I’ve just arrived in Boston for the HubSpot Inbound 2015 conference after spending the last 4 days in New York.
Conferences can be funny things for me. My usual experience is it takes me a few days to warm up (ie for the introvert in me to thaw) and by then the conference is almost over. Just as I’m starting to get friendly, and positive, and motivated, it’s time to go.
Which is why the pre-Boston ‘tour’ of New York organised by the HubSpot Asia-Pac team has been soooo good.
I arrived in New York last Thursday night, and had almost two days to myself to recover from the flight (I was really sick with a cold in the lead up to flying so I was pretty wasted and grumpy by the time I finally got here). Then on Saturday night things kicked off with drinks organised by Niti, Ryan and the rest of the Australian office team. Here’s a few of us at SkyBar:
HubSpot APAC meet up in New York for #inbound15 pic.twitter.com/WWOtNR4m9j
— Craig Bailey (@craigbailey) September 6, 2015
I met a bunch of new people from Sydney, Melbourne & Brisbane as well as India and New Zealand.
It seems strange in some ways to come all the way to NY in order to meet fellow Australian HubSpot users, but this in many ways is the genius of the HubSpot ‘tour’ idea. Not that I attend tons of conferences, but of the ones I’ve attended over the last 20-25 years, there’s always been a slight disconnect – a feeling of being a stranger or outsider. Even attending Inbound last year I had to work really hard in order to make any connections. I’m never a fan of networking, and I find the effort of meeting new people exhausting.
This time it is different. Following drinks, the next day (Sunday) involved sessions on marketing (with an APAC focus), as well as a fantastic dinner at a restaurant in Times Square. There were 50 or so of us there. And then additional sessions on Monday. (I left early to catch the Amtrak over to Boston – highly recommended btw.)
The HubSpot team have done really well with this pre-conference tour. The small group, personal touch approach has worked very effectively. By the end of it yesterday I felt really ‘warm‘. I was experiencing that ‘glow’ that normally comes at the end of a conference. But I was experiencing it now, right at the start of the main Inbound conference. It starts today! (I’m writing this on the morning of the 8th September).
A big shout out to Niti Shah, Ryan Bonnici, Lauren and Madison from HubSpot for organising and running the event, as well as Matt Kesby and Christy Tan in particular for their sessions.
