MeetingMatrix - First Impressions

Well here I am. Don Basler -- Senior Marketing Manager at MeetingMatrix

New company. New people. New opportunities. Because of my role I’m involved in many aspects of the business. This blog will be part of it.

Blogs in companies require care and feeding. This one was started awhile ago with good intentions but we didn’t do a good job of feeding it. We’re restarting it because it can be a great way to communicate with the community of event planners and venue management that we’re part of. And because it’s fun.

Our objective? Share our business experiences and market knowledge in an informal way and create dialogue with our customers and the community at large.

I’ve been in the company for two weeks. I’ve got some first impressions about the company, people and products.

MeetingMatrix – company.

I should note that I’ve got 15+years of marketing experience. I’ve worked for companies as large as IBM and as small as a two-person startup. In that time I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly of business models.

MeetingMatrix strikes me as different – in a good way. The dress is always casual. We’ve got a ping pong table. A jam room – three guitars, amps etc. last time I looked. A kid’s play room. Kids and dogs too. Been told to watch for bicycle traffic in the office.

Then there’s the work environment. We’re a quiet company. Developers more quiet still. Lots of people work remotely. We do have offices in Portsmouth (where I am), North Carolina and Hong Kong. We also have a radical work schedule called T.I.M.E. that lets people balance their work and personal lives in innovative ways – more on that a later date.

MeetingMatrix – people

I was fortunate to join MeetingMatrix just in time for our annual staff meeting where everyone in the company comes together for a few days. I got to meet everyone and see them interact. At times I almost felt like an intruder at a family reunion. The warmth and camaraderie was obvious and always present. As was the passion for the company and their roles.

MeetingMatrix – products

My initial perspective is that our products are excellent – obvious market leaders. The standards we set are high – and the people who design, support, and implement our products keep that standard.

Conceptually, MeetingMatrix is fairly straightforward. We build online views of rooms at meeting venues. Event planners use those views to: 1. evaluate, compare, and select appropriate venues, and 2. design and preview meeting rooms using interactive online 2D and 3D models.

The simple view is that we do room diagramming. The reality is that we provide a rich and powerful sales and marketing system for venues, an easy to use planning tool for event planners, and a fool-proof methodology for getting accurate plans – in pictures -- from users to planners to set up crew.

I look forward to working with the MeetingMatrix community

Don Basler
Sr. Marketing Manager