The call has now gone out for speakers interested in presenting at next year’s Internet Retailing Expo 2012.
The two-day event is being held on March 21 and 22 2012 at the NEC in Birmingham and organisers are now asking online and multichannel retailers who would like to share their experience of the industry to put themselves forward. Suppliers who would like to take part are encouraged to put forward retail clients to present with them.
At this year’s inaugural Internet Retailing Expo, speakers came from retailers as varied as Debenhams, Kiddicare, Tesco.com and BrandAlley. BBC online dragon Julie Meyer and John Butler, former head of communications and media at Dunnhumby, were both keynote speakers. The Expo was attended by more than 2,600 people, of whom more than 50% took part in the education programme, attending a conference presentation, workshop or JumpStart supplier briefing.
In 2012 the free-to-attend programme, which is held alongside the exhibition, will run across four tracks.
On day one of the expo, Fast Track is for people moving into online or multichannel retailing for the first time. It focuses on ways businesses can get up and running quickly, while learning from entrepreneurs who have done it for themselves and others with relevant advice to give.
The second track, also on day one, is built around the Enterprise theme. It is for people already selling online who want to grow their businesses and boost profitability.
The second day brings a focus on mobile and on customer experience. Both those new to m-commerce and early adopters looking to extend their work in this area will find something for them, whether they want to find out how to sell via mobile, or what innovations are suggested by the latest industry research and trends suggest.
The customer experience track looks at how to create a rounded view of the customer’s experience, covering areas such as design, interaction, experience planning, usability and analytics.
Emma Herrod, editor of Internet Retailing magazine, also organizes the Expo’s education programme. She said: “Each conference track is designed to provide visitors with high quality, actionable insights, case studies and thought leadership that they can use to move their respective online business or projects forwards.
“We are looking for new, innovative, well conceived and bespoke content presented by high calibre online and multi-channel retailers willing to share how they overcame operational challenges, give insight into their use of best practice systems and the steps they have taken in growing their businesses.”
Those who would like to put themselves forward are asked to send a one-page summary to emmah@internetretailing.net, with ‘IR Expo 12’ in the subject line of your email.
The summary should detail the conference track for which you are proposing to put forward a speaker, their name, job title and company name, the title of your presentation, a short synopsis, learning outcomes for delegates and your contact details.
For further detail about conference tracks, you can also call Emma on 07801 282729.
The deadline for submissions is September 25 2011.
