Boston and Vegas: INBOUND and Everything After

The first week of September I was in Boston for HubSpot INBOUND, speaking at the conference. INBOUND is one of those annual events that takes over an entire convention center and half the hotels in the Seaport District for a week. Marketers, founders, creators, a few thousand people who are all very enthusiastic about content strategy and sales funnels and the future of AI or whatever the theme is that year.

I stayed at The Verb Hotel in the Fenway neighborhood, which is a converted Howard Johnson's motor lodge that's been reimagined as a music-themed boutique hotel. The exterior still has the old HoJo bones. The interior is walls of vinyl records, vintage concert posters, and rooms that are small but well-designed with turntables and curated record collections. The pool area is the real sell: a heated outdoor pool in the courtyard that runs late, surrounded by murals and string lights, with a vibe that feels more Austin than Boston. The location puts you a block from Fenway Park and about a 15-minute Uber from the Seaport convention center. Not the closest hotel to INBOUND, but the most interesting one.

Boston in September is one of the best versions of the city. Still warm enough for the pool. The college kids are back but haven't taken over every bar yet. The light goes golden in the afternoons and the brick buildings in Back Bay and Beacon Hill catch it in a way that makes the whole city look like a postcard from 1890. I walked through Beacon Hill one morning before the conference started, just to walk. The gas lamps and cobblestone on Acorn Street are as good as advertised.

The conference itself was a few days of panels, talks, networking, and that specific energy that happens when you put several thousand people who all do some version of the same thing in the same building. I spoke, I met people, I had conversations in hallways that were more useful than most of the scheduled sessions. That's the actual value of conferences: the hallway. The scheduled stuff is fine. The unplanned conversation with someone at the coffee station who's doing something interesting and happens to be standing next to you is where the real value lives. I made two connections at INBOUND 2022 that turned into actual working relationships, both of which started with "hey, I listen to your show" while waiting for a panel that neither of us ended up attending.

The speaker dinner was at some restaurant in the Seaport that I can't remember the name of. Long table, too many people, good wine, the kind of night where you end up in a conversation with someone three seats down about something completely unrelated to marketing and it's the best part of the evening.

After hours, the Verb's pool became the spot. A few of us from the conference would end up there around 10 PM, still wired from the day, sitting around the heated pool with drinks from the bar. The murals lit up at night look different than during the day. The music was low. Those late-night pool conversations after a long conference day are their own category of social interaction: honest, a little tired, and better for it.

For food in Boston, the Seaport has gotten better. Row 34 near the convention center does oysters and craft beer in a former warehouse. The oyster list is organized by region and the bartender will tell you which ones are briny versus sweet without being condescending about it. In the Fenway area near The Verb, Eventide Fenway is an outpost of the famous Portland oyster bar. The brown butter lobster roll is different from every other lobster roll you've had. Warm, rich, on a steamed bao-style bun. I had it twice in four days and briefly considered a third. Nobody needs three lobster rolls in four days. I did not care.

After Boston, I flew to Vegas.

The Palms Casino Resort had reopened in April 2022 after being dark for two years, and this was the first time back since that January 2020 trip. New ownership, same building, same Damien Hirst shark above the check-in desk. The rooms were similar. The energy was different. Slightly quieter. Slightly less chaotic. Like a party that restarted after a long pause and everyone's still finding the rhythm. The art collection was still intact though. That was the first thing I checked.

Scotch 80 Prime was still running. Same dark leather room, same whisky wall. I ordered the wagyu appetizer again to see if it held up. It did. Some things survive ownership changes.

Vegas after a conference is a different animal than Vegas as a destination. Your brain is already fried from four days of panels and networking. You don't have the energy for shows or clubs. You eat well, you sleep late, you sit by the pool, you decompress. I spent most of the Vegas days doing exactly that. The Palms pool, which had been part of that $690 million renovation, was quieter than I remembered. Fewer people, more space, a pool where you can actually read without someone's speaker competing with your thoughts.

One afternoon I walked through Chinatown and ended up at Raku for a late lunch at the bar, which was empty at 2 PM on a Wednesday, which is the best time to eat there. The homemade tofu, a couple of skewers, a beer. Nobody talking to me about conversion rates or email open rates. The bartender and I talked about the neighborhood for a while. He'd been there since before Chinatown became a food destination and had opinions about which of the new places were good (most of them) and which were hype (a few of them). That conversation was worth the Uber.

Flew Southwest back to Fort Lauderdale. Two cities, two weeks, one carry-on that smelled like Raku charcoal.