I spent the last day-and-a-half at the AAAA conference. Some random observations:

• Lots of discussions about how they deliver advertising between all the entities in the advertising food chain. XML mentioned a lot. Every mention of XML accompanied by an apology for the “techno-geek speak”.
• Nobody allowed to sit on the floor near the outlets. Was told this is a fire hazard. Either a) they’re wrong, b) they’re lying, c) the tech conferences I’ve been to at the Venetian don’t enforce that rule. I’m assuming it’s C.
• Internet access? $200 for 2 days from the approved “Sands Expo Exhibitor Network” provider. I’m not kidding. And my cel is getting no reception so I assume that a wireless data card would fare no better to circumvent this insanity. I suppose that’s targeting the people with booths where it makes slightly more sense. But what are attendees supposed to do?
• Jim Stengel, the Global Marketing Officer from Procter and Gamble was one of the best speakers at the event. You’d think that the quality of the presentations might be higher at a conference for communications professionals. But that aside, Jim was not only a good speaker, but what he had to say resonated deeply. His main message was that marketers have to move from “telling and selling” to “building relationships”. He went on to say that the best way to build relationships with audiences was to be authentic, be generous, and build community. His slide deck pretty much laid out like the Jackson Fish Market business plan. It was reassuring watching him exhort the folks in the room to get on board. After all, our goal is to make software that forms a deep relationship with the people using it. We feel confident that brand advertisers will want to be a coherent part of that equation.
• Lots of weird internal politics. Every other session people were urging the audience members to agree on some standard or another (from how they deliver invoices to each other to standards for consistently measuring returns on video advertising across tv, the internet, and other mediums).
• Even though I met lots of cool folks/good contacts I’m not sure I would come next year. While the show is an Agency show it felt like for every person who represented an ad agency there were five people representing companies who wanted to sell their services or product to ad agencies (me included).

Unsurprisingly, most of the conference felt like the folks in the advertising industry (as represented by the conference program) were very interally focused on the details of how they operate their business. The only aspirational discussion and innovative thinking that I saw came from Jim Stengel’s talk and the folks from Chrysler who discussed a cross-media ad campaign they did for their trucks. The conference attendees I questioned about this seemed in agreement that the conference was very internally focused.

Super interesting to see another industry from an outsider’s perspective. I’ve really only been to geek conferences so this was a learning experience.