From self-driving cars and the fifth wave of mapping, to voice search and location in healthcare, the second day of LocationWorld provided guests with lots of insights and actionable takeaways they can put into immediate use.
The day started off with an opening keynote from Google's Global Product Solutions Lead, Dave Byrne. Byrne discussed Google's latest location advancements and how attendees can leverage this technology to reach searching customers.
"Mobile has changed absolutely everything," said Byrne. "If you're not investing in mobile, you're already falling behind."
Attendees then had the opportunity to attend 24 different breakout sessions, featuring an elite speaker lineup, including experts on Apple Maps, Bing, Google, Tesla, Uber, Yahoo, Yelp, Yext, and more. From the importance of review monitoring and client retention to search ranking and leveraging social media, attendees learned from some of the brightest minds in location, marketing, and technology.
During From Vocal to Local: Does Voice Search Change Everything?, Yext's Director of Ecosystem Partnerships, Tyler Donahue, sat down with Microsoft's Purna Virji to discuss the newest wave of search technology and how Alexa, Cortana, and Siri can impact business' local search engine marketing strategies.
"With digital personal assistants, search is coming to us," said Virji. "Voice Search behaves quite differently than text search. It leads to more question searches. The type of question tells us intent."
Contextual marketing often depends on location data to ensure relevance at the moments of greatest interest. Alongside Waze Product Specialist, Mark Campos, and Analyst, Author, and Advisor, Rebecca, Lieb, Yext CMO, Jeffrey Rohrs led a conversation on how today's leading brands tap into the power of location for their advertising and content marketing efforts.
"We tend to make two mistakes in predicting the future," said Campos. "We tend to be overly optimistic in the short term, and overly pessimistic in the long term."
Immediately following lunch, attendees heard from Piper Jaffray's Managing Director & Senior Research Analyst, Gene Munster and TechCrunch's Katie Roof on the next wave of marketing exploration, how location factors into the latest trends in tech, including AI and driverless cars.
"My prediction is that it will be illegal for humans to drive in 30 years," said Munster.
Guests were also able to stop by Yext's Location Lounge to get a glimpse of Yext's latest reviews and developer platform technologies, and speak with 'Yext-perts.'
Closing out the day, Tony Award-winning actor, Leslie Odom, Jr. took the stage. Best known for his performance as "Aaron Burr' in Broadway's Hamilton, Odom, Jr. explained how his passion for exploration led him to take some of the biggest risks — and make some of the boldest career choices — in his life.
"Talent is given," Odom, Jr. said. "But what you do with it is your life's mission." Odom, Jr. also said that "talent is never what separates the people who make it from the people who don't."
As part of his keynote, Odom, Jr. also performed selections from Hamilton, as well as his new album, Leslie Odom, Jr.
After the day's events concluded, guests headed over to the iconic Highline Ballroom for drinks, dancing, and a private concert featuring Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears.
Additionally, Yext announced the launch of the Yext Location Cloud Platform, which gives businesses centralized control of their location data across their organizations. It also enables developers across all industries to leverage location data in new ways that deliver operational excellence.
For those looking to leap ahead in location marketing, LocationWorld was a can't-miss event! A big thank you to everyone who attended our inaugural LocationWorld, including all of our speakers, as well as our sponsors: Twitter, Duda, NinthDecimal, Verve, Acquisio, Camilyo, Factual, Pitney Bowes, SearchMetrics, Simpli.fi, Yahoo, Scorpion, xAd, LiveRamp, DeepCrawl, Mono, and GeoMarketing.
Want to get in on the action during next year's event? Stay tuned for more information on LocationWorld 2017.
