I just came back home after spending two days at the "Net Konferenca 2005" conference, the premium and traditional internet event in Slovenia.

First of all, sorry to everyone that's been waiting for a reply from me. I'll get back to you ASAP.

Anyway, the conference was great, and it showed that the Slovenian internet market is moving in the right direction, although slowly and in some areas with great pains.

By far the most memorable experience at the conference, for me, was watching people pour in to my session and completely fill it up. People were actually bringing in additional chairs, leaving me with about 2 square meters of space, and standing in line to get in.

The bad news is that their reactions once again proved that almost no one in Slovenia is doing any kind of web site split-testing and that most don't have a clear and measurable web site "goal" for people to take to start the communicational process. The situation is a little better with e-zine publishing, but not much.

The key problem, in my opinion, is the lack of understanding , knowing and using direct marketing and its principles. Interent marketing is, at most points, direct marketing. If we don't understand direct marketing, we cannot even begin to understand (and excell at) internet marketing.

Hopefully, I've changed some minds and at least gave them something to think about. We'll just have to wait for the conference next year and see if any real progress was made.

On another note -- go to http://www.netkonferenca.net/ to see photographs of me giving out awards for "web excellence" to the lucky winners. Surprisingly, most of the awards went in to completely the right hands.

Here's just one of them ...