35 Executive attendees. 275 minutes of insightful presentations by some of the brightest minds in Retail + Digital Marketing industry. Grounds for Sculpture, a venue that has often been rated as New Jersey’s best kept secret (270 sculptures spread across 42 acres). Senior Retail & Digital Media Executives and Ivy League Academicians engaged in exciting and extensive sessions of networking and peer to peer insight sharing.
NetElixir University’s First Annual Retail Digital Marketing Seminar can be summed up in three words – Collaborative Learning Experience. We prefer to call it “The X= Experience”.
I have been asked by many – our purpose behind hosting this event. We have been asked why we want to make a departure from the traditional seminar format and create an event that is different (an exotic venue – Grounds for Sculpture; Academic involvement; Restricted to the C Level and less than 50 attendees).
Here are my thoughts –
Purpose behind hosting the Annual Seminar
Over the course of the last few years, we have had the opportunity of meeting with more than 50 C- level retail executives and gain deeper insights into their ecommerce business. It has been a fascinating learning phase for us to observe, first hand, both their challenges and the successes. We tried to offer strategic as well as tactical inputs based on our 9+ years of experience working with retail ecommerce clients. In doing so, we were playing the role of a “knowledge transfer agent who could execute”.
Then we thought.. why not create an event that facilitated peer-to-peer knowledge and insight sharing. An event where the CEO of one company could share what had worked for her with the CMO of the second company and vice versa.. and both benefited from this knowledge exchange process.
Our Annual Seminar has been created with the sole purpose of fostering a collaborative learning experience. We really want this to be an event where retailers learn from each other and have a good time, a great experience – the “X=Experience”.
Why We Wanted the Event to be Different
Here are some of the defining features of our Annual Seminar:
– Collaborative Learning Experience.
– Exclusively for Senior Digital Retail Executives.
– Restricted to 50 attendees.
– 10% of all attendees will be academicians.
– Will be organized every year, at a special venue like the Grounds for Sculpture, during the 3rd week of September.
The experience and collaboration pieces are very important. It’s my firm belief that you can’t engage in effective (and useful) one on one discussions if the number of attendees exceeds 50. Beyond that magic number of 50, the desired intimacy gets lost. The value that can be derived through collaboration gets diluted.
We purposefully chose a venue that has a WOW effect on attendees. We firmly believe a great venue and great hospitality are key to making an event memorable. Venue is a critical element for fostering meaningful networking. And needless to mention, great food and beverages are essential as well. Rat’s at the Grounds for Sculpture serves the best gourmet cuisine in New Jersey. Moreover, they use produce from local farms/suppliers for all of their amazing preparations. We absolutely love the “local focus”. And of course, we love the amazing food at Rat’s.
Last but not least, we wanted to create an event that was different because we truly believe that as a Company we are different. We wanted the event to convey our unique NetElixir spirit. Our passion. Our core values. Our style of doing things. That’s what we call the “X= Experience”.
-Udayan Bose
