In about 16 hours, I leave for Boston again!  Woo hoo!  I had never been to Boston before Memorial Day weekend (read about that here), but Beantown quickly became my fave new city.  And now, I get to go a second time less than three weeks later- and with one of my same friends, who also happens to work with me at Solid Cactus.  We’re headed there for the granddaddy of trade shows for our industry.

Internet Retailer (from Vertical Web Media) is pretty much the mother of all things e-commerce research.  They publish a monthly print magazine, have a slew of e-mail newsletters and publish annual guides on e-commerce trends.  One of those annual guides is the Internet Retailer Top 500- the list of top e-commerce sites  by revenue.  My company actually has more clients on the IR list than any other developer, which is pretty cool. Finally, Internet Retailer holds various conferences each year, the biggest of course being the Internet Retailer Convention & Expo (IRCE 2009).  My first year at Solid Cactus it was in San Jose, CA and last year was in Chicago.  This year, of course, in Boston and I am proud to have been selected to represent Solid Cactus with a few others on our sales and marketing team, as well as our art director, who is actually one of the featured speakers!

I absolutely love trade shows.  I was in San Francisco for Online Market World last September, but IRCE is about ten times the size.  I am uber excited to meet and greet with e-commerce business owners and tell them about all the Solid Cactus can do to help them start/grow their businesses.  Of course, trade shows are also about networking, so I’m sure I will meet other e-commerce vendors, too. If you are reading this blog and are going to IRCE 2009, visit Solid Cactus – we’ll be at booth #443- one of the bigger size booths, right near Yahoo!.

But back to Internet Retailer, I use their news every day in my position, constantly sending out their articles to clients (and even coworkers) when something strikes me to be of importance.  They really know e-commerce– and etailers should be paying attention to the reports/trends/advice put out.

Definitely looking forward to checking out more Beantown pubs, while there, too!!  I will be sure to be tweeting from the event as well!