Whether your company represents the agency-side or client-side, tell your boss the Summit registration list reads like a "who's who" of interactive marketing movers and shakers from Minnesota (and beyond).

• C-Suite executives, marketing executives, account executives
• Entrepreneurs, business owners and other business leaders
• New technology, information management and business process experts
• Information architects and application developers
• Experience designers, art directors and producers
• Copywriters, content development specialists and content managers
• Sourcing/procurement professionals and headhunters
• Analysts, consultants, and other influencers

Don't just give your boss a good reason for you to attend the most important event in the interactive marketing community for 2007 — give them 10.

1) Maintain your competitive edge
Learn the latest trends – and be among the first to hear ideas that will shape the future of our industry.

2) Establish a strategic vision
Use your day of big picture thinking to identify future opportunities and challenges in interactive marketing and brainstorm ways your company can effectively prepare for them. Plus, the connections you make and the conversations you initiate offer the highest potential to advance our field and revolutionize our industry.

3) Defend your market position
See where your organization stacks up against the competition. Then keep your eyes open for success strategies and metrics others are using, should you decide you need to set the bar higher when you get back to the office.

4) Develop professionally
Explore industry best practices and case studies from other professionals that can help you make informed tactical and strategic decisions impacting your career and your company.

5) Expand your horizons
With educational content covering a wide range of topics, the Summit provides a unique opportunity to learn about the issues that are important to your colleagues. Walking for an hour in their shoes at a breakout session can lead to better collaboration and efficiency back in the office.

6) Improve your productivity
Find out if your company can improve efficiency or if it can enhance the services offered. Post-Summit, you'll have access to your own virtual learning library of professional resources back at the office — including presenter's slides and presentation podcasts.

7) Train the new guy
Bring new employees up-to-speed — fast — by using the Summit as a crash course in interactive marketing. With two keynotes, eight breakouts, four intensive mini-sessions and loads of professional resources, the Summit doesn't just get their feet wet, it pushes them in the deep end so they can start swimming.

8) Build your network
Meet potential industry partners, freelancers and clients who are there to talk with people like you. (If you stay home, they'll just be building relationships with your competitors instead.)

9) See and be seen
Want to be thought of as a major player in the industry? Go to the place where all your competitors (and maybe clients) are. Want to look bigger than you really are? Buy a corporate table and fill the rest of those seats with your VIP clients.

10) Recruit top talent
The Summit is a great place to find qualified new employees. Imagine what you'll learn spending a whole day sharing ideas with a bunch of experienced people instead of interviewing them each separately for an hour.

Talking your boss into excusing you for the day to attend the Summit (and springing for your registration fee) is easy, if you follow these four simple steps.

1. Make a solid case
Develop a strong business justification for attending the Summit, including what you'll be able to bring back and your own personal goals. Write it down if you think it will have more impact. If more than one person on your team wants to go, approach your boss as a team.

2. Find an advocate
Having trouble with your boss? Take your case and shop it around. Who benefits from the work you do and the fact that you do it well? Maybe their boss would support you or put in a good word to help your case.

3. Find the money
Talk with your boss about the budget resources for conferences. Money for conference attendance may not always be easy to spot in your department's budget.

If there are no dollars for conference attendance in your department budget, talk to your company's business manager. Are there funds that have gone unused this fiscal year that you could appropriate? Was discretionary money set aside that has yet to be allocated? Ask if you can use any of these funds to attend the Summit.

4. Show and tell
After you attend the Summit, go back to everyone who helped support your request and share your thanks. Make time to schedule post-event "show and tell" sessions with your boss and colleagues to share highlights of your experience, the library of Summit resources you collected and the list of hot connections you made.