Chicago My Kind of Town and SMPS Build Business 2011 My Kind of Place
Monday, September 5, 2011 at 4:16PM I recently returned from my first SMPS National Conference in Chicago. My one word description WOW!!
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As a fist time attendee I came away suitably impressed. Past years I have told both Adam Kilbourne and Mike Totsch I really did not have the time to spend two or three days at this type of conference, after all we have two people attending already. Boy was I wrong. This absolutely was time well spent, each day was packed with opportunities to network with a variety of professionals, attend and participate in very informative learning opportunities and perhaps most importantly have the opportunity to observe, support and gain a greater appreciation for all the hard work our marketing and business development staff does for Tec.
Proudly Tec was prominently represented at the beginning, middle and end of the conference. Wednesday morning the conference kicked off with Adam and his two co-authors Holly Bolton and Dana Galvin presenting their White Paper, “The Client’s Use of Social Media and Social Networking” to a packed house of fellow CPSM’s.
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Thursday evening at the Gala Reception Mike, last year’s Chapter President of the Year, had the pleasure of introducing Alison Carney of the Washington DC Chapter as this year’s Chapter President of the Year. It was a great speech by Mike and a tremendous honor for Alison. In true leadership fashion Alison humbly deferred much of the success for the growth of the Chapter to her Board and members. Finally the very last session of the day Friday when many attendees had visions of the conference closing reception and the SMPS Chicago Social Event at the Merchandise Mart later in the evening, the BD Live session in the Michigan Room attracted 35 or 40 richly rewarded attendees. The client, Edward Gervain from Adventist Health System, was perfect and up to the task, the four BD professionals Kenda Salisbury, Barbara Stiles, Laurie Buckman, and Mike Totsch were superb. (Although in my obviously unbiased opinion Mike was superb-plus). This presentation was thought provoking, informative and hilariously funny, all-in-all 75 minutes well spent.
Not having the time to attend has become less of an issue. I may not be able to attend every year however I did leave Chicago looking forward to Build Business 2012 Take Action in San Francisco next July.
SMPS in events, office, organizations 
