#AdobeSummit Is Next Week

Every year, it seems, I hit a point where every analyst I know is dropping the question, “Are you going to Summit?” (“Summit” of course, is industry shorthand for Adobe Digital Marketing Summit.) For years, my shoulders have sagged each time the question is asked as I’ve responded, “Not this year.”

But…this year…I’m actually responding in the affirmative. And, through a stroke of fantastic good fortune (and, I’m convinced, some anonymous string-pulling on my behalf, but I have only suspicions and no hard data), I’m actually going to be a Summit Insider.

Michele Kiss (@michelejkiss) and I will be roaming the conference as digital correspondents for the event — tweeting (of course), interviewing attendees and various Adobe muckity-mucks, and reflecting on our experiences. In other words…doing what we like to do at analytics conferences even when we haven’t been tasked with the responsibility!

My Pre-Summit Predictions

I’ve never been to Summit, but I’ve certainly read posts, listened to podcasts, and had discussions about it to the point that I’m comfortable making some predictions:

• There will be some fantastic content (as I worked on my schedule, I was disappointed to find out that the Autoscheduler for the event was not able to open up rifts in the space-time continuum — I had three time slots where I desperately wanted to be in three sessions at once)
• There will be nuggets of wisdom (real wisdom here, people — not just pap cliches) from keynoters that I will not see coming at all
• Michele will out-tweet me by a ratio of at least 10:1 (It’s not a competition! But that’s what the loser always says, right?)
• I will get to catch up with a lot of friends (and will get to meet some of them in person for the first time!)
• I will be irked at least once by something someone at Adobe says (I’m generally a cranky person, so my irkedness is to be expected)
• I will be exhausted — mentally and physically — by the time I make my way to the airport on Friday morning (to head to SXSW…oh…lord…score me a restful flight, because “stamina” is not something that has increased with age!)

If You’re Going to Be at Summit

Please, please, please track me down. I’m easy to find. Whether or not I wear my Gilligan hat will be determined by the level of peer pressure exerted, but I’ll be keeping a close eye on my Twitter account, and I’m going to be disappointed (pissed, really) if I don’t come away with a few good “connected via Twitter” stories from the event.

If there’s something you would like to see Michele or me do that would make your Summit experience more interesting, entertaining, or noteworthy, please let us know! We have the loosest of reins (think Zoe Barnes after she left The Washington Herald for Slugline), the power of the digital pen, and a penchant for stepping a bit off the reservation if it seems like it would be fun to do so. And we have Michele’s legions of followers.

If You’re Not Going to Be at Summit

Hey! Part of the reason Adobe asked us to do this is that they’d love to have the Summit experience extend in a small way to those analysts who are unable to attend. If you’re on the Twitter, there are lots of ways to follow along:

• The Summit hashtag: #AdobeSummit 
• The Summit Twitter account: @AdobeSummit
  
• Michele’s twitter account: @michelejkiss
• My Twitter account: @tgwilson

And, of course, you can get fancy and combine the above into various Twitter searches (my favorite reference on that front is this TweetReach blog post).

But, if there’s something you think I could do that would give you a better remote experience, let me know!

Stay Tuned!

I’m excited about the event (as is evident from the schoolgirl-quantity volume of exclamation points in this post) and look forward to trying to wrap my brain around the experience and capture my thoughts in the moment and afterwards.