Day One – Hospitality ‘suite’ and the first educational session.
We got to the Orlando Convention Center pretty early to get to the hospitality suite, and for me to meet, in person finally, Todd Baker from Masterworks who I was co-presenting with at the first educational session. Like all convention centers, this one is pretty huge and even before we made it to the suite I was tired. Many other conventions going on at the same time. Some Tae Kwon Do thing, a “Magical Classic” (no idea what this is,) some Monster Truck thing, and a few thousand little Goth kids running around in Hall C at MegaCon (I think some online gamer/sci-fi/anime thing.)
Education Session 1 – Creating an Integrated Web Strategy, a session that by title alone would never meet everyone’s expectations.
I met with Todd in the cavernous room we were presenting in so that we could do a walkthrough of the presentation and make sure we wouldn’t look like the typical executives looking at a mouse for the first time like it was some foreign object. Todd uses Microsoft Office 2007 – which after seeing, I realized that my life wouldn’t be satisfying until I had my very own copy as well. I’m sure it will crash my machine, but I want it.
Our session had about 60 people in attendance, could have been more I don’t really remember. I have a huge stack of business cards though. Thanks to everyone for attending. About halfway through the presentation my cold got much, much worse and I think i had a fever and it was as though someone stuffed my ears with cotton and I couldn’t hear myself. (which, if you sat in the same room as me, or across the office, you would realize this was pretty serious.) Todd focused a lot on integrating channels for fundraising and had some very informational slides that even taught me a lot; I spoke a bit about our Guiding Principles for Effective Online Communication, and some testing we have been doing for the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (download the PDF case study). It’s very hard to talk about the topic of ‘integration’ because this is something that means so many different things depending on your role in a ministry or organization. I think we got a good bit of it covered, but we could have talked for several more hours. Todd and I are both ‘talkers.’
One plug for Todd – he has a great article in this month’s issue of Fundraising success (www.fundraisingsuccessmag.com) and a book coming out soon. You should read both. Especially if you are a fundraiser for a ministry or humanitarian organization.
The session ended with many people coming up to the podium and talking to Todd, Duncan and me. I was thinking of how Fedor and I were going to be integrating the booth with so many others in just a short time.
