The booths are broken down. The sessions are finished. Pitches for technology upgrades are being written as people fly home to resume their jobs at their respective companies.
I for one am currently sitting in the lobby of the Chicago Hyatt Regency reflecting on my week here. As a side note, the folks here at the Chicago Hyatt Regency are fantastic. They are very attentive and provide great service. I’ve stayed here two years in a row and have enjoyed both of my stays immensely.
The Booths
There were A LOT of vendors at IRCE15. You could have tried to visit everyone, but it was a fool’s errand. You might have been able to say hello to every single person and grab their flyers, but you would soon end up with 100lbs of paper and barely a clue who you talked to. With that said, I did visit quite a few. I ended up with about 40lbs of paper.
Some booth highlights & shout-outs:
Mozu & Echidna - Amazing ecommerce solution.
Pitney Bowes - Great shipping solution for international shipping.
PriceWaiter – Fun concept to allow customers to “make an offer” on things you want to get rid of.
Fed Ex – They had a new label that has a lot of advertising and customer retention possibilities
Queue-it - Always enjoy seeing my magician pal, Sebastian Hunt.
Windsor Circle - Great and clever giveaway of tailored green pants to focus on their customer retention platform.
Lingo24 – A bunch of fellas from Scotland walking around in kilts talking about their translating services.
Refund Retriever – Tracked me down for a high five and had interesting info on shipping refunds.
SEM Rush – Had to drop by and say hello in person to the folks I chat with on a regular basis on Twitter. #SEMRushChat
Elite SEM - Great party for clients and some very interesting moments. A bartender renamed me “pockets.”
Optilead - Very interesting solution to solve cart abandonment issues, plus they tracked me down on Twitter.
Presta Shop – Got a great selfie with their new mascot.
Speed Commerce - They were In Fifth Gear last year, but they remembered me and said hello.
Visual IQ - Handed some fun stickers.
Clustrix - Had a boat load of selfie sticks and nice info on scaling sales.
IBM Silverpop – Another good pile of selfie sticks and a digital marketer.
Bronto – More blow up dinosaurs & email solutions
Invodo – Saw my pals from eTail West there.
ID.Me - Tracked me down on Twitter for more selfies.
Micro Media Marketing - I took a selfie of a selfie inside a giant instagram poster. I broke the internet.
Wiser - Brian and I are best friends now.
Criteo & Signal – They had a great rooftop party
(I’m probably missing a few folks.)
Sessions
The sessions I attended were very informative and very interesting. I generally hung out in the video and social media tracks. I have a lot of new things I want to try when I get back. IRCE had a lot of diverse and interesting folks talking this year. I don’t think I was bored by a single sessions. Some people just hang out with the booths trying to scoop up as many prizes as possible, but you are doing yourself a real disservice if you don’t attend some of the sessions. Plus stealing untailored green pants is a bit jerky my European friends.
Well as the sun sets in Chicago, I’m off on a few adventures in the city. Where? Who knows. I’ll be back on the East Coast come Sunday.
Stay adventurous friends.