Berlin white nights
Friday, December 3, 2010 at 6:14AM 
My friend, Chris Brogan who I've written pre-conference posts on and followed since forever, was to be our keynote speaker.
The stage was set, we arrived to a cold snap in Berlin. We escorted Chris fresh off the plane and still in his shirtsleeves to Potzdamerplatz to buy a scarf , then we went in to have a waffle and scalding gluwein at the Christmas market, it was a lovely crisp evening and Berlin had all her charms on show, and so on to Homebase to warm up the start and to a ping pong match with Brogan.
The first day Kicked off with Chris speaking, It was Classic Brogan, real, engaged and giving us his take via storytelling on how marketing can be done as communicators in the digital age, Chris's M.O. has always been making heros of others and giving back more than he takes.
As I tweeted and wrote on my two posts on Chris before the conference he's a GRU.
He told the story of an heating installer in Detroit whose lead generation system was a telephone book and a woman making cold calls to the list.
He suggested that his secret to success had been his installers efficient good service to their customers and that this may be their strength and that they could play to this. Chris suggested he should make a video featuring his installers at work on a customers house, as a testimonal.
The response to his talk was great ( heres a snippet from that)and I guess he has even more fans now, that will adopt him as a mentor as I have.
heres my tweet takeout. @wisequeen on @chrisbrogan #b2beu 100 years ago I'd be here saying 'look a phone!' then 20yrs ago oh 'look its email ' now its- I'm on twitter and cant use it.
His kind tweet comment while I was delivering my talk on using social media for marketing success as Brand stragegist with iTive who provide solutions for brands and communication for business using new media, is very Broganesque> giving the credit.
From @ChrisBrogan, Great work, @wisequeen . I loved the point about the event marketing. And the sticky. #b2beu
We then went on to a panel covering emotions in marketing lead rather deftly by Rick Segal of Gyro HSR. The take outs from this were that: the emotions used most in marketing campaigns are fear and doubt, based on the underlying desire to belong.
We heard from John Gerosa of Google on how they move and shake our world via search and mobile. Great content there.
We heard from Jort Possel of Accenture who gave us food for thought on working smarter and simpler in engaging with our clients in his talk on Blogging for B2B business success
We heard from Andrea Monaci of HP on Effective Marketing to Fortune 500 companies.
We heard from Madlen Nicolaus from Kodak on Turning friends followers and fans into sales through social media. There were so many excellent talks.
An excellent talk by Roy van Griensven from Philips on bringing the marketing and sales department together around an iPad was really great for me.
Peter O'Neill of Forrester shows us what stats can teach us about the past and future in Marketing.
Thierry Collet of Dassault systems talk was power-packed and so informative on how their software applications impact every aspect of our lives and how they entered new markets.
For me, both Chris's talk, on engaging and Rick's talk on what the workspace means to us now had the take outs I will apply to my own efforts. There were so many great take outs from Rick IDEATE NOT EXECUTE and join the flow dont stop it and I'll try cover some them here in my posts just as soon as I have the videos edited.
I will be covering all the speakers and uploading the video I shot of them and all the pictures here. So follow along as I take you into the power-packed conference that was so useful, and we explore all the networking and fun we had in the evenings, quite some adventures and stories we had!
Thanks to our MC /Chairperson b2b Mag Editor Joel Harrison, who tried in vain to herd us cats.
The white out taxi story: which happened moments after the picture you see of us walking in the whiteout above, was moments after the speakers dinner, where we tasted South African wine with Chris., It was an absolutely hilarous and scary taxi adventure that prompted Chris Brogan to tweet this.
chrisbrogan Chris Brogan
I'll bring you all those stories and videos on the speakers as I upload and edit them all. plus my latest interview with Chris Brogan here this week from my lovely warm apartment above the river and snow in Berlin. So stay with me
@ wisequeen In Berlin
Photocredit Madlen of Kodak
Reader Comments (2)
What wonderful times these are to be a part of the technological advances that are assisting us in working smarter. Social media tools has so much to offer and utilizing them is a business plus. Love these glimpses into what others are doing around the world. Brava
Thank you for sharing some of the Berlin event and Chris Brogan with us!