Craig Blake, who was installed as President of the New England Direct Marketing Association at NEDMA ‘06, has just a few parting words about the conference before we put this blog to rest for at least a short summer hiatus. Here’s Craig…
Well, 10 months of planning and preparation have passed and NEDMA ‘06 is in the history books. After all of the countless hours of organization and STRESS, it is all over. It kind of reminds me of Christmas morning when I was a little boy. All of that anticipation, build-up and excitement, then it is over, just like that, in the blink of an eye. Poof!
On Thursday night (June 15) after the conference, I had a chance to enjoy a frosty pint with fellow NEDMA ‘06 volunteers Ben Borne, Bob Cargill and Doug Hamer to celebrate the success of the conference, and we all came to the same conclusion: It was truly a fantastic journey and seeing everyone so excited and enjoying themselves so much made it worth all of the hard work. So to all of you in attendance, thank you.
I would also like to express my appreciation for all of the speakers, lunchtime discussion leaders, exhibitors, sponsors and volunteers who made NEDMA’s 44th annual conference such a huge success. We broke attendance records across the board with over 375 total attendees. This is a testament to you, members of New England’s direct marketing community.
Look out world, here we come!
On a related topic, rumor has it that Gary Lubarsky, Vice President of NEDMA and chair of NEDMA ‘07, has already started planning next year’s conference. If you would like to join the excitement and help plan it with him, or if you would like to serve as a speaker, sponsor or exhibitor, please drop us a line at . Otherwise, don’t forget to check back here. I suspect the blog will continue, providing you with all of the behind-the-scenes coverage of next year’s event.
Signing off as NEDMA ‘06 co-chair, on behalf of Bob Cargill and myself…
…good night, New England direct marketers! We will see you again soon.
June 24th, 2006
With less than 72 hours to go before NEDMA ‘06 finally kicks into gear, Craig Blake (Vice President of Sales at W.A. Wilde, Vice President of the New England Direct Marketing Association and co-chair of the conference), has just a few final words to say.
Once again, here’s Craig…
Frequent readers of this conference blog have had the opportunity to get a sneak peak at what you’ll be learning about on June 14 and 15 at NEDMA ‘06. Over the course of the past several months, we’ve had a countless number of contributors to the conversation on this blog. To all of those individuals, I just want to say thank you.
Of course, behind the scenes, there has been an array of volunteers making sure NEDMA ‘06 will be the best conference ever. And I’d like to take this moment to recognize a few of them…
First of all, my hat goes off to Pat Farley — of Farley Creative — for all of your effort in writing all of the promotional materials for NEDMA’ 06.
Doug Hamer — of DS Hamer Design — for all of the many hours you’ve spent creating all of the communications for the conference.
Ben Borne — of Newport Creative Communications — has done a masterful job as our manager of speaker relations, arranging all the details surrounding the speakers.
Cyndy Bro Higgins — of ResponsiveConcepts — has created all of our online communications, including this very blog, the NEDMA ‘06 Web site and online registration.
To NEDMA’s managing directors, Beth Drysdale and Pat Lee — of Drysdale Lee & Associates — thank you for all of your energy, effort and willingness to let me break a few rules.
Bob Cargill — my partner in crime and co-chair of NEDMA ‘06 — thank you for all of your support, energy and effort, especially in keeping this conversation going.
To all of the other committee members who have contributed to make NEDMA ‘06 so successful, thank you for all of your energy, enthusiasm, ideas and effort.
After all of those thank you’s, you probably get a feeling of the amount of hard work and effort that went into organizing NEDMA ‘06.
If you haven’t registered for NEDMA ‘06, please do it now by clicking here. Time is running out for you to join us at New England’s premier gathering of direct marketing professionals.
I look forward to seeing you on Wednesday and Thursday at NEDMA ‘06, It’s a Brave New World, the New England Direct Marketing Association’s Conference and Exposition.
And thank you, Craig. You have set the pace — and high standards — for all of us.
For those of you who don’t know Craig, he’s an outstanding leader, a dedicated professional and a true team player. He’s driven to succeed, but he also has a great sense of humor and a positive, easygoing personality that brings out the very best in everyone around him. To say it’s been a pleasure to work with Craig – as co-chairs of the NEDMA ‘06 conference – would be an understatement. It’s been a blast!
June 11th, 2006
Joining us as a special guest blogger this week is Mariah Hunt, who is a Senior Production Manager at Digitas, working on the FedEx, AT&T and Virgin Life Care accounts.
Prior to joining Digitas, Mariah had her own direct marketing consulting business with clients such as Monster.com, Crabtree & Evelyn, and Intersystems. She has won many DM awards, and has participated in many DM forums, speaking engagements and postal forums.
With over 18 years of DM experience, Mariah has helped many clients realize their ROI while making sure all cost efficiencies are realized in the data processing, print and lettershop areas.
Programs she has worked on include loyalty, acquisition and retention, financial and retail.
Mariah earned a B.S. in Marketing at Skidmore College in New York.
Mariah will be appearing at NEDMA ‘06, It’s a Brave New World, the New England Direct Marketing Association’s Conference and Exposition, during the “Lunch with the Experts” session. Her topic will be Direct Mail Production Management.
Ladies and gentlemen, Mariah Hunt…
First, let me start out by saying I am not a blogger — my attention span lasts no more than 10 minutes and scrolling to read the blogs (page after page after page) is a good way to find my computer at the bottom of a 22-story building on the sidewalk in pieces.
That said, I am excited to be doing a lunch session on DM production. It has become a lost art to produce something tangible in this new age “digital” world — do it on budget and within the speedy timeframe that everyone wants. I find less and less people knowing the true art of colorwork, typography, creating and printing a piece you can hold in your hand, and marvel at. And, even worse, there are not many new faces coming into the profession these days, either. DM offline production is not the “glamorous” end. We are the red- headed stepchildren who churn and burn to get pieces of mail out. Most “younger kids” want to do online, not offline, work.
Me? I still find things to be excited about doing offline work — even after 20 something years.
With all that being true, I am still amazed at the amount of mail that has been circulating these days. Dimensional mail, pop ups, diecut packages, packages with credit card-type things attached to them — it is a new mail that most people are seeing in their boxes these days, along with some of the “old world” packages still unbeaten from every test thrown at them.
If you were at the last monthly meeting with Steve Penn (who was great, by the way), you would have learned that it took 28 years for the old tried and true white mail #10 package from the Wall Street Journal to be beaten out by something else.
I hope that people come to the lunch session with lots of questions, issues, problems, and stories to share. I am excited to talk about the thing that has kept me gainfully employed for the past 20 something years.
And if there really is nothing to talk about, we can talk about my feelings on blogs….
June 6th, 2006
In the last of his posts as one of our special guest bloggers, Ted Demopoulos — who will be appearing at NEDMA ’06, It’s a Brave New World, the New England Direct Marketing Association’s Conference and Exposition, during the “Lunch with the Experts” session on June 15 – tells us what he thinks the benefits of blogging are for the non-bloggers among us…
Blogs have enormous benefits for non-bloggers.
Let’s be serious, most people don’t and may never blog. Many of you reading this may never blog.
Most inhabitants of the blogosphere don’t blog. But they keep reading blogs. Why? What are the benefits?
Blogs are an enormous and effective information source. I can think of many stories that the mainstream media didn’t get quite right, but that blogs did. Often these are admittedly in niche areas, but hey, we all live and work in our own niches!
I know a great sales guy – the kind you want to buy from because he doesn’t waste your time and is always trying to offer you value. He wouldn’t dream on calling on a company without doing basic blog research – reading any official company as well as non-official employee blogs, and looking for any recent mentions of the company and their products in blogs. He benefits from the blogosphere, and I don’t see him ever blogging.
One big company I work with has no immediate plans to blog, although I set them up to regularly monitor the blogsphere using tools like PubSub and Technorati to see what their customers are saying and they get a lot of valuable feedback that way, as well as keeping up on industry trends and sentiments.
Most people don’t write books, but a lot of us benefit from reading – probably everyone here. Blogs are getting a greater percentage of people to publish information, and that benefits both bloggers AND non-bloggers.
Ted Demopoulos’ professional background includes over 25 years of experience in Information Technology and Business, including 15 years as an independent consultant. Ted has helped start a successful information security company, was the CTO at a “textbook failure” of a software startup, and has advised several other startups. Ted is a frequent speaker at conferences and other events, co-author of Blogging for Business, and the principal of Demopoulos Associates. Ted also has an ongoing software concern in Hong Kong, The Arial Group, an Enterprise Risk Management solutions provider.
June 2nd, 2006
