Next Tuesday I’m trekking up to Boston to visit my friends at eTail East. In February, I went out to eTail West in Palm Springs and had a great time. I’m hoping my travels to and from Boston go much smoother than my flights to and from Palm Springs. I plan on arriving early on Tuesday, survey the area, and get into heavy interviewing on Wednesday. Thursday morning I’ll depart back for Philadelphia. If all goes well, then I should have footage ready to post by the weekend. I’

I first met Sebastian Hunt while wandering around my first conference in Chicago. Having never been to a trade show, I tentatively explored my new surroundings unsure how to approach booths. Low and behold standing in the middle of a huge convention hall holding a deck of cards with his sleeves rolled was a pleasant gentleman in a three piece suit. As I approached him he stepped forward and asked, “Do you want to see a card trick?” What a ridiculous question, of course I did

My favorite part of attending conferences is the vendor booths. I love seeing all of the new emerging technology out there and talking to a bunch of different people from all over the country and even the world. At eTail there were a lot of vendors dealing with website commerce and quite a few with tracking and managing prices. Strangely enough, I am rarely authorized to ink deals with anyone. This is probably because I generally want to get everything so I can play with

Having attended a few conferences before, I often do not spend a lot of time hanging out in panels or listening to presentations. Many times they either are speaking about subjects I don’t care that much about or are so boring I am literally falling asleep listening to them. eTail West however has a great record of having people who are actually interesting and informative. The day starts out with a few main speakers, and then it breaks off into “tracks” where it narrows its

It was then I received a phone call from hotel event planner. Apparently my adventures and misadventures were of entertaining interest to many people at the conference. My tweets and posts to the conference app were being followed. A town car and driver was being sent for me and he would drive me the rest of the day to Palm Springs. Within minutes a gentleman pulled up in a nicely air conditioned car, shared a chuckle as I explained I had no luggage, and opened the door to

I took the flight to LA. I asked that my luggage be sent to LA. I was already on standby to an earlier flight to LA, but that was up in the air. After a quick bite to eat at a Chinese food place (I highly recommend the Orange Chicken at the City Wok at Denver International Airport) I waited to see if I could make the earlier flight. I was #2 on standby. They took 2. With a grin and a skip in my step I said adios to my fellow standby-ers and grabbed my seat to LA. 2 or s

I am back from my adventures at eTail West and enjoyed myself immensely. The eTail conference series are among the best out there and this particular conference was one of the best I’ve attended. The folks who run it and organize it know what they are doing. While I was out there I attended some sessions, visited a lot of booths, and met a lot of great people. I’m going to talk all about that soon enough, but the focus of these first few posts was the adventure to get ou

On Tuesday I am heading to sunny Palm Springs, California to attend the eTail West conference. While out there I’ll be conducting interviews with various retailers and exhibitors. So the real question is, how in the world I get invited out to this business conference? Well…funny story. In June the east coast version of this conference, eTail East was held in Philadelphia. I attended and had a good time checking out various exhibitors, sessions, and even ran into my good