Thinking about in-person events again?

It’s been over 2 years since I last attended an in-person conference! With the world we are in today moving from in-person to digital, I most definitely did not think I would feel the impact. After all, I’ve been working remotely now for over 5 years, and none of it was really new to me. Ironically, before the pandemic, I very much labeled myself an introvert who learnt extroverted characteristics. Nothing you could say or do would convince me otherwise. I knew that as a deep introvert, I had just learned how to exhibit extroverted tendencies which did great in convincing people that I was more social than I actually felt, HA! Call it pushing past my comfort zone, learning a new skill, developing and growing myself as a person, or whatever you’d like. To me, it was plain old nerve-wracking every time I had to be in large groups of people.

2 years ago, I attended anywhere from 1-3 events a month (in-person) and would almost always speak at every single one of them in some way shape, or form. Fast forward 2 years later, it’s a Friday afternoon, I’m wrapping up for the week, reading all my messages, and looking through my LinkedIn inbox. “DigiMarCon Speaking Selection”, the first line of the message reads. I pause for a minute, “what the hell is this… I most definitely do not remember applying to speak here”. “Congratulations! We are inviting you to speak at our upcoming event in Seattle on May 5”. I pause for a minute, knees weak, arms are heavy… ok, ok, ok, I’ll stop the Eminem lyrics now… but I paused, realized I had been talking about going to this conference a while back and now realized that I may have submitted an application to speak. “S**t I thought to myself, the event is in less than a week, I most definitely don’t have content ready to speak”. Realizing how busy I was getting at work, I thought this might not be the right time to re-engage with in-person events. It’s so much work, you have to prep your content, rehearse, get a designer to make your deck look somewhat presentable, and then you need to go through the nerves of presenting to a room full of random strangers who have no idea who you are, where you are from, and often can’t differentiate between my British sounding accent and good ole Aussies (Australian, people).

But here I was, “should I turn this down I thought”, seems only right given the season of life we are in right now (yes, I said we, I am a Gemini). Alright, let’s sit on it over the weekend and think about what you want to do. So off I went, into the wiles of the weekend, not remembering to even think about Digi, talk less of MarCon.

“Great, it’s Monday. I should probably respond to them and turn this event down, it’s too short notice”. So off I went to respond with a “this is great news, but…”, when something hit me. It has been over 2 years since I got the real-life connection I needed in an event setting, something about meeting new people, learning new things, and engaging in a productive happy hour really sounds alluring to me. “What’s this feeling?!” My introverted soul asked myself… “WE don’t like large crowds of people! What do you mean you “miss real-life connections! We are perfectly happy wearing a nice shirt and Pajama bottoms to work!”. Could it be? Could it be that the years of mandated lockdowns have actually left me starving for human interaction outside of my house?! I guess so, because the next thing I did was hit send on a response that read “ I can confirm I am interested and will take some time to respond to it today.”. After accepting the ask to speak, I felt the nerves bubble up! “What am I going to talk about? Who’s going to be there? How big is this event? Do I have time to build a deck?”. All the questions an introverted person would ask themselves.

As I started to feel the flood of stimulation hit me, I decided to step away from thinking about it and set some time on my books to focus on building content. Over the past few months, I had been consuming all the articles, books, videos, and docuseries I could about technology and web3, something about this iteration of our transition really fascinated me! “There you go” I said to myself. “That’s the presentation, duh!... The Future of Digital Marketing and Web 3.0”. Excited at the possibilities of what this could be, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about all the things I wanted to talk about. Should I talk about NFT’s, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, and Decentralization, or should I just show up and admit that we really have no definitive answer to what Web 3.0 is and will be yet because it’s still evolving?

“Well, that seems like a lot”. Not today my mind said. So off to bed I went! The next morning I woke up, got ready, and headed in to do some of my best thinking. Not to the office as you might think. But the gym! YES! The gym, the place I do most if not all my best processing and ideating. Perks of working for a company that truly values flexible working ??

“Hands, touching hands. Reaching out, touching me, touching you…” for many of you familiar with these lyrics, these are the lyrics to good ole “Sweet Caroline, pom pom pom…” (because you have to say pom pom pom). Blasting through my headphones unexpectedly in the middle of a superset bench press. I sat up for a minute, chuckled, and was instantly struck with the idea for my presentation. See, Sweet Caroline is an awesome song, performed by an amazing artist, and really universally known, but had no business being in my music queue in the middle of a bench press set. Those 2 just didn’t go hand in hand! How can you do 8 sets of 25 to Sweet Caroline (pom, pom, pom)! You just can’t, it’s weird, HA! But that was it! The basis of my presentation!

I decided I would take our audience through the era of Digital Marketing with the wrong content! I would talk to them about how important the power of content resonant marketing was, and how some of us today were marketing with things that have nothing to do with the story we are trying to tell. “Its like showing Duane “The Rock” Johnson, when we really mean Obama, or using Mr. Neil Diamond when we really meant KISS.” (and yes, I said this during the presentation).

So off I went, to the office, building a powerful and well insightful presentation on digital marketing and web 3.

Time to rehearse! While rehearsing I quickly remembered that the key to a good presentation would be telling it just like a story! Making the content as easily digestible as humanly possible while making sure the true insight needed here was never lost.

Fast forward, it’s a few days before the event… I get a call. “Hello” (with a slightly annoyed tone given the number of scam calls I’ve gotten lately) “Hi Jacob it’s Aaron from DigiMarCon, how are you mate” (no he wasn’t English, he was Australian). “I’m good, how are you?” I ask. Seeming confused as to why he was calling me. “So, you are probably a little confused on why I called, huh?” was like he was reading my mind. “I sure am”. “…well, we have had a little last-minute change to the event and have unfortunately found ourselves in a pickle without an emcee for the day…”. Well, there goes that event, I thought to myself. “…but I was looking through our list of speakers, looking for someone I really believe could bring light to the room, and found your profile. I’ve watched some of your videos and was pleasantly surprised with what I saw. Would you be willing to emcee the upcoming event”? I paused for a minute. It’s been 2 years! I’ve spoken at a number of events now but haven’t had to emcee, and here we are, a few days from the event and they want me to emcee. “Hmm, you know what. Why not” … “Are you sure?, you don’t need to think about this”… I laughed. “Sounds like you want me to say no”. And with that, I became the first Emcee for the inaugural 2022, DigiMarCon conference in Seattle.

You know, of all the things that happened leading up to this event there is one thing I can say that really gives me deep cause for reflection. It’s the fact that I almost said no to the possibility of meeting some of the most insightfully empathetic Marketers of our time simply because it “had been 2 years”.

The moment I got on stage, I realized we were all here, all together, sharing a group human experience in such a close and intimate setting that celebrated the differences of each other. “Welcome to 2022 DigiMarCon Pacific Northwest…” still a little nervous I said. As I peered down at the audience I realized again, it had been 2 whole years for me. And I’m sure it’s been that for them too… Let’s have a little bit of fun and just be people.

Those 2 days taught me how important the connection of shared human experiences are and how valuable and powerful it is to approach them with as much empathy as we can muster. Collective learning with people is what inspires true innovation… and I am sure, without a doubt, that on those days, we inspired and innovated the various industries we represented.

So today, if you are thinking about the value behind your organization going back to an in-person event, stop thinking! GO! Regardless of the size. In less than 30-minutes, another attendee and I came up with an entire social media strategy for their organization that they had been stuck mapping out. I made some of the best connections with some of the smartest people in the room while learning a substantial amount about the people I was doing this with.

Don’t think. Just go! Talk! Share! Laugh! Cry! Emote! Allow yourself to learn something new and don’t’ allow the “it’s been 2 years” demon to stop you from socializing and learning. So, what’s next for me, you ask? (said no one) See you at the next conference I will be at.?