I’ve been back from Boston for over a week now and have been madly trying implement my takeaways from the conference. Before we left I published 5 Things I Hope To Take Away From INBOUND 14. Now that I’ve had some time to reflect on my week in Boston, and time to recover, it’s time to revisit my post and see if I got out of my trip what I expected to.
1) New ideas and how to implement them
New ideas are the most important thing to me about my job. It’s very important to me to be original. I look at my job as an opportunity to create something different, and I take that to heart. I understand that not everything I do can be new. I have to be somewhat conservative in some regards, but if I’m going to get to where I want to be in this industry, new ideas are how I will get there. Did I bring any new ideas back from Boston? I definitely did. Did I learn how to implement them? I would say that I half learned to implement them. More importantly though, I learned where the resources are to teach myself to implement my new ideas. It's now up to me to be proactive and follow through.
2) Better grasp on what I already know
I went to a few sessions on topics that I’m familiar with, but I found them to be a little bit too basic. The instruction was good, but I was already too advanced. I called audibles on a few of them and went to sessions that I felt like I’d get more out of. Social media was one of those sessions, there are things within the software that I could and should know more of, but the session I attended was much more basic. It did make me realize that while I knew more than what some sessions taught I am by no means an expert, I might be a solid intermediate, but with a lot to learn.
3) New contacts
I did meet a lot of new people and have many more Linkedin connections now than I did before INBOUND. Better yet though, I have email addresses and direct connections to people who can help me with the implementations of some new ideas that I have. I’ve already reached out to a few people and that is proving to be the most valuable takeaway from my trip.
4) Get to know my coworkers better
I definitely got to know my coworkers better. I know now that after a few drinks if there is a microphone available that it won’t be left alone by many of them. I also know that as much fun as they are at night, the mornings are a different story altogether. For the most part I was very impressed with them all. (There unwillingness to accept public transportation is why I'm not wholly impressed)
5) Drink a lot of beer
I did start out drinking a lot of beer, then I switched to whistkey then God only knows what else. Due to a severe lack of sleep I definitely had to switch to Red Bull and vodka on my last night, needless to say, I got all the drinking in I wanted to and more.
All in all I’d say the trip was well worth it. Whether or not my boss got what he wanted to out of the trip from all of us will be determined in the months ahead. I intend not to let him down though. I’ve had a week to get back on my routine now. Now it’s time to get off my routine and implement something that I learned from INBOUND ’14 at least once a week. By doing so I’ll be playing my part in moving the best Denver Marketing Firm where it needs to go.