typically has low return. Our brand, our product, our message may be different, but the systems and how we manage our business is the same.

Phil Lodico, Managing Partner, FairWinds Partners and VP, CADNA - The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse

[Phil was a sponsor, and had a short 3 minute spot. I also spoke with him later.]

ICANN is pushing to open the TLD (top-level domain, such as .com and .org) space to a virtually unlimited number. They want to sell these to the top bidder. For example, Chase could buy .bank and therefore have a URL of http://chase.bank. The question is, what happens to BoA, Citi, and other banks? If this goes forward, the likely scenario to play out would cost companies billions of dollars. It is the belief of CADNA that the only winners are ICANN and cyber squatters.

[This reminds me a lot of the net neutrality issues, and I expect that I'll be doing some more research and discovering around this. Watch for a potential post in the future on this subject.]

Duane Schultz, VP of Interactive Marketing, Xerox

1. Web experience must cover the entire integrated experience before its put on the website. i.e. just a web page without the strategy and supporting processes will not get on the site.
2. Build standards. Takes labor and time.
   (see Lisa Welchman: #2 Web Governance -- #1 and #2 seem to be talking at that point.)
3. Measure the results end-to-end.

Chris Dill, CIO, Portland Trailblazers

Lots of technology happening. Current project will use CMS to run menu screens in Rose Garden. Provides flexibility to do more than menus. e.g.

1. Brand menu for event
2. Remove beer off of menu after 3rd quarter, since that is when they quit selling
3. After the game, replace with arrows to exit and promos for upcoming events

CRM is a new and important technology for sports teams

Have moved Courtside Monday night to be delivered over the Internet. Cost reduction and wider reach for Blazers. I like because I can see the video version without having Comcast.

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Needless to say, there was a wealth of information and networking. This is a Twitter stream graph for the #isf09 tag: http://www.flickr.com/photos/caseorganic/3750563314/sizes/o/. You get an idea of the popular topics and speakers.