Vancouver’s F5 Expo: Refreshing Business Stratagies

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the F5 expo in Vancouver. The event is produced by Lindsay Smith, the CEO and founder of Massive Media Inc. A company usually synonymous with fun tech socials in Vancouver. The conceptual inspiration of expo is a play on “F5 key”, thus dubbed: Refreshing Business Strategies. Lindsay has always had a knack for smart marketing and she has definitely kept her track record strong with this event–if not adding to her portfolio of successful events.

Headlined by Malcolm Gladwell, it would be a hard to have any sort of involvement in the Vancouver tech scene and not have seen the ads with his huge fro plastered throughout town.

I arrived a little late to Lindsay’s keynote Wednesday. The room was so full by the time I got there we just hung out and got some coffee and explored the expo hall next store. Unfortunately the second speaker was in the same room and with no other events going on anywhere else everyone just stayed in the same room – same issue, too many people – stood in the hallway.

By the time the third session started we were more eager to see some action. Our choice of topics included a Cloud Computing Session and one on The Metrics of Social Media. Being in the middle of a Cloud transition at work we opted for the Cloud Session. The panel consisted of two local Cloud Company executives and one representative from Microsoft for the Enterprise representation. View the full review of the Cloud Computing Session.

After we headed over to the Panel on Search titled: Search Marketing in 2010 . I am often hesitant to attend panel’s on this topic if the event is not search focus the topic seems to just be thrown in as a hot topic and generally speaking quite low level. In this Search Session I would say this was about 80% true. However as a newbie listening to the panel I think I would have been impressed with the amount of information they packed into the session as well as how honest the panel was. The panel, similar to the Cloud Computing session had a good mix, including a representative from Yahoo!, Bing and a local SEO. View the full review of the Search Marketing in 2010 session.

Overall the event was one of the better ones I have attended in the Vancouver area. There were lots of good representation from industry leaders and participation of local enthusiasts.

Here are my highlights and low-lights:

Highlights

• The Branding of the Event
• Inclusion of Industry leaders
• Strong Local Representation
• Lunch

Low-lights

• Keynote and conference kick off accessibility
• No Internet??