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.