• by Kelly Samardak , July 14, 2008

ContextWeb Breakfast Panel, The Yale Club of New York City
July 9, 2008

Just to throw you guys for a loop, I like to interrupt the conga line of parties with a little of them that thar learnin'. No, no, not the stuff from books. We're talking a good old sitdown with a panel of people. Remembering the bacon, sausage, fruit, OJ, and scads of dark lovely coffee from the Oxygen rebranding breakfast, I RSVPd "yes please" to the breakfast session with ContextWeb.

The Yale Club is now nothing new to me since MediaPost has thrown a few OMMA shows there. Therefore, I shouldn't have gotten turned around after stepping out of Grand Central, but you know what, I did. I tacked on a good extra 10 walking minutes (maybe less) on one of the hotter New York mornings. I should mention this was the EARLY morning, after my late night with NYCTV , so heavy eyes and brain in full effect. I spun through the revolving door and shot up to the 20^th floor Grand Ballroom for "The Next Big Thing: How Publishers Are Taking Back Control of Their Brands with Scalable and Profitable Advertising Strategies." That's more than a mouthful and I couldn't figure out the riddle based on that lengthy prose.

I arrived five minutes before the starting bell, so my access to the Continental breakfast was blocked by networkers oblivious to my blood thirst for morning coffee. I had to machete-chop through the networking jungle. This is what I don't understand: You KNOW the buffet table is there, you just stepped two tiny footsteps away from it so you could grumble to Scrappy about your SEM strategy. You've got your coffee -- now move away so I can get mine. I'm telling you, pre-coffee I'm like Sasquatch's homicidal stepchild.

"Hey!" I light-bulbed to myself, "This was a mini version of OMMA Publish!" They even had Wenda Harris Millard, Co-CEO and president of Media, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, on the panel. Wait, can we talk about the nametags for a minute? OK, good. I couldn't find mine. They were in alphabetical order and I know my alphabet (hooray for Mantua Village Elementary!), but my name wasn't obvious to me. See, the company name was big and bold and the name of the person was teeny tiny, in case the mouse (we named him Meatloaf) from my old Waverly Place apartment took some summer reading courses.

Denise Brown, an interested party without company affiliation, and lucky tablemate to my right, offered that maybe Contextweb wanted to showcase all the different companies present. I countered that I'm more interested in the people themselves at these events. Are we really in a world where meeting the person takes too much time, let's cut right to the company and how I need you?

Smart Money and Smart Money sat across from me, with TVGuide.com, who glided in just under the buzzer and was full of bubbling personality to my left. She was energetic and smiley and was also one of the women to ask questions of the panel. And you've already met Denise.

Over the singing throb of my stupid broken toe, I noted that it's a bad idea to deliver a slide-guided presentation at 8 a.m.. Bill Morrison, partner, ThinkPanmure, delivered charts and numbers and text-heavy slides. He's a very serious, inflection-sparse guy, so the presentation compounded the ineffectiveness of the weak coffee. I wish panelists would share their experiences and lessons learned rather than peddle their slides for trade (you know, give me your business card and I'll send you the rest, heh heh heh).

Wenda did not disappoint. I remembered her as aggressive, straight-shooting, and unapologetic. She left me with something too large to put on a T-shirt, but enough to chew on, addressing the difference between the technical implementation of online advertising vs. sizing and format for available creative. She asserted that it's different schools of thought, with engineers and scientists thinking linearly, preferring the yes or no, either/or choices.

"It's not an either/or in the digital world. Advertising is about persuasion and art and machines don't make art... and art doesn't give you an answer, it gives you possibilities," she said.

Having miniature bagels at your party and you want it covered in Just An Online Minute? Send invitations to kelly@mediapost.com

Pretend you're a member of the Yale Club with the pictures on Flickr!