Philly friends gearing up to kick off Online Media Boot Camp on April 9

This post continues a story that first began here (part 1) and here (part 2)

T-48 hours for OMBC

This Thursday, my Philly-based friends will debut their exclusive, 1-day workshop for marketing and PR folks who need to better align themselves with online media. The event, entitled the Online Media Boot Camp (twitter hashtag #ombc), is being led by Beth Harte of the Harte of Marketing and SEO/SEM guru and Search Engine Strategies speaker Liana “Li” Evans on April 9, 2009. Put these two ladies together and you have a digital marketing dynamo duo that is a powerful force to reckon with!

Why Beth and Li are hosting OMBC

You may recall my fun lunch with these ladies (and the fabu @gloriabell) up in PA several weeks ago. That luncheon was just full of laughter and good convos! My trip to meet these ladies in PA, however, also had another purpose and that was to learn more about OMBC and the reasons behind why these two talented and outspoken digital marketers came together to give rise to this event.

“In the Delaware Valley area,” explained Beth, “there is a lot of manufacturing, finance and pharmaceutical industry and these sectors often tend to be deeply rooted in the more traditional forms of marketing and PR. It’s not like the DC area where there is a lot of tech or where tech mindsets are a dime a dozen.”

As Beth described the social media marketing climate in the region, it sounded a bit compartmentalized.  “You can almost draw a line right down the marketing profession,” Beth shared. “You have the traditional marketing and PR folks on one side and the digital and social marketing folks on the other side. At functions and events, it’s often very easy to tell generally who belongs to which camp.”

As Beth shared these observations, Liana agreed wholeheartedly, “Some of the traditional marketing and PR folks in the Delaware Valley don’t really get the whole social media thing. They can’t let go of the traditional broadcasting mindset. They don’t seem to understand it well. Some don’t seem even much interested in social media, period.”

But for those marketing and PR folks who want to evolve and better understand the digital marketing scene … well they are in luck! That’s exactly why Beth and Liana launched OMBC. “We wanted to do something to help marketers of all backgrounds get more up to speed in the digital marketing arena,” Harte shared. “We felt an event like OMBC would allow us the opportunity to share digital marketing insight and wisdom with those who really want to develop a more in-depth understanding and better command of the rapidly changing online marketing space.”

My buddy Shashi is part of the OMBC speaker mix

Good guy Shashi Bellamkonda, Social Media “Swami” for Network Solutions, is part of OMBC’s speaker mix. Shashi will speak about a subject he knows very well and one he presented on recently at SXSW: Selling Online Media Internally [ aka: getting the boss to approve your tinkering with social media stuff during business hours ]

And OMBC has other industry pros in the speaker line up including:

• Valeria Maltoni, Conversation Agent
• Mack Collier, The Viral Garden

I’m wishing my friends and colleagues well this week. I’m sure they’re gonna kick some serious digital marketing @ss and really get folks much more in sync and enthused about all things social media and online marketing.

Good luck Beth, Li, Shashi and team!