Conferences and Pac Man

On the emailgeeks slack channel someone asked for advice about going to conferences. There were lots of great suggestions. I threw in the Pac Man Rule and realised a lot of folks haven’t heard of it before.

Eric Holscher created the Pac Man rule. The rule is really simple. If you’re standing in a group talking at a conference a circle can make it challenging for new people to join you. But, if you leave a space for another person to join you by standing in the shape of a Pac Man, you’re inviting new people to join.

Here’s a video explaining:

I’ve found this really useful and helpful both when I’ve been in conversations and when I’ve wanted to join conversations.

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Speaking in June

ActiveCampaign is hosting their very first user conference in Chicago in June. I am honored to be a part of their speaker lineup.
Early bird registration only $450 through April 30.

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Upcoming events for Laura

speakingIconForBlogWe’re more than halfway through April. Good: Taxes are finished. Bad: Wait? We’re well into Q2? How time files. With that realization, it seems like it’s a good time to share some of the places and events I’ll be at in May.
Salesforce Connections in Atlanta, GA. May 10 – 12. I’m a panelist for Deliverability Unplugged: How to Stay out of Email Jail and Other Best Practices on May 11.  I’m sharing the panel with Mickey Chandler from SFMC and Melinda Plemel from Return Path. The session will be moderated by Rebecca McAdams from Forrester Research. Bring questions. I don’t think you really want to just listen to us show you slides, so come bearing questions.
As an aside, Salesforce is offering a discount of 50% off registration for Connections16 through April 22 if you use the promo code EQUALITY. Good on Salesforce for this.
Email Innovations Summit in Las Vegas, NV. May 17 – 18. Understanding your IT Department: What Non-Technical Brand Managers Need to Know about Email Security, DMARC , ISPs and Delivery. I’ve been working on this talk and, wow, there’s a lot of info I want to share. It should be a fun session, so stop by.
You can get a 15% discount off the cost of registration for Innovations by using my speaker code SPKATK

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Time for Email Innovations!

After a great experience in Atlanta last week, with the Salesforce and Mailchimp folks, I’m heading off again today. This time it’s Las Vegas for the Email Innovations conference hosted by the Only Influencers group.
My talk is coming together nicely. It’s been a bit of a challenge to try and give enough detail to make sense while not overwhelming with technobabble. There were times when I was all

Thankfully I have some great folks around who talked me down and reminded me that there wasn’t a test and I could gloss over some of the details and still make sense. If you want a preview of part of my talk, check out my blogpost from last week at Only Influencers. Understanding the technical: authentication.
Hope to see you there! My talk is in the Education track after lunch on Thursday.

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