It’s been a week since digital commerce and advertising executives descended on San Francisco for the inaugural (and sold out) Retail Innovation & Marketing Conference. It was a whirlwind, but boy, did we learn a lot.

First up, one of the hottest topics to hit retail in many years: Mobile. We kicked off our time in San Fran with a one-day Mobile Boot Camp which covered basic topics of designing and deploying effective mobile sites, using SMS to increase sales, and what the future holds for this digital trend, but that was hardly the end of the mobile discussion. At the main event, speakers detailed where mobile has been and where it’s heading, how to take the first steps in mobile retail, and digital trends to watch for 2010. Trust us when we say, everyone is on the mobile bandwagon. Best Buy even shared a video of why they love mobile and what it means to the company (it’s worth a watch).

And the other big hitter at our conference was the topic of social commerce (our VC panel summed it up by saying: it’s here and it’s now.) But there were also social media mantras from Diane von Furstenberg, rules for customer engagement from Moosejaw and Marketspace’s Jeff Rayport, and a very popular Sephora session on identifying key participants in your community: “Who’s at your social media party?”

Mobile and social commerce may have been the big ticket items for this conference, but our speaker topics also included The New Customer, Creative and the Customer Experience, as well as Cross-Channel Marketing. If you’re looking for more highlights from Innovate ’10, check out a full listing of blog posts here. Or search #innovate10 for all the Twitter chatter and nuggets straight from attendees. If you attended, feel free to tell us what you thought.

Thanks and feel free to share your experiences at our inaugural Innovation event.

Larry Joseloff
VP, Content, Shop.org
joseloffl@shop.org