A Recap of MIMA Summit 2009

Yesterday was the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA) Summit 2009 called “Migrate” and it was not only incredibly well done, but there were over 1,000 attendees, the largest turnout for an event of this type I’ve yet seen in Minneapolis/St. Paul.

The Minnov8 team was there with a booth and a plan to liveblog the event, archived here in case you missed either the event or the liveblogging.

Before I continue, accolades are due to the vision of the MIMA board and the flawless execution of the event by Jen Kane and team at KaneConsulting. The only downside — outside of their control — was the unfortunate technical issues with Wifi which made our ability to liveblog the event one of the biggest challenges we’ve faced as a team covering a live event like this one (we had to use our iPhones and the intermittent connections to upload what turned out to be minimal content for your viewing).

We were incredibly pleased to have been the media partner for MIMA at this event and want to thank the board, staff and Jen Kane for

Reactions to the sessions were mixed based on the people I talked with: those who are experienced in interactive marketing and social media found many of the sessions to be quite basic and somewhat redundant (same stories heard over-n-over again like Dominos, Motrin Moms, Dell Hell, et al), while others with less experience absolutely found the sessions enlightening and filled with new information. One attendee from a Fortune 100 company said to me during a break, “I know most of what was said in (session name), but three things were presented that turned out to be completely new information, and my criteria for a successful event is learning ONE new thing in each session I attend. On that count alone, MIMA was a resounding success for me.” I felt the same way and, frankly, am eager to view the videos of sessions I missed and access the slide decks of the presenters since there is so much value that was delivered at MIMA Summit.

The Minnov8 team has yet to process the event in full, but a few thoughts come forth: it would be useful to understand specifically who attends, what their level of experience is, what organizations they work for and so on. In addition, it would be fantastic to see significantly more vendor attendance with booths and, possibly, a two-day event in order to ensure that people had time to migrate through the a vendor exposition. I know I’d hoped to hear A LOT more about analytics software and would’ve loved to have had a chance to talk in depth with makers of analytics software and services.

As always at these events, the people are what matter. It sure was fun to see many of the same folks as at other events and to meet new ones. After the jump are two things from Minnov8 team member Graeme Thickins you will find interesting and useful.

Four interviews by Graeme at the happy hour at the close of MIMA Summit ’09 (Listen to or download the mp3):

Graeme’s Flickr photoset: