Okay, I think I’ve finally recovered enough from my trip down to Manhattan to be able to write something fairly coherent about the three days spent down there. I probably should break this up into several posts, but being that I was without a computer while there, I’m likely the last person writing up a summary. I’ll link to others I find in the end, and if I miss one, please leave it in the comments.

FOOA - As a whole
FOOA had it’s ups and downs. I was most pleased with meeting all the people I got to meet, next to that was some of the presentations. I know that Carson Systems has learned quite a bit about conferencing with this one, and I think that marketers, publishers, and the like are probably the pickiest of the bunch. (Yep, that includes myself.)

One of the main things I heard nearly everyone talk about was that they felt like they were at a big sit-down tradeshow more than at a learning conference. Presenters that had 30-45 minutes of speaking time typically filled it with “This is what we do and why you should use our product/service,” rather than explaining things in more general terms. Sure, sponsors deserved to have some exposure time (because they were lined up upstairs and few people actually went up there to see them) but an entire 30 minutes on PayPerPost just unnerved people. Most of us knew what PPP is, and have already made our firm decisions whether or not we want to use it. Same with BlogAds. Though it was kind of humorous to hear the thinly veiled insults at each other.

VideoClix
Outside of that, there were a few speakers whose services I hadn’t heard of before. VideoClix was one of them, and I thought it was a really neat idea. The concept is that you can take any video clip and highlight certain pieces (their examples were fashion shows and then a clip of Mike and Sully from Disney’s “Monsters, Inc.”) and when the user clicks on that character, dress, purse, what have you on the left hand side of the screen, a picture of that item (or a knockoff) shows up on the right hand side with a purchase option. The best part of this was the fact that once you highlighted a character or item, even if it went offscreen and came back, it was still being tracked.

The Deck
Another interesting, albeit elitist concept was The Deck. The sites that are “members” of The Deck are very simply designed, and contain NO other ads than the one single ad that’s placed there by The Deck on behalf of advertisers. There is a non-competition clause, where if say, Coca-Cola decided to place an ad on one site, there will be no ad for any other soda company on any other site in the network (currently totaling about 15 sites) that month. Plus, Coca-Cola would have the first refusal for the following month - meaning that if they wish to continue their ad in the network, any other soda company that was in the queue would have to wait again. The sites in the network boast millions of pageviews per month, and The Deck only accepts advertisements from products and services that the members of the network have paid for and/or used.

Numeric Analytics
I got to speak with Numeric Analytics upstairs as well as hear a presentation from Pete Affeld. The big thing is that many advertising clients aren’t fully aware of all impact of their advertising efforts - most only hear about the positive. But it takes knowing about the negative (or lack of) results to really fine tune any advertising campaigns properly, so that’s where Numeric Analytics comes into play. Their services are geared towards advertising clients and are made to help them get better information about their campaigns.

Darren Rowse - ProBlogger/b5media
I spent most of the time down there with Darren, and there are more pics later in the post from the meetup we had at The Speakeasy. I really loved Darren’s presentation though (despite his fighting off the flu, he was entertaining as well as informative)… it was one of the few that took a humorous approach and appealed to both publishers and advertisers. His presentation was about “dating” in advertising - meaning romancing each other (publishers and advertisers) to make the most out of the relationship. He focused on providing clear and concise statistics to potential advertisers, and valuable offers to bloggers and publishers. It was one of the few presentations that actually got a giggle from the audience from the beginning. Way to go, Darren!

On day two, Darren, Matt and myself went across the street to Pronto Pizza for lunch. The “butlered lunch” there at Gotham Hall left much to be desired… we were HUNGRY. Here are a couple shots from there, and I believe Darren has more he’ll post soon enough. I was honored to be with Darren as he tasted NYC style pizza for the first time - I even explained “the fold” quite well, I think!

Those were just a couple highlights - there was much more to it but I don’t want to bore you all! After Day One, Carson Systems set up a little “happy hour” after party at 230 5th Ave. We mixed and mingled on the rooftop, and here were some photos I took. (Don’t mind the one with me in it - I was exhausted after having been up since 3am and traveling down to the city that day!)

Saturday I met up again with Darren, and with Shai Coggins (another b5 coolie person) at Carmine’s for lunch. Carmine’s is one of my favorite places to eat in Manhattan, and since Darren loves Italian food, and Shai had never been to NYC - I figured it a perfect place to go. At one point, Darren had snagged my camera and taken a few candid shots of me yakking away - I do believe I was gushing on about one of my favorite crooners, Michael Buble at the time.

After lunch, I brought Darren and Shai to Battery Park where we checked out Lady Liberty, some street dancers, and a sculpture that was previously at the World Trade Center. After that, we hit up the meetup, (which was wonderful) and that’s all there is to say about that! *phew!*

Yes, there are even more photos…

Others who’ve posted updates:

Elaine Vigneault - LOVE HER!

Theron’s Flickr Set

Ari’s Recap (Few Guys From Work)

John Keegan’s Flickr Set

Rich Minx’s Recap

Chris Conley’s ProBlogger Meetup Recap

Behind The Buzz - Live Blogging the FOOA

Popularity: 19% [?]