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Offline Marketing meets Online Activity

My background before founding Huddler is in Sales/Marketing/Business Development at an enterprise software start-up called Integration Appliance. They're a great company and I loved my experiences there, but after flying all around our continent to meet various Legal IT Groups, I was thrilled to start a consumer web company where I wouldn't have to see my "clients" anymore. Now, I'm still a staunch supporter of the interwebs as the most efficient mechanism ever created for disseminating information to a mass audience, but I had a much-needed reminder of the importance of face-to-face communication last week.

Along with my faithful comrade Cristina, I had the pleasure of volunteering and attending West Coast Green last week in San Jose, CA. Now that EcoHuddle has been around for 6 months (really - where is the time going!?) many companies at the show had heard of us and/or spent some time on the site. That said, while several of them remember receiving email correspondence from us about our new badges, or their ability to manage their product listings on the site, seeing us in person made all the difference. They eagerly devoured my business cards and helped brainstorm some cool ways that we can work together. They also generously donated they're products to the new Huddler Action Team we're starting up.

Similarly, I ran into the founder of GetWithGreen. He was incredibly pleasant to talk to and we obviously had a lot to talk about. Only after getting home did I realize that he had sent me a private message on Huddler weeks before that I didn't properly attend to. Having met him in person, I'm not much more eager and likely to follow up and hopefully find some interesting collaborative opportunities. Anyway, it seems like common sense that you can't forget about how much value there is in marketing your online world offline, but it's really easy to neglect when your head is buried in the weeds.

One more great lesson I took from that contest is that going green doesn't have to be a competition. Even at one of the nation's largest "Green" conferences, people still buy their coffee in non-compostable cups, drive SUVs, use old appliances, drive 85 with the windows up and the AC blasting, and a myriad of other "ungreen" things, but what's important is that we're all making some efforts towards sustainability where we can. I definitely didn't feel a need to be bashful about my "light green" status there and it was a refreshing feeling.

Lastly - thanks West Coast Green for giving me the most comfortable t-shirt ever made. Buy these things wherever you can get them. Something about mixing bamboo with organic cotton is absolutely magical.



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