The 2016 Internet Summit brought more than 2,200 people to the Raleigh Convention Center on Wednesday’s opening day. That’s about 200 more than it been drawing in the past. That may be at least partly due, to the increasing number of well-known media figures and top business strategy speakers.

This year, those include opening day keynote speakers Olympic Gold Medalist LaShawn Merritt, comedian Al Madrigal, and the “Wizard of Moz,” Rand Fishkin. Also speakers such as Hassan Ali, creative marketing director at the popular fake news site, The Onion, and Ann Handley | bestselling author of Everybody Writes & chief content officer, Marketing Profs.

On day two today, attendees will hear from “Super Size Me,” documentary director and CNN’s “Inside Man,” Morgan Spurlock and Neal Patel, head of human social dynamics at Google.

  • WTW Insider Internet Summit coverage: Wizard of Moz blasts most content marketing advice.

The focus on including entertainment was noticeable everywhere.

Singers played from small stages, at the top of escalators and in nooks and crannies.

Humor, video games, costumes

Comedians are on the agenda both as Al Madrigal, who is slated for a second day lunch keynote, but also in a comedy showcase near the end of the first days programming.

Humor is even on the program with an entry called, “Be more funny! Use humor to elevate your brand, from comedian Michael Albanese.

Video game consoles, table top hockey, a colorful batch of costumes and numerous lounge areas rounded out the event’s entertainment focus. The video game consoles were free to play and in use each time we passed. Even the costumes drew the attention of a group of women toward the end of the first day.

The event, unlike TechMedia’s Southeast Venture Conference (SEVC), the Internet Summit is about 60-40 women, says the event’s co-founder Eric Gregg. “It’s a marketing conference,” he explains. So the focus has drifted from the nitty-gritty digital content to sessions focused on advertising on Facebook, getting traffic for content, and driving growth from email campaigns.

Useful take-away insights still abound

That doesn’t mean there isn’t any nitty-gritty stuff. Many sessions still feature marketers such as Steve Guberman from GolfNow, who showed how using Google tags can vastly increase the data you can see at Goggle analytics, to Cara Rousseau, a marketer at Duke University. Rousseau revealed during a panel discussion on trends in social and search, that the university is having “Unparalled success in establishing one-on-one conversations with prospective Duke students via Snapchat and Instagram.

As always with this event, the time-slots are packed with up to seven separate events, with six normal. With only 15 minutes between sessions, a bit of networking or discussions at the sponsor and speaker tables and you’d miss the first part of a presentation.

In addition to sessions led by national brand marketers and executives, the Thursday session includes speakers from Lenovo, Red Hat, UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke.

You can get a running, live set of take-away insights at the events #ISum16 Twitter feed. Most attendees have their phones, laptops or tablets out. We noticed both an increased use of information-filled slides and of audience members taking cell phone photos of the slides this year.