Recently digital marketers such as myself flocked to Boston to attend the Mecca of marketing conferences, Inbound.

At Brilliant Transportation, our marketing team is in charge of creating content that event planners find helpful and useful, typically around event

transportation. However, I figured since this was my first time attending a major conference

it would be helpful to provide my insights as an attendee to you.

Helpful Thoughts From an Event Attendee

What Enhanced the Event's Experience

The Inbound App

As we were voyaging to Boston I thought it would be proactive to go online and start jotting down all the sessions I wanted to

attend accompanied by room number, date, and time. Turns out that was a huge waste of time because HubSpot designed an app for

just that. Within the app I was able to sort through session types, routing (BCEC is

HUGE), and add sessions to my calendar. There were other functionalities to the app, but I found this one extremely helpful for

seamlessly planning out my day.

In the center of the conference center was what HubSpot deems "Club Inbound." It served as the central meeting place for all attendees

throughout the week. The area included lounge chairs, charging stations, music, food/drinks, and even masseuses. I was fortunate to network with

some amazing people there including one of the smartest minds in marketing, Seth Godin.

Networking Area

Venue was Phenomenal

BCEC was an amazing venue, easily able to handle the 14,000 attendees this year. There was never a time where the flow of people

felt congested or cramped. The conference center was so massive that at times it felt like I hiked 3 miles to reach my next session. Other than

that, it was clean and easy to navigate. A+

There were times where I felt my head was going to explode from all the knowledge. From 8am to 6pm we were listening to the smartest people in marketing give their advice. To act as a release, HubSpot booked comedian Amy Shumer for the third night. Needless to say, her standup was hilarious and a nice spin on a week of educational

learning.

Fun - Amy Schumer

(Picture via bizjournals.com)

I love Boston. The city is college-oriented and it seems like everyone there is trying to better themselves - I like that. Boston only has a little over 650,000 residents which is a nice change of pace for me coming

from New York City. Also, the seafood is incredible. I enjoy myself every time I can make it to Beantown.

Boston

The main hashtag for the conference was #INBOUND15 where people could connect and share their experience. To mix it up HubSpot

encourages a #HumansofInbound hashtag on Instagram for people to share their past and how they ended up where they are - a nice touch

for networking and learning more about each other.

Social Media Engagement

What Could be ImprovedOverbooked Sessions

Probably the most frustrating part was not being able to see all the sessions I planned on

attending. I think HubSpot could've done a better job over gauging attendee interest for certain sessions and placing those sessions in

larger rooms. The overbooked sessions caused a few problems for me:

• I missed highly anticipated sessions • I had to leave sessions early to beat crowds • I missed the Q & A at the end of sessions

I will say that HubSpot recognized the

problem during the event and started creating "encore" sessions for some of the most

popular. However, those sessions overlapped others so it wasn't optimal.

Transportation

Naturally, members of Brilliant would be more critical of event transportation than others. While we weren't expecting our level

of service, we were disappointed in the taxi lines. We decided not to call Uber because the surge pricing was 3x for the same

product. As a result we would walk a few blocks and hope to get lucky with a taxi. Like I said, we weren't expecting our level of service but we were expecting to get a clean taxi in under 30

minutes.

Overall, Inbound was an incredible experience and it's going to be hard for another event to top it in my opinion. I hope

you found my attendee point of view helpful for planning your future events. Please subscribe to Brilliant's Event Planner Blog to

receive useful content for planning your event.