TIMA Starts 2012 with a Bang!

• jkennedy's blog

by Christina Motley @christinamotley, TIMA member and Guest Blogger 

The Triangle Interactive Marketing Association (TIMA) kicked off 2012 by passing the presidential reigns from Janet Kennedy (Director of Market Development for Market Vue Partners and current TIMA Treasurer) to James Wong (Marketing Communications Manager for iContact) and hosting its first event of the year, “The Futurists: Looking Ahead to 2012,” to a full house at Marbles Kids Museum in Downtown Raleigh last week. The program delivered a terrific line up, including moderator Marshall Brain, founder of How Stuff Works, and panelists Phil Buckley, Director of Interactive for Capstrat; Mike McTaggart, Director of Consulting Services with Atlantic BT; Lisa Braziel, Strategy Director for Ignite Social Media; and Gregory Ng, Chief Experience Officer at Brooks Bell.

Top take aways included a great conversation about Pinterest, a vision board-styled social photo sharing website; interesting insights about who will win the e-commerce retail race: Google or Amazon; a commentary about transferring the brick and mortar; tried and true retail store fronts into optimized websites that provide user friendly online shopping experiences; and predictions about how people are going to get more comfortable with information sharing and stop caring about Big Brother.

The final question of the day from Brain was, “If I don’t know anything about a website and I’m going to create one, what do I need to do?” The panelists’ answers?

• Be cool.
• Solve a need.
• Localize.
• Be ready to fail gracefully.

Follow the conversation on Twitter @TIMA_NC and stay tuned for the next blog: An Interview with WebMD Executive Director Richard Schwartz, who will be the keynote at TIMA's February 8th event.