Guest post by Katie Del Angel. Katie is a content strategist at ISITE Design, responsible for content marketing and social media within the agency. She oversees a mini B2B content empire of five in-house blogs, including the CMS Myth, and a growing army of internal contributors. She also oversees website content and organizes the agency’s annual UX event in Portland, Oregon, Delight 2012.

I was at Social Media Club Boston last night and ran into a friend from Upword Search. We discussed upcoming events, and naturally FutureM came up. We chatted briefly about the ISITE session and the myriad of other events that week, promising to chat soon to compare schedules. In that moment, I was vaguely reminded of my college years, comparing schedules and professors with friends - and it got me thinking: FutureM actually reminds me A LOT of the first week at college. Only way better.

The possibilities are endless, but there are no requirements. No prerequisites necessary -- you sign up for whatever you want, simple as that.

(BOSTON, MA) – Today, FutureM, a weeklong event experience on the future of Marketing, announced its Media and Advertising track, which will include PayPal Media Network, Celtra, JumpTap, and Havas Digital as featured companies. The track, designed for media buyers, planners, strategists and sellers is dedicated to furthering the conversation about what will drive media and advertising forward and how it will contribute to the overall mix within Marketing.

“On a daily basis we are surrounded by integrated media and advertising campaigns from brands big and small – as companies strive for brand recognition,” said Debi Kleiman, president, MITX. “FutureM creates an avenue to explore media and advertising’s relationship with marketing, how it’s integrated and how it’s changing. This year, the track will look at some hot button topics from multimedia to the holy grail, grabbing consumer attention.”

Temperature@lert’s Solar Cellular Edition was officially named a finalist in the People's Choice Stevie Awards for Favorite New Products in the “Other” category.  They were also named a finalist in the 2012 American Business Awards for Best New Industrial Product earlier this year. They are currently waiting to hear if they will take home the gold. In order for Temperature@lert to win this category, they must collect enough votes to move into first place.

Get to know a MITX member! This month we're featuring HB Agency.


1. How was HB founded and what inspired its creation?

Working for other agencies, Nicolas Boillot and KevinHart became frustrated with the fear of multidisciplinary approaches and low emphasis on customerservice. They believed they could do better and make the experience transparent, fun and winning for all parties.
They created an agency that effectively integrated the major marketing disciplines to deliver high-performing campaigns. Other agencies that claimed to do this suffered from gaping holes in their knowledge base or lack of methodology and discipline. HB built a crackerjack team with widely varied backgrounds committed to ensure big-agency knowledge and capabilities with small-agency customer service.

2.  What makes HB different than other companies in your space?

We love featuring guest posts by our diverse and super fabulous members! This guest post by Sarah Sykora. Sarah is the Chief Marketing Officer at Babson College and is the parent of two young children. She is passionate about empowering women and entrepreneurship. You can follow Sarah at @ssykora.

One long-held notion about entrepreneurs is that they begin their path to superstardom by tinkering in garages. And, by coding in coffee shops. And, by networking in Silicon Valley. While this is an accurate definition of some entrepreneurs, you don’t need to do these things to be defined as an entrepreneur.

We currently face economic uncertainty and a rapidly changing job market where the need for and existence of entrepreneurs absolutely shatters this former notion. Have you ever pivoted your career path? If so, you’re an entrepreneur.

Ten 20-somethings to present generational topics in 20 minute flash sessions

(BOSTON, MA) – Today, FutureM, the weeklong event experience on the future of Marketing (October 23 – 26, 2012), announces one-of-a-kind session topics from a generation, current 20-somethings, that has developed with digital in its pocket. New this year, FutureM is featuring ten 20-year old entrepreneurs, students and marketing gurus who will speak to what is next in Marketing from a millennial perspective.

“In marketing, all it takes is a fresh perspective and a risk taking idea to generate changes in a creative industry. That is why we are so excited about the marketing concepts and twists to conventional thinking we will see from these 20-somethings,” said MITX President, Debi Kleiman. “Generation Y is notably the first generation to have digital at its finger tips and FutureM will put them to the test to see if they are worth their salt.”

Guest post by Karl Wirth. Karl Wirth is the co-founder and CEO of Apptegic, a customer intelligence and marketing automation solution that enables online businesses to understand each customer and respond in real-time on-website and in-context based on the customer’s behavior and business characteristics.

Ten years ago, Seth Godin wrote that effective communication with customers must be “anticipated, personal, and relevant.”  I’ve always liked this.

But I think another word must be added: “in-context.”  Effective communication with customers must be in-context.

Let’s imagine a scenario. I have visited a company’s website and given them permission to contact me about a solution I want to buy for my work. I anticipate that they will do so. I am looking forward to the conversation. They prepare a great personally targeted, relevant response to me. This has all the makings of effective communication.  
 

But then they call me at 6:30pm during dinner to deliver their response, or at 11pm when I’m in bed. This won’t be effective communication.
 
Few people outside of telemarketers will make this mistake with a phone call, but everybody makes it with email. You don’t know when I will be checking my inbox, so it's likely I will get even your anticipated, personal, and relevant pitch out of context.

The following blog post was provided by an industry veteran who has judged our Interactive Awards competition for many years and wanted to anonymously share his suggestions for putting together an entry.

As you consider your company's entries into this year's MITX Interactive Awards, it's worth knowing that your peers who volunteer their time as judges really enjoy the process. For many of us, like you focused intently on our own work, this presents a great opportunity to spend some quality time with great work being done by other firms, teams and agencies. In years of judging, I've never met another judge who didn't enjoy the process.

It's also true that, as quickly as our space tends to evolve, the experience of reviewing entries remains remarkably consistent — regardless of category or quality of the work. With that in mind, here are some suggestions as you put together your entries:

By Hannah Fleishman. Hannah is an intern at MITX. She is a rising senior at Emerson College and grew up in Italy, Germany, and Egypt. Hannah is passionate about traveling, writing, marketing, and smiling.

Emerson College hosted a social media panel last year. I arrived excited and left with mild anxiety. One of the panelists suggested that everyone have a blog to show potential employers that you’re passionate about something. I didn’t have a blog, so naturally I just heard “you will never be successful.” I needed to start blogging. I didn’t know what I was going to blog about but I had to think of something, otherwise I was a passionless pit (is that copyright infringement or is it word play?).

My friends all use Tumblr so I created an account, spent too much time picking out a free layout that someone else had designed to express my creativity, and decided this would be a travel blog. Original, I know, just like my layout. But hear me out. I spent 15 years growing up overseas. I travel back to Egypt twice a year and figured I could blog about life as an expat, or post anecdotes on being a third culture kid. Now I could say I dabble in blogging while shamelessly showcasing how worldly I am. I couldn’t believe how easy it all was.

FutureM, the weeklong event experience on the future of Marketing, today announced eleven new session topics and meet-up leaders focused on digital media, mobile and e-commerce for its national fall event. Today’s session leaders include:

Senior executives from Razorfish, JetBlue and PepsiCo to share insights in joint program

CANTON, Mass. and BOSTON – August 8, 2012 – The Pulse Network (TPN) and the Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange (MITX) announced today three keynote speakers for a joint Inbound Marketing Summit (IMS) and FutureM program in October.

Sometimes it is surprising how much strong writing skills can make a difference. In the case of Award competitions like our Interactive Awards, providing the judges with the right information, in the best form, and in the optimum length, can greatly increase the chances of winning. At MITX, we love when our people get recognized for their great work so we have put together some best practices for writing a #winning entry for our Interactive Awards competition, starting with an example of a real submission for a project that did, in fact, win: the 2011 winner in the Applied Technology category and of the Best in Show honor, Good Form Running (entered by Almighty on behalf of New Balance). While the way Almighty wrote their entry didn't guarantee the win (the work was innovative and amazing, and that's what ultimately lead to the award), they provided the information in way that made the judges understand their work easily and deeply. Check it out.

For the July blog series, we asked some of Boston's greatest thought leaders to speak on a particularly complicated (but relevant) subject: tracking, targeting, and privacy. Their responses were surprising, fascinating, and applicable - and we think you'll find this series quite interesting! This post is by Tyler Sandler. Tyler a BIMA member and Senior Director of Sales for Evidon. Don’t let his New York area code fool you, Tyler is a native New Englander, graduate of the University of New Hampshire and a Sox fan. He can be reached at tsandler (at) evidon (dot) com.

The irresponsible use of consumer data is the rogue trader lurking in our industry. If unfound this trader can blow up years of hard work and investment. Online targeting options abound but, until recently, little thought has been given to consumer privacy when it comes to tracking and targeting. This is why I challenge you to do something.

Whenever the subjects of targeting, tracking, and privacy come up in the context of our industry, there is always controversy, heated debate, many sides of the story, and opinions mixed with facts. When I miss a few days of headlines I feel like the whole world has changed. The next few years will bring about some of the biggest changes that our industry has faced.  Now is not the time for complacency - it is a time for action. This is our industry’s issue to solve. Given the exponential growth of technology, my children will live in a world where access to information is beyond our wildest sci-fi dreams and, as such, digital privacy could be nonexistent. We are in the early days of setting the standard of what privacy means in our always on, networked, and connected society, and this is why I challenge you to do something.  

By Hannah Fleishman. Hannah is an intern at MITX. She is a rising senior at Emerson College and grew up in Italy, Germany, and Egypt. Hannah is passionate about traveling, writing, marketing, and smiling..

A few months ago I was scouring the Web for a paid summer internship - the four leaf clover of student work experience. I came across a job post on Craigslist that read “Paid Social Media Intern," a diamond in the rough. I opened the link and learned that an unnamed (classic Craigslist) firm was looking for someone to keep its Twitter and Facebook accounts updated and relevant. The schedule was flexible with a minimum of 10 hours a week, all from home, for 20$/hr. Was I being tricked by the big bad Internet? Could I really get paid $200 a week for doing something I had never been trained to do? Something I do for fun? Oh, the perks of being a millennial. Before coming across this job post I did not have social media listed as a skill on my resume; I assumed that was expected of me, having been born in the '90s. But we all know what happens when you assume.

Since the Craigslist post I have been asking myself, is social media a skill? Sometimes I think yes: Emerson College recently added a social media course to the marketing curriculum, services such as Klout rank your social media influence, BostonTweet guest speaks on the topic because he is just that good. Clearly it is something to be practiced and perfected, like any sport or instrument.