My Head is Spinning for a Number of Reasons

After two incredibly full days at the Inbound Marketing Summit in San Francisco, I’m back in Park City relaxing on my couch and trying to digest the great information and ideas that were put forward during the conference. Two main points that are currently resonating for me are:

• Decide first and foremost what it is that you want to accomplish online.
• Create, and continue to create lots and lots of quality content that relates to what it is that you are trying to accomplish.

I promise to post more about IMS 09 in SF, but I’m pretty wiped out from a very early morning and the need to fully download on everything from the Summit.

It’s been quite interesting getting back to Park City and finding out that our School District officials have canceled school for the next couple of days due to the fact that they think that some kids may have the “Swine Flu.” I  looked in a local paper and saw that a Utah state health official said that our local officials “erred on the side of being cautious, but I don’t fault them for that decision.”This is due to the fact that the three cases here in the Park City area are still listed just as “probable” so until they’re confirmed or not I am planning to keep washing my hands every chance that I get, and keep on doing what i always do otherwise.

And then there’s the news that the largest of the local Park City area property management companies, Deer Valley Lodging, is being forced into chapter 7 bankruptcy. This coincides with a separate announcement that Deer Valley Resort will officially announce that are putting together their own property management division. Interesting news,  and in my book good news, because many great people should be able to (hopefully) transition from DVL to DVR without the uncertainty that has been hanging over their heads as Deer Valley Lodging has stumbled deeper and deeper into the mire over the past several weeks.

Just a few exciting things around here then,  anything interesting going on in your neck of the woods?!

Photo credit: littledan77

A Different View of the Mountain

It was an early morning for me today, 5:30am to be exact. I was up and out the door so early because I was heading down the Salt Lake City Airport to meet Steve, our Mountain Host Manager, and fly back up to Park City to take some photos and video of the mountain from up above. I’ve been involved with aerial photography at the resort before, but I’ve never been the primary photographer. Thankfully I only wanted to capture a few particular images and I also had our videographer (another Eric) on-board to ensure that even if I completely flailed that we would get something of value out of this endeavor.
In the end, the weather was pristine, the flight flawless and here’s a sample of what I was able to capture:

Thanks again for flying Steve!

Halloween in Park City

Here’s a video from Halloween with the three cutest trick or treaters ever:

Halloween in Park City 2008! from Eric Hoffman on Vimeo.

A Tale of Two Lunches

Today I attended the Park City Chamber’s 2008 Tourism Industry Fall Forum and as I sat in the audience it struck me how markedly different the dynamic was in this group as opposed to the lunches I had during the Marketing Profs Digital Marketing Mixer last week in Scottsdale. Some of contrasts I noted:

• I was the only person twittering during the talks today, a big difference from last week where it seemed like there were more people twittering than not.
• Today it felt like the room was holding it’s collective breath in that a lot of people seemed very nervous about the coming months ahead; whereas, at MPDM, everyone was enthused about the opportunities that they saw coming, whether or not the economy took some lumps or not.
• The best quote from today was that, “We can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but we’re still in that tunnel.” A good, hopefully true but kinda scary thing to hear. On the other had, I remember hearing “If content is King, marketing is Queen and she runs the house,” from Gary V last week, dunno how that compares but it was just one of many kick ass quotes to come out of that preso.

One last item from today was the fact that several (admittedly engaging and entertaining) TV ads were introduced as being something that had a great chance of “going viral.” Hmm, first off, at MPDM I heard many times that spending big money on traditional media was essentially throwing good money after bad as it just isn’t were the eyeballs are anymore. And secondly, guess it’s me, but I’ve come to hate the word “viral”, actually I’m not the only one, and I’d love to see an ambitious online effort made to try to connect with potential visitors to Park City and Utah. Something different for different times, would that make sense?!

Oh, and I’d have to give the best tasting lunch to MPDM, the taco shell salads just didn’t compare to the tortilla soup.

Photo credit: chadmill