• by Jon Bond , Op-Ed Contributor, September 23, 2013

Ten years later, Ron Berger’s hope of creating a fashion week for the ad industry, has become all that, and more.  And now the mantle has seamlessly passed from Ron (and the AAAA) to cat-herder extraordinaire, Matt Scheckner, and his firm Stillwell Partners.  

With all the changes happening in our industry, conferences like this offer the chance to learn about some of the new, hot topics.  Like social media. No, wait, that’s becoming old hat already. I meant programmatic buying, or perhaps native advertising, the ad ingénue of the week.  

It’s all there this advertising week, along with the usual A-list entertainment, and other festivities. It’s a great opportunity to bounce around, see people I haven’t seen in a while, and of course keep up on the ever-changing landscape of the business. The problem is that next week is another industry event. Then another one the week after, and so on. Who has time to go to all of these events?   Has anyone noticed this proliferation besides me? Given that it’s virtually impossible to show up for most of them, I thought about what makes my short list, and why.  

1. Cannes Lion (the Rose bill alone exceeds the total cost of any other event)
2. ANA (heck, the clients are there)
3. Advertising week (has arguably replaced the AAAA as the premiere agency event in the U.S.)
4. SXSW (where Twitter was launched, nuff said).
5. AAAA (has made great strides since the Greenbrier days, but still has some more time traveling to do). 

The three key attributes are people (let’s face it, networking is Job 1), content (avoiding death by PowerPoint, or panel blindness), and the experience (the boondoggle factor). 

Summer was officially over on Saturday. But cheer up, we are now officially in conference season!