Highly accurate predictions about MarTech in 2019 (well, at least the conference)

Ready for a great New Year? While I may be a curmudgeon skeptic when it comes to most marketing industry predictions, I’m quite certain of three things for the year ahead:

1. Marketing technology & operations management will be integral to marketing in 2019.
2. Martech tools, talents, tactics, and the overall marketing world will continue to change.
3. MarTech will be the best vendor-agnostic conference to attend to master this discipline, to learn from and network with your peers in marketing technology leadership, and to keep ahead of all the changes that continue to disrupt marketing as we know it.

Okay, okay, that last one is a little self-promotional. But don’t take my word for it: judge for yourself by peeking at the initial MarTech agenda for our Bay Area event on April 3-5, 2019.

A few highlights of the conference that you can count on in 2019:

• The latest marketing technology landscape — what’s really happening in the market
• A fireside chat with the remarkable Ann Lewnes, EVP & CMO of Adobe
• A keynote by IDC CMO Advisor Kathleen Schaub on “guided decentralization”
• Legendary martech CMO Brian Kardon on the real use of AI in marketing
• The New York Times team sharing its product management approach to martech
• The originator of the LUMAscape, Terence Kawaja, on learning from D2C brands
• Meg Goldthwaite, CMO of NPR, on the new era of “v-commerce” (voice commerce)
• Marketing-technologist-turned-CMO Mayur Gupta, recently Spotify VP marketing & growth
• The CIO and team from Docker on IT-managed martech (and martech containers!)
• Shawn Goodin, marketing CTO at JP Morgan Chase, on 5 roles of martech leaders
• A senior data scientist and analyst from Nordstrom on marketing data science & strategy
• A session by the CRM/MAP manager of Sub-Zero on how they deployed citizen technology
• David Raab, founder of The CDP Institute, on graduate-level customer data management
• An inside look into “quasi experimentation” for marketing at Netflix
• Debbie Qaqish on combining marketing operations and sales operations without tears
• Merging martech stacks in M&A, by Plantronics and LogMeIn pros who’ve been there
• An AI engineer from Zillow on personalizing user experiences beyond A/B testing
• The global manager of marketing ops at Cisco Meraki on “year one” of their team
• Jennifer Brett, Head of America Insights at LinkedIn, on data & analytics strategy
• The head of digital marketing at Autodesk on instrumenting their customer journey
• Riverbed Technologies CMO Subbu Iyer sharing “The Cure for Shiny Object Syndrome”
• The talented Tom Fishburne of Marketoonist fame bringing laughter, insight & inspiration
• The 2019 Stackies: Marketing Tech Stack Awards (open for entries now!)

…and more to be announced soon. I predict guarantee this will be a spectacular couple of days for marketing technology and operations leaders at all levels. Beyond the editorial program above, there will be dozens of sponsored sessions, over 100 exhibitors, over 2,000 marketing technology pros, awesome networking parties, and more.

Want an even deeper dive into marketing technology management? Sign up for one of the half-day workshops for the first day, each led by true experts in their field:

Super early bird “Alpha” rates are available until January 26 — but if you’re reading this while it’s still 2018, what better way to bring the year to a close than to set yourself up for a great martech experience in the spring?

Best wishes for 2019, and I look forward to seeing you in the spring!