MarTech next week: a personal choice

It’s finally here. The big fall 2020 MarTech conference, virtual of course, with almost 80 sessions all supporting our theme: MarTech is marketing.

With so many sessions, attendees are going to have some tough choices to make. Here’s how I plan to navigate my way through those three days.

The keynotes. First, I always look at the keynotes. Chief Martec himself, Scott Brinker, kicks off day one by naming the five martech trends for the decade ahead. Just five, and for a decade? Scott’s a brave man. On day two, Brian Solis, Global Innovation Evangelist, Salesforce, describes “Generation Novel,” a critical customer segment created by the pandemic. What I’ve heard. from someone familiar with the content, is that this is a richly detailed piece of thought leadership. A must watch.

Check the full MarTech agenda here.

Finally, on day three, we’ll have some fun with the annual Stackie Awards. I’ve had a glimpse of the entries, and I can tell you that entrants are reaching new heights when it comes to design — the visual representation of their stacks. After Scott calls the winners, I’ll be chatting with him about themes and trends in the stack world.

Marketing stacks. Which brings me to one theme I see highlighted throughout the conference: where marketing stacks are headed and how to get the best out of them. “The Beauty Of The Beast: How To Optimize Your Monstrous Martech Stack,” presented by Helen Abramova of Verizon and Matthew Gomez of Walden University stands out, but there are a string of sessions on the present and future stack: see Tony Byrne of Real Story Group on “Future-Proofing Your Martech Stack.”

That’s not all. You can put together a route through the schedule focusing on any one of these topics: CDPs, content experience and analytics, data rights and privacy, digital transformation, email marketing, SEO and AI. It depends on what your immediate needs are, both for your organization and your own professional development.

MarTech Live. And I can’t wrap up here without a mention for MarTech Live, which will be broadcasting truly live each day at 4:45pm ET. I’ll be hosting the first session, a look at the virtual event stack with Vasil Azarov of the Growth Marketing Conference, and our own Marc Sirkin. I’ll also be closing the conference with a fireside chat featuring Christopher Penn of TrustInsights.ai on what we’ve learned from the week.

But I particularly want to draw your attention to the Wednesday session, hosted by MarTech Today editor Rodric Bradford. He’ll be convening a panel to discuss a topic of growing importance: “How to Truly Diversify Your Staff.” His guests: Dennis Schultz of the Blacks In Technology Foundation and Elizabeth Cotton, founder of Career Mingle. Feel free to invite your HR colleagues or anyone else from your organization to that one.

Plenty to think about, and I look forward to hanging out with you all. And I mean it: I’ll be in the virtual networking lounge each afternoon, a forum where you can network with your fellow attendees and MarTech Today staffers.

About The Author

Kim Davis

Kim Davis is the Editorial Director of MarTech. Born in London, but a New Yorker for over two decades, Kim started covering enterprise software ten years ago. His experience encompasses SaaS for the enterprise, digital- ad data-driven urban planning, and applications of SaaS, digital technology, and data in the marketing space. He first wrote about marketing technology as editor of Haymarket’s The Hub, a dedicated marketing tech website, which subsequently became a channel on the established direct marketing brand DMN. Kim joined DMN proper in 2016, as a senior editor, becoming Executive Editor, then Editor-in-Chief a position he held until January 2020. Prior to working in tech journalism, Kim was Associate Editor at a New York Times hyper-local news site, The Local: East Village, and has previously worked as an editor of an academic publication, and as a music journalist. He has written hundreds of New York restaurant reviews for a personal blog, and has been an occasional guest contributor to Eater.