You will have seen from my recent posts (1, 2, 3) that I have been attending the Gestalt IT Tech Field Days in Silicon Valley, home of all computer nerds.
Unlike your normal conferences and vendor events the Gestalt IT Tech Field days take a different approach to engaging with the vendor community. As I quoted previously :
This unique event brings together innovative IT product vendors and independent thought leaders who have immense influence on the ways that products and companies are perceived and understood by the general public. The world of media has changed, with social media and blogging gaining special importance.
Our Field Day is an opportunity for tech companies and independent writers to get to know each other. Ultimately, we hope to provide a forum for engagement, education, hands-on experience, and feedback.
However now that I am actually here in person I have been able to witness just how well it has worked. One of the vendors doubled their daily website traffic. The amazing thing was that this was the day before we came, and it was no small company. That just shows you how much engaging right can create value all round. On the flip side, at the same company, we got to challenge their CEO, head of marketing and Chief Architect around product and engagement complaints from the community, some of which were coming in over Twitter whilst we were talking!
I took the chance to get Stephen Foskett, the organizer of the event, the man behind it all (with the great help of many others) to briefly share his thoughts. I don't think he has slept much in the last week so he did well to be coherent late on the last night when I put him on the spot without notice.
Look to see my posts over the next while with some more technical details, the good, bad and the ugly about what we experience over the two days.
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