HostingCon is one of the most important conference for the web hosting industry in the US (and maybe for the world too). With over 1300 attendees including all the big names such as ThePlanet, Riorey, Microsoft, etc. there was no way we were going to miss it.
This was my first time at HostingCon and I’ll admit my expectations were pretty high. While the opportunity to meet people (and especially business contacts) face to face is always something I look forward to; I completely dread the 16-20 hour travel from Bombay to anywhere in the US. It’s times like these when I bless ICANN for keeping their conferences at locations around the world, so my travel time is not always 2 days.
Having been to several ICANN meetings in the past, I knew exactly what I had to dump in my conference bag: suits, blazers, some more formals, and some after work, smart casuals; just can’t go wrong. Turned out I was…completely. I guess we were amongst the very few people there wearing suits (not sure if this was because of the weather in Austin, it was really hot). Silver lining though – we stood out amongst the crowd ;).
We had quite a busy 3 days ahead, some meetings were lined up in advance, some we’d hoped to catch up with at the conference ad-hoc, and we were also hoping for a lot of footfalls in our booth. Not to forget, I also wanted this to be a learning experience, so catching a few seminars was definitely on the cards for me. At the booth, our Caricature idea turned out to be a major hit. Our iPad giveaway, while not something that differentiated us much, definitely was a puller too.
Coming back, it was quite a success for us. Maybe we could also do with an extra day, to meet more people. I missed all the seminars, which brings me to suggest if there’s a way iNet can maybe stream these seminars over intranet, or have a screen in the exhibition area, that would be great.
I must mention though, that the quality of the crowd was top-notch, decision makers, the who’s who of the industry. No wonder HostingCon is amongst the best in the business. World Hosting Day (previously known as WebHostingDay) though, has smartly transformed itself from a Europe focused meet-up, to a larger global event. They’ve taken advantage of their central location, making it a larger attended event. I’d really like to see HostingCon to cross borders now.
A big shout-out to iNet for the fantastic execution. We’ve already booked a great spot for next year – Can’t wait.
P.S. In case you haven’t seen them already Click Here to see the cool caricatures that we made for everyone that came to our booth.
P.P.S. Did I mention that I won an iPad from Attracta? Thanks for that Attracta 🙂
