Recently digital marketers such as myself flocked to Boston to attend the Mecca of marketing conferences, Inbound. When you distill it down, Inbound encourages marketers to provide value to people, not blast interruptive marketing messages. At Brilliant Transportation, our marketing team is in charge of creating content that event planners find helpful and useful, typically around event transportation. However, I figured since this was my first time attending a major conference it would be helpful to provide my insights as an attendee to you.
What Enhanced the Event's Experience
The Inbound App
As we were voyaging to Boston I thought it would be proactive to go online and start jotting down all the sessions I wanted to attend accompanied by room number, date, and time. Turns out that was a huge waste of time because HubSpot designed an app for just that. Within the app I was able to sort through session types, routing (BCEC is HUGE), and add sessions to my calendar. There were other functionalities to the app, but I found this one extremely helpful for seamlessly planning out my day.
Networking Area
In the center of the conference center was what HubSpot deems "Club Inbound." It served as the central meeting place for all attendees throughout the week. The area included lounge chairs, charging stations, music, food/drinks, and even masseuses. I was fortunate to network with some amazing people there including one of the smartest minds in marketing, Seth Godin.
Venue was Phenomenal
BCEC was an amazing venue, easily able to handle the 14,000 attendees this year. There was never a time where the flow of people felt congested or cramped. The conference center was so massive that at times it felt like I hiked 3 miles to reach my next session. Other than that, it was clean and easy to navigate. A+
Fun - Amy Schumer
(Picture via bizjournals.com)
There were times where I felt my head was going to explode from all the knowledge. From 8am to 6pm we were listening to the smartest people in marketing give their advice. To act as a release, HubSpot booked comedian Amy Shumer for the third night. Needless to say, her standup was hilarious and a nice spin on a week of educational learning.
Boston
I love Boston. The city is college-oriented and it seems like everyone there is trying to better themselves - I like that. Boston only has a little over 650,000 residents which is a nice change of pace for me coming from New York City. Also, the seafood is incredible. I enjoy myself every time I can make it to Beantown.
Social Media Engagement
Of course, a conference for marketers is going to have active social media engagement, but it goes to show how much social media can enhance an event. The main hashtag for the conference was #INBOUND15 where people could connect and share their experience. To mix it up HubSpot encourages a #HumansofInbound hashtag on Instagram for people to share their past and how they ended up where they are - a nice touch for networking and learning more about each other.
What Could be Improved
Overbooked Sessions
Probably the most frustrating part was not being able to see all the sessions I planned on attending. I think HubSpot could've done a better job over gauging attendee interest for certain sessions and placing those sessions in larger rooms. The overbooked sessions caused a few problems for me:
- I missed highly anticipated sessions
- I had to leave sessions early to attempt to beat the crowd
- I missed the valuable Q & A at the end of sessions
I will say that HubSpot recognized the problem during the event and started creating "encore" sessions for some of the most popular. However, those sessions overlapped others so it wasn't optimal.
Questionable Speakers
(Picture via bizjournal.com)
There were some points during the conference where I was questioning the relevance of some keynoters. I know HubSpot was going for "bigger than marketing" type speakers for the keynotes, but some still left me questioning. One example was HubSpot booking Aziz Ansari (my favorite comedian) for an early morning keynote to talk about his new book, Modern Romance. While I really enjoyed seeing him in person and even laughing at times (wasn't a standup routine), afterwards I felt like I didn't gain anything from it. I think more speakers like Seth Godin and Dan Pink would've enhanced the experience for me.
Transportation
Naturally, members of Brilliant would be more critical of event transportation than others. While we weren't expecting our level of service, we were disappointed in the taxi line on some nights. We decided not to call Uber because the surge pricing was 3x for the same product in our opinion. As a result we would walk a few blocks and hope to get lucky with a taxi. Like I said, we weren't expecting our level of service but we were expecting to get a clean taxi in under 30 minutes.
Overall, Inbound was an incredible experience and it's going to be hard for another event to top it in my opinion. I hope you found my attendee point of view helpful for planning your future events. Please subscribe to Brilliant's Event Planner Blog to receive useful content for planning your event.