Market Camp Silicon Valley

At the first marketing camp unconference in SV and it's good place to be. It was terrible to wake up in the 7am hour on Saturday, but the sheer number of people here sacrificing their Saturday represents both personal commitment and possible productivity pain.

I think this could be a great thematic direction for SVForum, as this was the first large scale marketing conference that I've seen where the egos were secondary to the learning. Like the unconferences for hacking and technology, this featured directed topics, lots of discussions, and Q&A. This was the place to learn what's on people's mind: What do marketing people think and worry about? What marketing issues are top of mind?

As a problem solver, it was fascinating to see what people consistently had questions about. What did I gather was the major direction? Marketing people, or at least people tasked with marketing, are saddled with tactical issues. Several of the sessions had topics covering strategy and planning, but most were limited by the generic for of "How do I do X" or why are things changing?

The undertone is that business is changing. Many of the "How To" questions were based on several areas that I followed:
- How do I best use Twitter?
- How do I best use Facebook?
- How do I measure return on effort and return on investment?
- How do I grow (users, engagement, customers, etc)

If I could take one thing away from this conference, marketing automation and the training around it is really solving problems. This particular audience seemed more tailored to startups, small business, and consultants, so the defacto vendor mentioned over and over again was hubspot. One caution here - several people stated that while hubspot was good to start, it was painful to leave.

I'll be looking for the final slides here.