I returned last night from the Inbound Marketing Summit in San Francisco. It was cool to have a co-locate with The NewComm Forum (#sncr), which made it really easy to connect with some of those folks who wouldn’t have attended IMS. I especially enjoyed my all-women dinner with KD Payne, Jen McClure, Susanne Rockwell and Mihaela Vorvoreanu.

There were definitely a few nuggets I pulled from the conference. David Meerman Scott made a powerful opening by showing just how dead the traditional print media is for business research. And, Tim Ferriss broke the “everyone should have a blog and a Twitter account!” rule with the true but relatively no-brainer comment that if it doesn’t drive sales (for most companies) there’s no point. Now that I’m working to help the small business market, that rings very true to me.

Here’s what I thought worked well:

• Format: Initially, I thought the short (sub-60 min) format was weird, but as the day went on, I appreciated it alot. Having a new subject, format and presenters every 30 to 40 minutes meant you really couldn’t space out and nod off. The flip side to this was that its hard to get depth in that amount of time.
• Format variety: No hour-long lectures here. There were single presenters, two-person riffs, panels, etc. Again, that format switch up kept you engaged. Also, if you did get up to make a call or put out a fire at work, you didn’t have to wait too long for a new presentation. At Kutenda, we’re going to incorporate this model into our training programs.
• Pacing: Kudos to Justin Levy for keeping everyone stay within their time limit and cueing up the next session immediately. The good thing about a short format too is even if there is an unprepared or boring speaker, they are gone before you nod off.

I believe the short format made it so that people didn’t have a lot of questions, because there wasn’t time to formulate any.

Of course, there’s always room for improvement, and here are the ways I think IMS can improve:

• Ban devices from speakers and panelists: I am not going to name names, but I think its rude — both to other panelists and the audience – to check your iPhone or other device while you’re in front of a crowd. I mean, if you are that busy, then perhaps you should leave the space open for another expert. Show us how smart you really are by paying attentionand being respectful to the real world around you. NOTE: This wasn’t a common occurrance, but happened enough to be irritating. Just ban it. Problem solved.
• Gender balance: With the hundreds of applications for speakers, surely there could have been more gender balance of presenters. I know that the tech start-up world is filled with (mostly white) men, but really, if you want to be a leader in the field, show some leadership by finding those smart women who have something to share. If they don’t apply, seek them out. Get out of the clubhouse, boys. NewComm Forum did a better job of the balance piece — maybe ask Jen McClure how she does it.
• Tactical: It might really help give context to new media beginners to get a start to launch look of social media initiatives. How did the strategy get formulated? Where did that lead tactically? What did you fail at? Where did you succeed?