Digital Media Inquisitor 004
Evening of 9.25.16 — I’m currently behind the desk after a two day weekend that was packed with four days of activity including enjoying my wife’s birthday and all that New York City has to offer. I’m facing exhaustion after hitting Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Tribeca, West Village, Morningside Heights, Washington Heights, Midtown Manhattan, and tons of other neighborhoods in a two day span. I’ll fight it off and spend this evening planning my week. There are three big business events across three cities the week of 9.26.16 and I wanted to highlight them in this quick post.
It’s “kiss babies and shake hands” season .. and this is your opportunity also to learn the latest in digital business trends.
Shop.org Digital Retail Conference
In addition to directing Acquia’s practice in the Media and Entertainment industry, I am also covering our go-to-market strategy and approach towards retail and consumer brands. As a result, I will be attending Shop.org’s Digital Retail Conference in Dallas, Texas from Monday 9.26 through mid day Wednesday 9.28. I plan to attend many breakout sessions (full list here) and hear major retail brand executives offer their approaches towards digital marketing strategy, omnichannel retail experience, and integrating commerce and content platforms. Ping me if you would like to meet up there.
Drupalcon Europe — Dublin, Ireland
While I will be at Shop.org many of Acquia colleagues will be at Drupalcon Europe, an annual conference focused on digital platform best practices and the latest innovations related to the use of Drupal. I wanted to highlight some sessions for those attending Drupalcon which do touch on the Media & Entertainment and Retail & Consumer Brands industries.
Three Drupalcon panels caught my eye:
Multi-Media Asset Management in Drupal
Tuesday, September 27th 10:45–11:45PM Local Time
This will be a technical panel but it’s a key one for media companies using Drupal. It’s important that content producers have a robust editorial experience allowing them to cover all types of media. And the media types are always proliferating — for instance how would you manage, edit, and publish 360 virtual reality content to Drupal? That’s just one emerging type of content, and this panel will identify the types of media that must be handled in Drupal as part of it’s core CMS offering.
Al Jazeera Media Network and Drupal 8
Wednesday, September 28th 3:45–4:45PM
Al Jazeera Media Network is a global media giant and was one of the first media companies to adopt the latest version of Drupal. This panel will cover how Drupal 8 allows the network to centralize their disparate media brands on an international, multi-lingual and region, unified CMS platform. Through building this next generation platform, Al Jazeera has streamlined the creation and personalized the delivery of news.
Scaling in store retail technology at 500 Duty Free Shops
Thursday, September 29th 10:45–11:45AM
Lagardere Travel Retail and Aéroports de Paris manage and organize the work of over 500 Duty Free boutiques all around the world using an in store retail iPad app. The application allows the duty free shops to optimize their staffing based on when passengers will be in the airport terminals. There are many more features including how the shops manage their product inventory which is at a whopping 200,000 items (or as they say in the retail industry, SKUs) across all those locations.
New York Advertising Week, Interactive Advertising Bureau Mixx Conference and New York Media Festival
Three media and entertainment industry focused events are all happening the week of September 26th here in New York City.
Advertising week and IAB Mixx also touch leading digital marketing strategies and advertisers so consumer and retail brands are also a big part of the conversation at these two events. IAB Mixx’s top speakers include the CMO of Twitter and Marriott International and C level executives from media brands like Buzzfeed, Medium, and CBS.
I can’t even fathom trying to sort through Advertising Week’s schedule of events right now, but I could potentially be attending a few panels on Thursday when I return from Shop.org. I mean just look at this schedule, so much content …
The New York Media Festival (NYMF) is smaller and has a focus more centered on digital media executives from entertainment brands. For the first night of the festival for instance, there’s an invite only “Music Industry Leaders Dinner”. I’m seeing NYMF speakers from companies like SoundCloud, LiveNation, Spotify, Zynga, Sony Pictures Entertainment, NBCUniversal, Facebook, CondeNast, Hearst Television, and Starz.
Why are all these conferences happening at the same time in New York? It’s probably easier for The New York Media Festival to pull off so much great programming when some of the executives speaking are also here in the city for IAB Mixx or Advertising Week.
If I had my choice, I’d attend all 3 NYC events and spend blocks of time at each conference depending on the programming. I will be at the New York Media Festival closing party Thursday, September 29th and hope to see you there.
