@ ad:tech singapore, june 9-10

update:

• Thanks to @misenscene for sharing his Twitter analysis on the ad:tech show. Go here to download!
• Found @mashable's 8 Ways to Create Paperless Business Cards. Exactly what I needed! I could have made use of this at the show. ><

The ad:tech Singapore ended after two days of keynotes, panels, and workshops, touching on the hottest trending topic in the digital marketing world. There were a number of interesting topics I wanted to join in, but unfortunately, it's still a normal work day for me and I only hold a free visitor pass, so I'm usually out after the first keynote presentation of the day. :\

Don't know what the ad:tech show is? Visit www.adtech.com.

My experience

Considerably my first "official" attendence at a conference, which I went in Cellcity's name but didn't have any name cards to exchange! ><; Yes, so the one thing that I failed most at this show is networking. & What a great opportunity to meet lots of people with the same passion! Definitely need to get my cards made for the next show.

* Many of the tweeps I was following were there too, like @claudia10 and @belindaang, but didn't find a chance to say hi. :\

Part of the reason was probably because my attendence was a "last-minute" thing. I only learned about the show a week ago. It was much related to the online/social media direction that Cellcity is going into, so there wasn't much of an "agenda," just listening in to see what can be learned. I took more of a personal interest attitude to the show, but it did help me to rethink certain issues of Twitter and of social media/mobile marketing in general.

The two keynotes I attended were:

• Digital Consumers & Interactive Marketing in Asia Pacific - The State Of Play by Steven Noble, senior analyst at Forrester Research (jun 2)
• The Power of Digital Branding through the Lens of the Obama Campaign by Scott Goodstein, external online director for Barrack Obama's presidential campaign (jun 3)

My thoughts

Digital Consumers & Interactive Marketing in Asia Pacific - The State Of Play
As the opening keynote of the show, I was a little disappointed with the quality of the presentation, to be honest. While it might have been a good statistical introduction to businesses outside of this trade, I think the insiders would expect a little more insight on the future trending of digital marketing. Steven also appeared to have a specific focus on China and Australia, rather than Asia Pacific in broad, throughout his speech. Perhaps a quick comparison with the trends in North America or the Europe might be an interesting addition to the presentation? Or so I thought..

Still, there were some interesting numbers and consumer profiles to share. And the discussion session (interview + q&a) was a lot more exciting - specifically on the use of social media and mobile marketing! I always enjoyed Don Knox's (VP of ad:tech Global) interview sessions, where he posed key hot questions displaying his clear understanding of the audience and the objectives of the show.

You can download Steven's presentation here.

The Power of Digital Branding through the Lens of the Obama Campaign
I'm sure you've heard a lot of talking about the success Obama Campaign by leveraging the online media, social networks in particular. Much expectations were generated around this talk, and I thought the outcome was a satisfiable one. Scott talked about various key factors in engaging social media and mobile in campaigns, the evolution of online marketing and where it's headed to, using his experience in the Obama Campaign as core case study. In the q&a, he also gave strong advice to young businesses who were still rather new in social media marketing. My favorite word from Scott - tastemakers.

Read about @bleongcw's interview with Scott here.

There was another small talk by the Global CEO of Acronym Media (one of the sponsors) - Anton Konikoff. Real straight to the point, Anton gave his audience compact but valuable and insightful overview of the search marketing revolution(-ing) and the impact of social media, based off their Global KDM (keyword-driven marketing) Officer's - Mike Grehan - new whitepaper New Signals to Search Engines.

The whitepaper is available for download here.

Twitter intervention
Now here is a real-time great example of the power of Twitter and microblogging. The best of ad:tech Singapore were live on Twitter! All thanks to @claudia10, @uniquefrequency, @summerisque, @danielgoh, @youareonvisual, and @armchairdude for filling me up on the discussions I missed out on. :)

You can still read the old tweets on #adtechasia. Other great tools life streaming are TweetGrid and twazzup. Try them out the next time!