Letters to the Editor
[Re: Loose Cannon: I Come to Change Summer NCDM, Not Bury It, Direct Newsline, Oct. 11, 2004]:
A job search-recruiting component to the summer NCDM sounds appealing, but wouldn’t many companies who should attend be reluctant to send their people to the conference for fear that they might be snatched up by recruiters while they were delegates?
Fred Morath Fred Morath Direct Marketing Natick MA
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As a regular attendee of the summer NCDM for the past 5-8 years or so, I agree with you that it needs an overhaul. From the vendor, this show has become increasingly difficult to justify. Truly, the thing I hear most about this show is “We have to attend, because we play in this space. But, I don’t expect much out of it.”
I personally have learned much from this conference and I enjoyed going. Lately, however, the content has seemingly become a bit stale and people are learning less and less from this conference. So, overall, I like the idea of an overhaul or even a “euthanasia” as you say of the summer NCDM conference. I do like your idea of increasing the recruiting side a bit.
Here are my thoughts:
Pros:
I’ve often believed that we need to extend the knowledge to the college campuses. There are precious few colleges that even speak about Database Marketing as a major or even a class. This will help that. I see it even reviving the content a bit and holding more educational sessions than we’ve seen.
This would also generate a lot of interest within the industry. I see a situation where industry pros will use this to search for new roles within Database Marketing. Which is not a bad thing. It could serve as a vehicle to bring the academic community and the business world a bit closer together.
Cons:
As a vendor, I can justify the cost of a conference with the leads that I generate from the conference. This format, does not seem condusive to me for that type of justification. Additionally, I’m not sure if we could justify attendance from our recruiting groups in the early years. You may have to lower the cost for us to truly justify the expense. Along the same line, I fear that this will lesson attendance from the client side.
Some other suggestions:
Shorten the conference and make it more of an executive forum. Gartner puts on a great conference, because it focuses the conference on specific Executive level issues. Hold one on one time with industry experts. See if you can get some of those long time professionals or speakers to offer some time to hold one on one sessions with conference attendees. They can sign up in advance, and hold a conversation about their specific issues.
I like the idea of getting this discussion into some sort of online forum.
Jeff Hassemer
Director of product strategy Data Management Services DoubleClick, Inc.
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One of the things we found out over 35 years of running Direct Marketing Day in NY is that the attendees’ registration fees are, in the main, paid by their companies. So if one of the major functions of the show is to provide attendees with the opportunity to find a better job, companies will be reluctant to send their key people for fear that they will find a different job.
Consequently, to do what you suggest, you’d be best to assume that the people who come will be (a) paying their own way and (b) taking time off from their current job. This being the case, the venue would have to be somewhere that does not require lots of travel. Also, the time span would have to be very short…perhaps one day. These factors all work against such a conference being a financial success since they do not encourage exhibitors and at the same time they diminish the attendance from major companies.
It just may be that there is no need for two similar conferences in a single year. Given the state of the new economy, people just don’t have as much time to go to conferences as they did in the past. Every conference in our field has had a downturn in attendance. So, perhaps the best approach would be to eliminate the summer NCDM and concentrate on making the fall one irresistible.
Arthur Blumenfield
BMI Fulfillment Services Norwalk CT 06850
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I found your ideas intriguing, hope you’re getting good feedback from your readers. One area that was not covered (at least I didn’t notice) was the idea of promoting this platform to corporations as a component of their outplacement activities. Many companies that restructure and/or retrench commit significant resources to helping their displaced professionals into the next phase of their careers.
I know that I could have used such a resource at a couple of points in my career! Keep up the good work.
Elliott Hawk
Lead Generation/Database Manager Skyline Displays Inc. Eagan, MN
