Brian J. Link

I attended the uHeart Digital Media event at the University of Toledo yesterday even though, as a programmer by trade, I am not exactly the target demographic they were probably trying to reach. There was plenty of talk throughout the day about social media and marketing concepts which, while somewhat useful to my everyday work life, are mostly the kinds of things my clients handle internally or through other providers.

With that caveat in mind, I did enjoy most of the day and I wanted to write down coherent thoughts before it was too late and everything skipped my mind. Also, this post might be worth revisiting next year in case UT puts on the event again and I can compare and contrast any changes.

Complaints

My biggest gripes were with a few speakers in particular but since everything you write about someone on the Internet is indexed I’m not going to mention any of them by name. Instead here’s a few minor things I wish would have been done differently:

• There were at least two sessions where I personally knew local people in the room who had more experience and knowledge about the discussion topic than the speaker did. I wish some of them had been approached about presenting.
• This probably shows my bias against marketing people in general, who I feel all talk this way for a living, but there was a lot of generic and vague discussion in some of the sessions. I wish there would have been more practical advice and examples, like Mike Bott gave (more on this later), in some of the talks instead of buzzwords and generalities.
• Last, and defnitely least, is that the sheets of paper for grading each speaker have to go if they do this again. That whole process should just be handled with a form on a website somewhere that I can fill out at my leisure. You could have whipped that up in the time it took them to ask for and collect hard copies after each session.

Compliments

I thought, just from a logistical standpoint, that the University did a very nice job of putting the whole day together. Check-in was easy, everything and anything you needed was close by and the facilities for each speaker were nice. Since I moved to Toledo a few years ago most of my time on campus has been directly related to which basketball or football game was being played that day so it was nice to see a bit more of what’s available aside from Savage Arena, the Glass Bowl and the parking lots in between.

As for the speakers, I enjoyed Fulter Hong and Ben Bator’s opening talks. Hong’s Q & A portion included some technical answers about analytics and PPC campaigns that I wish he would have had more time to go in depth about. I would imagine, given the crowd in attendance, I would be in the minority who would find that interesting though. David Hunke promised to give a presentation, and not a speech, during the lunchtime session and then proceeded to give a speech anyway but I still thought it was well done.

Of all the talks I attended, I would say that Mike Bott’s was by far the best. He gave lots of practical and useful advice that, to a marketing person, was probably basic stuff but I found it interesting and legitimately useful even to my business as a programming gun for hire. He was also one of only a few sessions I went to that seemed to use and get the most out of the time he was allotted.

I didn’t attend the Pitch and Pour event but my experience from 8:30 in the morning to 4:00 in the afternoon was well worth my time.

TL;DR Summary

4/5. Would go again.

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