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This is my first full breakfast to late night parties Ad:Tech. While my startup is in the ad industry, my background is very much on the technology side of the internet, more so than the online marketing/advertising side or the traditional agency part of the ad industry. As a result here are a few observations I have made of the show, a few minor corrections to my previous posts, and an exploration of what this blogger/entrepreneur did on Tuesday other than walk the exhibit hall and catch the keynote presentations.

Before the first keynote I arrived a bit on the late side to Ad:Tech this morning, the exhibit hall had been open for about an hour and I had yet to have any coffee. Instead I stood, waiting, in the middle of the large Hilton lobby. After a little while of standing, catching up on emails, twitters and blog posts, I sat down. Had this been San Francisco or a "web 2.0" tech industry conference, in the ten minutes or so I stood there in the lobby I would have seen and greated dozens if not hundreds of friends - people I have seen dozens of times at industry events, parties, and previous conferences.

However though Ad:Tech is a tech related event, it is a very different audience and attendee demographic than say O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 Summit or the TechCrunch 40 conference.

My meeting, however, was with two fellow tech entrepreneurs also attending the show. We ducked across the street to the Starbucks hidden under scaffolding across 6th Ave from the Hilton (much shorter lines there than at the Starbucks right in the Hilton). We then went up to the press room and talked. Unlike myself, their experience of the show has and will be very different, they have full days of meetings scheduled - indeed the CEO noted that had he not had full days of meetings scheduled but had had just a few (or no) meetings he would have canceled his reservations and stayed in SF.

We talked about my observation yesterday about who was not exhibiting - and about who was here at the show. One thing I learned most definitively is that many of the firms who did not have a major presence (or indeed any presence at all) on the exhibit hall floors are, in fact, here at the show in force. Companies such as MySpace (some 30+ people), AOL (and Ad.com etc), and I assume but haven’t fully confirmed Yahoo! where indeed here, just had chosen not to have a small, cramped booth presence to tie up people - instead they chose to focus on scheduling lots of meetings.

I also wondered how many ad agency folks were here at the show - I have been repeatedly assured that many people are here, but other than one person from an agency in South Florida, I haven’t yet personally met many (speakers excepted). Later today (Wed) the show has promised that more detailed numbers of attendees will be made available, so far the only publicly stated data point is that over 13,000 people had pre-registered - based on the number of people I have seen so far, my personal estimate is that at least 9000 probably more than 10,000 people have been at the show in at least some capacity over the past two days. I will be asking to see if more detailed breakdowns of who was at the show in attendance can be seen (and for example, who was here just for the free expo pass portion and who stays on).

On that note, I overheard in the halls today at least one woman looking forward to "when all the expo only people leave and finally people I want to talk to start seeking me out" - I didn’t catch who she is with but the sentiment I suspect is shared by many, my prediction for the next two days is that they will be a very different and much smaller crowd. I’m not yet sure what the makeup of that crowd will be, but I suspect it will be easier to find people after a given session and easier to meet new people (to a degree) - however whether everyone whom you might want to be meeting will still be here is another matter.

After the last keynote of the day I wandered down to the various hotel bars to try to get a sense of the conversations, to try to meet new people and to round up a group to have some dinner. At the last minute a few friends who were in town (some for Ad:Tech others for other conferences also happening here in NYC, all had schedule conflicts so I was left with a planned restaurant but no one to eat with). I stood and then later sat and watched the crowds ebb and flow.

As I wandered I realized that indeed the audience here is one I do not yet know. I did have a great and fairly long conversation with one good friend who was also here at the show - talking about his ideas for his new venture as well as what I am doing and where we both see the industry as a whole heading in the next few years (see my first overview post on Ad:Tech for my views).

Then I answered a question about where to possibly find great sushi with a ‘would you like to join me for great Korean’? And thus a great, but highly impromptu dinner was assembled. A group of four of us had a great meal, recorded a podcast for Ten Golden Rules where we talked about the show so far, and then after dinner ended up having drinks with other attendees at a bar in Grand Central Station.

A great reminder, yet again, that for all the value of scheduling many meetings, lunches, breakfasts and dinners, it also does pay to have flexibility, to talk to fellow attendees (but possibly strangers) and be open to group dinners and other post-conference events. These conversations, rich, long and accompanied by good food and drink are almost always the ones which get built on over time and lead to great things.

So my advice - by all means schedule meetings like crazy before the show (I know I will before my next Ad:Tech) but also leave room for some random conversations - also look for ways to be approachable and to approach others, to include not just those whom you know from years of past work together, but also new people who are also passionate enough about your industry to spend their time (and often given NYC hotel prices very real money by any measure) to be at the event.

Shannon Clark is a founding partner at Nearness Function, a new ad network for the publishers of dynamic content which will launch in a few months. He is the organizer of MeshForum - an annual conference on the study of networks and the one day MeshWalk series of walking conferences. He has been blogging for many years at Searching for the Moon where he covers technology, economics, food, and the life of an entrepreneur. His first server on the Internet was in 1991, he started his first company in 2000 after many years working as a technology consultant.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 at 10:30 am and is filed under advertising, Conferences, Adtech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.