This was the first Adobe Summit I have attended since the conference moved from Salt Lake to Las Vegas and I’m really glad I did but before we go any further, I should let you know that this isn’t going to be your typical Summit recap of sessions attended, thoughts on the keynotes, and why I’m excited about announcements that were made — there are already a lot of really good posts out there recapping Adobe Summit so I won’t attempt to add to that with my observations — rather, this is my personal experience at Adobe Summit.
Why is it important to focus on the personal side of attending a conference like Adobe Summit? The answer is simple, because it’s the way we do things at 33 Sticks. While we work in what is often called Business-to-Business, we don’t see it that way, we see it as People-to-People. If we make Carrie at Harvard Business Review successful, we make the business successful. If we help create amazing experiences for Todd at The Monitor, everyone around him will enjoy their jobs just a little bit more, and the company that pays us will become more successful. If we invest in helping Natalie become a superstar at Holland America Line, the company makes more money.
[bctt tweet=”It’s about people, relationships, and experiences first, when you do that, everything else just begins to fall into place.” username=”33sticks”]
Summit Week started off Monday morning with coffee and breakfast at a small little coffee shop off The Strip, a location that will remain a closely guarded secret, with two people who are just high quality, amazing humans — Michael Helbling, Analytics Director at Search Discovery, and Matt Gershoff, CEO of Conductrics.
After a good breakfast, some wonderful conversation, and introducing Michael and Matt to the delicious beverage that is the Dirty Chai, the three of us headed over to the UNLV campus for UnSummit.
UnSummit. UnSummit, a small, yearly event that takes place before the craziness of Summit proper kicks off, is the brainchild of David McBride. UnSummit has historically been one of my favorite parts of Summit week, a small group of people who are passionate about analytics, talking shop. No sales pitches. No egos. No elaborate presentations. Just smart people, talking data.
The aforementioned Michael Helbling talked about the need for digital analysts to become more mature in their practice, followed by a couple 33 Sticks clients Todd Schauman, Director of Marketing and Analytics at The Christian Science Monitor, talked about calculating customer lifetime value and Brett Kobold, Sr. Manager, Marketing Analytics at Workfront, presented a framework for designing Aggregatable Timelines.
We closed out the day with Matt Gershoff literally melting people’s faces with his presentation on Machine Learning and AI.
UnSummit also gave me the opportunity to meet people in the industry that I have connected with on social media but have never met in person. The person I was looking forward to seeing the most was Till Büttner and we made it happen and it was amazing.
Thank you David for your dedication to making this event happen every year, I know it’s not easy but it’s greatly appreciated by myself and many others in the industry. Also, thank you to Claravine, Bounteous, and Metric Partners for stepping in to sponsor the event.
Monday night, following UnSummit, the 33 Sticks team got together at Hell’s Kitchen for a nice dinner together and yes, I ordered the Wellington.
Having been a longtime fan of Chef Ramsay, this was a wonderful experience for me and it made me respect what he has built even more. While his brand has expanded and the number restaurants he operates has grown exponentially, he has found a way to maintain the culture and quality that is so important to him. From the quality of the food, to the knowledge of the staff, to the overall experience, it was nothing short of amazing!
As we look to grow the 33 Sticks brand, Chef Ramsay and his ability to scale quality and caring is a constant influence on us.
The @33Sticks crew does summit right, whether its @Jenn_Kunz owning the hot tub or @hilamonster & @usujason sharing their penthouse view.
12/13— Jim Kultgen (@JimKultgen) April 6, 2019
At 33 Sticks, we’ve kind of always cut our own path and how we spend our time at Adobe Summit is no different. We invested in a beautiful suite, where we could escape the noise and craziness for a few minutes to refresh, where we could host our clients, and where our friends could come relax before heading back into the sessions to get more knowledge.
This was my spot, while the rest of the team was off hitting as many sessions as they could, I chilled here with a few close friends.
Tuesday night we hosted a dinner for our clients and we were very fortunate to have Hila’s parents come out from LA to help with all the preparations. We wouldn’t have been able to pull it off without their help. I even had a chance to sneak away and enjoy a quite breakfast with them at Bouchon.
Our yearly client dinner at Adobe Summit turns out to always be a great time, I love putting smart and motivated people together in the same room, with some amazing food. And it’s just a nice way to say ‘thank you’ to all the amazing clients that choose to be part of the 33 Sticks family – I don’t take it lightly and I am personally dedicated to making sure their experience is amazing!
33 Sticks also participated in two sessions at Adobe Summit. Hila presented, what turned out to be a very popular session, on using Adobe Analysis Workspace for forecasting, statistical significance, and churn analysis. In said session, Jenn made a guest appearance by launching a t-shirt directly into the conference room ceiling.
Jenn Kunz did a wonderful job presenting her tips and tricks as part of the Analytics Rockstar panel, in addition to her guest appearance during Hila’s sessions 🤣
This is a 360 video of the t-shirt canon incident, so drag it around and enjoy from every angle.
The Bash was a great time to unwind and spend some time with our friends.
As the week drew to a close and things began to slow down, I was able to enjoy a wonderful brunch, at Bouchon, with our friends from Southwest Airlines.
We ate the most amazing fried chicken I’ve ever had at Yardbird.
And I enjoyed a quiet dinner with Jon and Hila at SUGARCANE.
As with everything at 33 Sticks, it’s about people and experiences and Adobe Summit 2019 did not disappoint. I’m already making plans for Adobe Summit 2020.
If you want to hear more, we recoded an episode of the 33 Tangents Podcast talking about our experience at Summit:
[author] Jason Thompson [author_image timthumb=’on’]http://i2.wp.com/33sticks.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/jason_250x250.jpg?zoom=2&w=1080[/author_image] [author_info]Jason is the co-founder and CEO of 33 Sticks. In addition to being an amateur chef and bass player, he can also eat large amounts of sushi. As an analytics and optimization expert, he brings over 15 years of data experience, going back to being part of the original team at Omniture. [/author_info] [/author]