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Ever since we held the last (and first) Euro­pean Demand Gen­er­a­tion Sum­mit at Alti­tude last Novem­ber, we’ve had a thirst to do it all over again.

As part of the feed­back process on the last event, we asked what peo­ple thought of the day, the con­tent and speak­ers. We also asked what changes they’d like to see in the for­mat of the event in the future and what top­ics they’d like to see covered.

Per­haps pre­dictably, it was the day’s agenda and cal­i­bre of the speaker line-up that attracted most peo­ple to the first event. Not to men­tion it was free to our invi­tees. Of course our speak­ers scored very highly, but com­ing away from the day almost all com­mented on how much they’d val­ued the oppor­tu­nity to net­work. I’m sure they found it cathar­tic to share some pain and under­stand that oth­ers out there were try­ing to over­come the same hurdles.

Three key pieces of feed­back came through, which we’ve tried to lis­ten to in putting together the agenda for the forth­com­ing summit:

1. Peo­ple want more prac­ti­cal con­tent and less of the the­o­ret­i­cal. There’s an appetite for sto­ries of blood­ied knuck­les, as well as a hunger for real learn­ings from peo­ple who’ve been there and done it. We were very con­scious not to make last year’s event a beauty parade of ven­dors and ensure it was client-side mar­keters telling their sto­ries. This time round we’re try­ing to encour­age our speak­ers to tell their suc­cess sto­ries, and what mis­takes they’d avoid the sec­ond time round. As an exam­ple, Shawn Burns from SAP is com­ing along to tell the story of how he and other mar­keters trans­formed sap.com from a largely brochure­ware site to a ‘demand gen­er­a­tion machine’. Good stuff.

2. Atten­dees wanted more oppor­tu­nity to net­work and learn from their peers. We had some great table con­ver­sa­tions at lunchtime last time round, and we tried to allow gen­er­ous breaks. For the most part peo­ple resisted the lure of their Black­Ber­ries, made con­ver­sa­tion and ben­e­fited immensely. This time round we’ve gone a bit fur­ther and we’ve made the after­noon ses­sions entirely inter­ac­tive. Atten­dees will have the oppor­tu­nity to attend three out of four work­shops on social media, accel­er­at­ing sales, using web­cast­ing and online video, and mea­sur­ing and opti­mis­ing cam­paigns. We’re going to have peo­ple cap­tur­ing learn­ings from one group to another so that through the course of the after­noon we gen­er­ate a body of knowl­edge which can then be shared with all atten­dees afterwards.

3. In terms of the con­tent, there was a lot of call for tips on mak­ing the most of a credit-crunched bud­get, using social media and prov­ing a return on mar­ket­ing activ­ity. Our first speaker of the day, Jim Cas­sidy, is an ex IBM mar­keter now at Euro­pean com­pany Step­Stone. In his pre­vi­ous life with a bud­get of mil­lions, his great­est chal­lenge used to be how to spend mar­ket­ing bud­get fast enough. He’s now in a posi­tion where every penny (cent) has to be accounted for. Jim will talk about what he’s pri­ori­tis­ing, how he’s mak­ing a case for spend with the board, and how he’s mak­ing his mar­ket­ing assets sweat. We’ve also got a great panel line up, led by Cisco’s Amanda Job­bins. They’re going to give their take on some of these topics.

So hope­fully that gives you some­thing of a taster for what’s to come on the 30th April. If you need any more encour­age­ment, the venue we’ve cho­sen this time is sim­ply stun­ning — a pri­vate member’s club at the top of Centrepoint.

About time you reg­is­tered I think: www.demandgenerationsummit.com

Remem­ber, we’re only accept­ing reg­is­tra­tions from client-side mar­keters from the B2B ser­vices, tech­nol­ogy and tele­coms sec­tors. No offence intended to oth­ers, but demand for places is extremely high.

Hope­fully see you there.

P.S. If you’re of the twit­ter­ing kind, you can get reg­u­lar updates by fol­low­ing us at www.twitter.com/demandgentweet or sub­scrib­ing to the RSS feed

Related posts:

1. The Demand Gen­er­a­tion Summit