The Digital Arms Race in San Francisco: New speakers, new formats, new events

ClickZ Live San Francisco is an August staple (right?) but this year, we’ve made a few changes you’ll love, like the new format and the brand new event.

If ClickZ Live were a person, it’d be getting ready to graduate high school before embarking on a debaucherous summer of buying cigarettes and lotto tickets, getting tattoos and maybe even joining the military.

That’s right: ClickZ Live is turning 18. And you are cordially invited to come celebrate that milestone birthday with us in San Francisco.

ClickZ Live San Francisco – the theme of which is The Digital Arms Race – will kick off Monday, August 29 with a training day. The conference will then take place on Tuesday and Wednesday, and we’re excited to announce our two opening keynotes: Simon Sproule, the vice president chief marketing officer (CMO) of Aston Martin; and Kevin Krone, Southwest Airlines’ former CMO.

Sproule will talk about his iconic luxury brand’s content experience, while Krone will go a little more broad with a talk about “the art of digital engagement.”

And there are plenty more where that came from. Our agenda is rounded out by more speakers from a ton of great brands and agencies, including Virgin America, Clorox, Pandora, and Foursquare.

Something that differentiates ClickZ Live San Francisco from previous shows is the 10 Accelerator Sessions sprinkled throughout the two days. They’re a bit longer and more in-depth, bringing an element of Monday’s training sessions to the conference. The formats will combine classroom sessions, brand case studies, and peer-to-peer working sessions.

For example, on Tuesday morning, you can learn more about driving success with email marketing with Tim Clark, the managing director of NASCAR’s digital platform; Xbox’s Brian Coles, who serves as the brand’s director of marketing and communications; and Jacci Johnson, group account director at Wunderman. The classroom portion will be led by Sundeep Kapur, a ClickZ Live regular you may have done yoga with in the past.

We’ve also partnered with Captured, which will provide online forums before and after the event, allowing delegates to network digitally and discuss content; and Dot Native, whose hundreds of sessions and best practice guides can be accessed before the show.

Yet another thing that makes this year’s event a bit different is that we’re also using this time to introduce our latest event series, Shift. The two events are running concurrently in the same venue, but they’re quite different.

Topics covered during ClickZ Live tend to be tactical, where Shift is more about the broader overall strategy. Shift’s focus is more about digital disruption, not because that’s a hot topic right now, but because the event’s core audience is the senior-level people who deal with disruption directly.

The best way we could put it is, the person attending Shift will send his or her team to ClickZ Live. For more information on that event, check out our Shift San Francisco site.

Friday is the Super Saver deadline for both events, so grab your discounted tickets and we’ll see you at The Park Central.