I just spent the last three days at the 2007 Bridge to Integrated Marketing and Fundraising Conference in DC. It was nice to be on the sitting-end of a conference for once! I heard a lot of presentations and talked to tons of attendees, and thought I'd share some of my observations. I've got a lot of ground to cover, so I'll stretch this out over several posts.

An opening plenary from Tony Elischer Monday morning kicked off the bulk of the sessions. Tony is the British Seth Godin. He's funny, engaging and smart. His presentation was about re-evaluating how we do our marketing work. He encouraged the audience to take everything they are doing and throw it out the window. Start from scratch and do something new. Experiment, play, and invent. I thought this was a refreshing message, because I know it's easy to get caught in the trap of doing only what feels safe.

One of the most surprising and exciting parts of his presentation for me was how he spent a fair amount of time talking about how technology can and should be embraced as part of any marketing strategy. I was surprised to hear it because during the time I spent in the exhibit hall, I heard from many attendees who were completely disconnected from anything technology related: E-mail fundraising was something one of the kids in the department did.  Many of them had no idea what was on their own web site.

Of course, in my little bubble at NTEN, I forget that these kinds of chasms are the rule, not the exception. So I was heartened to hear Tony tackle the topic, and he really did it justice. He was a great cheerleader for technology, and he positioned it perfectly - as the paradigm you need to master to reach tomorrow's donors. He even showed the Michael Wesch video, "Web 2.0....The Machine is Us/ing Us." So mad props to Tony and the Bridge conference for picking him!