Girls In Tech

On July 23rd, 2009 I attended the Internet Strategy Forum Summit at the Governor Hotel here in Portland, Oregon. ISF is a global non-profit professional association headquartered in Portland, Oregon. The organization is dedicated to professional development, peer networking, information exchange, research and thought leadership among senior Internet decision-makers at client-side organizations across multiple industries around the world. This year’s full day summit included keynote speakers from Forrester Research, Hewlett-Packard, Intuit, Xerox, Intel, Welchman Pierpoint, Portland Trail Blazers and others.

Girls in Tech PDX was excited to be the association partner of ISF this year in Portland. Thanks to ISF founder of Steve Gehlen and team who’ve done an amazing job bringing in thought-provoking speakers from all over the US.
Katherine Durham, VP of Marketing Imaging and Printing at Hewlett-Packard kicked off the morning engagement with her presentation in shifting the digital marketing mindset to harness the power of an integrated approach. She gave us a snapshot of a few recent campaigns from HP that included user generated content, viral and social media tactics.
Jeremiah Owyang, senior analyst from Forrester Research spoke about the future of social media. What do we expect to see in 2015? How will the power of communities intersect with your brand and others? How will this technology change user behavior? He dove in deeper to the evolution of five eras of the social web and discussed how the future will change the way we engage with the community as a whole. Interestingly, he showed a screenshot of the movie, Minority Report, from way back in 2002. This shows us at least some of us were already anticipating the way we would receive information and how it would evolve to become real-data, real-time content driven by our preferences.
Johan Jervoe, VP of Digital Marketing at Intel talked to us about the idea of an integrated creative approach, and it really resonated with me. He took us into the process of concept through implementation and the importance of getting all of the key stakeholders involved at the beginning of the concept. Recently, they launched an interesting viral marketing initiative called “Ajay Bhatt is a Rock Star.”
Other speakers included Chris Dill, CIO from Portland Trail Blazers spoke about the integration of IT and Marketing and how they revolutionized the digital signage commodities for the Portland Trail Blazers. The panelist discussion led by Steve Gehlen talks about adventures in the Internet presence ecosystem and how to maximize ROI for enterprise services and tools. A few companies are involved in some of these heavy topics such as Covario, Webtrends, Fatwire and others.

The world is changing by the second. It’s interesting how we as a consumer are evolving as the future is near. But for now, I think the future turns on the question of who drives and control your brand presence? It was a super day to spend at the Summit. Very insightful and good overall content. Looking forward to next year! Be sure to join our GIT Portland Facebook page for upcoming events, info and perks. You wouldn’t want to miss it!