Nick Baggott's CRM and Digital Marketing Blog

vacation during August

I will be away on vacation from July 30th to August 16th, so sorry - no posts during that time - have a great summer!

I am speaking at TFM today

I am speaking at the Technology for Marketing show today at Earls Court, London. I will be in the CIM Experience room. If you are there, come and say hi.

I will post a link if CIM record it again. I understand they may well do a podcast this time

End of year summary

What a year.

23 countries, 17 clients and plenty of work. Fingers crossed, I am not affected by the credit crunch yet, but I have been sensible saving cash just in case!

Highlights have been seeing the pyramids in Mexico, historic Buenos Aires, swimming in the dead sea, having dinner in a fabulous restaurant overlooking Stockholm qand of course watching football in Brazil.

Worst traffic award goes to Moscow, narrowly beating Sao Paulo and Mexico City.

So, thanks for everyone that has helped me - Tamie, Gisselle & the teams at Microsoft, Imparta for introducing me to o2 and Lloyds TSB, CIM and Diann at Clear Direction deserve a special mention, but of course thanks to all of the alliance partners, clients and business partners.

Fingers crossed for next year. I have high hopes for a couple of new clients and relationships with agencies like Wild Card and Nixon McInnes and Chemistry of course.

Good luck to you all and thank you

Vacation

I am off on vacation (holiday for the Brits) for a couple of weeks from this Thursday. I shall be back on August 14th. I'll pick up email via my pda ocassionally.

Steve Balmer at MGX

Last night I saw Steve Balmer's presentation at the Microsoft global conference, MGX. These presentations are legendary and it certainly lived up to the billing.

I've never seen a crowd reaction like it. He transfixed 17,000 people and had them eating out of the palm of his hand. Truly inspiring.

More news and comment from MGX soon. I am presenting soon!

Great new site from Reuters

I recently did some digital marketing training with Reuters. They have been working on a new community web site on Valuation Risk for a while and needed some help putting together the final elements of their digital marketing strategy. So, I created and managed a 2 day training session with their project team. The completed site is a great example of how to do digital marketing in a web 2.0 world. It features lots of opportunities for collaboration as well as content in many formats to interacxt with or download (including via podcast).

Check it out, it is called Valuation Risk

Digital Marketing Training in Brazil

I have just finished a one day Advanced Digital Marketing course for Microsoft in Sao Paulo, Brazil. They were a wonderful group, very participative and engaged.

We had some interesting debates - particularly about why Orkut is more popular in Brazil than facebook. Maybe it is because Orkut were first to market, maybe because Orkut is focused around sociability (who I am, what I am like and what others think about me, rather than what I do) - but most definately because you can find other Brazilians there. Like you can find Dutch people in Hyves!

Here's a photo of the groups putting together their team presentations, using digital marketing to challenge Open Source software.

The IDMF Show

I spoke on behalf of the CIM at the International Direct Marketing Fair at Earl's Court, London this week (Tuesday 29th to Thurs 31st April). I did 2 sessions each afternoon on digital marketing and social networking. As expected the sessions were in great demand with standing room only.

If you missed it, don't worry. I understand CIM are going to publish some video of me at TFM soon - I'll post the link here. 

Mexico

I'm in Mexico this week, working with Microsoft.

facebook group for Navigate Illumni

Practice what you preach!

I've just set up a facebook group for people who have been on one of my training courses and want to stay in touch or network with other people who have had similar learning experiences. It is so easy to do. It is free and took 10 mins to do. If you have a network or community, why not do the same...

Check it out. I'll start posting into it, as people join up. It is an open group, so feel free to tell your friends.