Esther: Welcome back The BusinessMakers Overtime Show, heard here and online at theBusinessMakers.com/overtime. And we have with us Sal Baldovinos. He is the Chair of the IS Conference, the Interactive Strategies Conference. Sal, welcome to the show.

Sal: Thank you, Katie and thank you Esther for having me on today. I really appreciate it.

Esther: Yeah, of course and Katie and I are very familiar with the IS Conference -

Katie: Yes.

Esther: - we'll just call it that for short 'cause Interactive Strategies is a mouthful.

Katie: It is.

Esther: But you know what we're talking about. We have both been several times before. Katie's actually spoken before at the Interactive Strategies Conference and she's -

Katie: Yes.

Esther: - you know, we -

Katie: It was a great experience.

Esther: - yeah, we love it. We think it's a great event. It happens right here in Houston but it really does draw from all over the state and even other states, doesn't it, Sal?

Sal: Yes it does. We've had people as far as Louisiana and up north come down to either speak or attend. We've had people as far as Colorado - Gwen Bell was actually a speaker last year - so we were very pleased to have her. So I mean we're definitely getting bigger and better as each year progresses and we hope to maybe two years, three years from now, make this sort of a South by Southwest for Houston.

Katie: Ooh.

Esther: We like the sound of that.

Katie: That's exciting. So tell us a little bit about what IS Conference is all about. I mean the name, perhaps, does suggest interactive strategies but what are you putting out there for people to snatch up when they attend?

Sal: Well we definitely wanna cater to our Houston marketing community but it also branches far beyond that. We also have web developers that come out and join us. We've had very well-known designers who have spoken for us in the past. So we definitely don't wanna limit it to only the marketing community. We want everybody who's familiar with social media to also get involved with search engine optimization and those who are new to the game that want to get into interactive marketing and really figure out what it is, we definitely wanna open up the doors for everyone. We don't wanna limit it to just the suit and tie agency types who wanna keep it open to the T-shirts and jeans kinda guys.

Katie: The geeks. I like it. So this year's pretty exciting. You have a really phenomenal keynote speaker. Tell us a little bit about this mystery man.

Sal: This mystery man that we kept under wraps for quite some time and we -

Katie: You did. I'm proud of you. [Laughter]

Sal: Yeah, we threw things out there -

Katie: You guys keep secrets!

Sal: - with Highlander references - just kinda having fun with it, but we are proud to announce that Mr. Hugh McLeod, there can be only one keynote, has decided to join us for IS 2010. So we're very happy to have him with us. He's an acclaimed author. He's an amazing cartoonist and he's also a - he's getting around the town and doing some speaking engagements and we're just very happy that he's joining us this year.

Esther: It's gonna be very cool.

Katie: Yes.

Esther: And I guess I wanna know because a lot of times, you spend this money to go to these conferences and you walk away with, you know, one or two really solid things that you can do for your business or that you've learned - what can people really expect to walk away with from Interactive Strategies Conference?

Sal: Well this year is definitely the time to come. We've taken the theme this year as a DYI approach, do it yourself approach, with a subset of create something. So we want our designers to create great graphic design. We want our marketers to create great ad campaigns. So with the conference we have four separate tracks that go on at the exact same time. So it's a barcamp style conference where you have the choice of going through an SEO track, going through a strategy track, going through a social media or a design track. So there's gonna be something for everybody to get their feet wet with social media, with SEO, and you're not gonna leave away with just one solid thing that you can take back to your company. There's gonna be a plethora of information for you to take back to your higher ups and say, "Hey, you know what? You may have spent a couple of hundred dollars on this ticket, but guess what, we're gonna invest this and the return on investment is just gonna be far beyond and far reaching, just the few hundred dollars I got spent on the conference itself."

Katie: And the DIY approach for IS Conference this year really kind of takes away what really gets to me about other conferences that really don't do it right. You know they have speakers that are speaking at just a very high thinking level and not giving out those actionable, "Here's how to get your hands dirty. Here's how to really maximize this time and money that you've invested." I think that's amazing.

Sal: Exactly. I mean we definitely don't want the corporate stuffy speakers that are just gonna say, "Here's my case study. Here's the few statistics that I've had over the last few years. You can do it too." Well, with the speakers that we've curated this year, we definitely want individuals who are in it, who are doing it right now, who are the front-runners of social media, who are getting their names out there, but they're not nationally known speakers. So we definitely wanna promote the local speakers as well. So this gets the audience on a more intimate level. It's a very intimate venue to begin with. It's at the Angelica Film Center in Downtown Houston. So we're gonna be inside a movie theater that seats, you know, anywhere from 50 to 200 people and in each individual track you're gonna have the opportunity to get one-on-one attention with the speaker and one-on-one attention with your co-attendees. So you'll be able to interact. You'll be able to Tweet while you're there and say, "Hey, you know what this speaker's got it. This speaker's," you know, "getting the information that I want. You should come over to this room and get that information."

Esther: And it's not just all learning. I mean you've got several events scheduled. You've got a breakfast. I mean lunch is basically on the house. You've got happy hour. I mean you've got all kinds of stuff. It's gonna be a full day of networking.

Sal: It is a full day. Exactly. We start off at 8:00 a.m. bright and early on September 16th at the Angelica Film Center. So from then you're gonna start registering, get all your badges, get your T-shirts, which this year you're gonna wanna wear 'em to your wedding, I'm telling you. They're great T-shirts.

Katie: Oh!

Esther: Oh, I don't know about that, Sal. That's asking a lot from us girls over here.

[Laughter]

Sal: Maybe the grooms out there will wanna wear them with their Converse.

Esther: Yeah.

Katie: There we go.

Sal: Like I said, we're starting off bright and early, 8:00 a.m. We gonna have breakfast for you. We've got some great sponsors lined up. Friedman Leonard had signed up to do our breakfasts. We have Top Spot Internet Marketing who's signed on to do our lunch sponsorship and then we have the great blinds.com -

Esther: Woo hoo!

Sal: - doing our happy hour. So we're very happy to have everybody on board.

Katie: Oh yeah.

Esther: I mean doesn't that make total sense? Blinds and alcohol? Doesn't that really go together?

Katie: [Laughter]

Esther: Alcohol goes with everything.

Sal: We were hoping to throw in some fire in there but we just couldn't get it together.

[Laughter]

Esther: Our products are fire retardant.

Katie: Thank you very much. [Laughter]

Esther: Yeah.

Katie: So Sal, we talk to a lot of entrepreneurs that are looking to promote their events or maybe thinking about holding their own conference. As an Interactive Strategies Conference, what are some cool things that you have planned that a geeky conference like this does that might inspire some of our other business listeners?

Sal: No, definitely couldn't do Interactive Strategies without talking about social media. So since I've been involved in 2008, social media has been the front efforts in our campaigns. We do Twitter. We do Facebook and last year we had a contest for our attendees or prospective attendees to put together a video of why they should go to IS Conference and what they plan on getting out of it. So we had a half a dozen submissions and we had this really great video put together and we actually showcased that video during the conference and it ended up being the intro for our keynote last year, Brian Solis. So definitely using social media as a tool to get the message out there but that's not the only thing. You gotta do the traditional marketing, the email marketing, the getting out there and speaking at events and then really promoting it and with our parent organization, The Houston Interactive Marketing Association, we have that opportunity with the monthly luncheons to get up there and say, "Hey, you guys are HIMA members; you gotta go to this conference. This conference is gonna put you ahead of the game. You're gonna know more than the next guy that didn't go to the conference.

Esther: How can people sign up for this and how much is it gonna cost 'em? Is there a discount for signing up early - 'cause we're still a couple months away - so what's the best way to go about signing up?

Sal: The best way and the only way at this point, is to go to www.is-conference.com and that's gonna take you to our conference website which I might say sets us apart from most conferences -

Esther: It's quite nice.

Sal: - it's very interactive. We actually integrated Twitter into it so if you hover over people's names with the @ username symbol they'll actually pop up a v-card so that you can actually start following the speakers that we're gonna start putting up there.

Esther: It's pretty cool.

Sal: It's very interactive. You go to the page to register. You can buy the tickets there. We do have early bird registration. Early bird registration ends July 28th and right now tickets are $50.00 off, so you - at $250.00, $300.00 and $350.00 and those are different levels for HIMA members, non-members, and then non-members who want to participate with HIMA. They can actually buy their conference ticket with their HIMA membership. And as an exclusive offer to your listeners, I definitely wanna cater to your audience. So what I'm gonna do - up until the conference comes, so starting today, your listeners are gonna get a 20 percent discount by using Overtime Show rocks. So we're gonna -

Esther: Hey!

Sal: - we're actually gonna do that. And put otsrocks. So use that promo code otsrocks, one word, all lowercase, and our listeners are gonna get 20 percent off starting today, up until the conference date. So this is an exclusive offer only to your listeners. I also encourage your listeners to go to the website and subscribe to the newsletter. That newsletter's gonna give you important dates announcements and additional promos. So if you're interested in getting more money off of your tickets, I'd suggest you sign up for the newsletter.

Esther: Very cool.

Katie: That is awesome and you totally were just like the Billy Mays of IS Conference, Sal.

Esther: You were.

Katie: That was amazing. [Laughter]

Esther: That was amazing.

Katie: I wanna go sign up now and I'm already going.

[Laughter]

Esther: How cool. Well, Sal, thank you so much for being here and letting us know a little more information about what we can expect at Interactive Strategies. It sounds like it's gonna be amazing. This could be the best year, yet.

Sal: We hope so and we just wanna keep it growing. We wanna make it bigger and better for our attendees. This isn't about the speakers. This isn't about the sponsors. It's about our attendees getting the most out of their buck.

Esther: Awesome. Thanks for being here. We appreciate it.

Sal: I appreciate it. Thank you for having me.

Esther: You're listening to The BusinessMakers Overtime Show, heard here and online at theBusinessMakers.com/overtime. I'm Esther Steinfeld -

Katie: And I'm Katie Laird.

Esther: - and we'll be back with more in Chapter Three.