In early 2005, I had the honor of being invited to speak on a panel of OMMA West out in San Francisco. While I had spoken at several events before, most were located here in the Washington, DC area. Smaller focused conferences, often about the use of the internet in the political arena. This one was different. Much larger and more broad based. And more influential. So a special thanks for that goes out to David Berkowitz for bringing me in to speak. This was a breakaway panel on blogging. Jeremy Pepper sat on it as well.
These larger events can be electric. They’re filled with energetic people who are on the forefront of strategic marketing communications and/or the technology that will make it all possible. The atmosphere is definitely optimistic. Just like the posts I see in today’s blogs and the mini-conversations on Twitter.
That attitude was never more obvious when we all piled into the larger room (about 400 of us or more) for one of the major sessions. Four top speakers, visionaries all. In a phrase, rock stars. Huge screen. Each equipped with their own mike. Giving us their views on the future and how, essentially, we’d be leading it in some way. We would be the ones who would create the strategic methodologies of marketing communication, entertainment, and news delivery. Yes, yes, that will be us.
I began to look throughout the audience of hundreds of heads nodding in agreement and then realized something that troubled me.
There wasn’t one black person in the room.
4 Comments » Posted on December 20th, 2007 by Jonathan Trenn
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