It never entered my mind that buried somewhere inside of me was a “geek” waiting to jump out—until yesterday.  I was hired by JHG just three short months ago, with a long track record of marketing and client relations in the traditional side of media, having spent nine years in radio marketing and sales, but with a passion for the digital space.  So, as any great company would do to put their employees in the best position for success and to enhance learning, they sent me to the 2010 San Diego Interactive Day.

Each session allowed me to walk away with an enormous amount of information related to the digital space.  I was a sponge when Joel Book from Exact Target discussed email strategy and his Triangle Offense of “search to attract, web to engage, then email to serve” process and was fascinated by the geo-fencing mobile marketing opportunity discussion by Placecast’s Denny Reinert (which brings me to recollect— it was right then that my inner geek really started to surface). But my favorite session by far was the luncheon keynote speaker, Paul Ollinger, Western Region VP of Sales for Facebook.  The presentation was engaging, had timely and relevant topics and he had the best quote of the day when the topic of privacy was questioned — “When you get a landline, your name, phone number and address are put into a book that’s put on everyone’s doorstep”.  Like many of us during that session, I laughed—out loud!

Marketing goals are essentially the same no matter what platform is used, but the endless opportunity that the digital marketing platform provides has opened my eyes to a whole new world.  All in all, it was a great day of learning and I certainly couldn’t help but to become a self-proclaimed “geek” after spending a day surrounded by and listening to hundreds of them.