Key Highlights
- A behind‑the‑scenes look at Digital Summit Chicago, from the show floor to the sessions and every moment in between.
- Ideas as they landed in real time, from early‑morning conversations to post‑session reflection.
- The themes marketers kept circling back to — AI, visibility, video, audio and storytelling — captured in context.
There are a lot of ways to document a conference. You could take the influencer route and live stream/post everything and anything at the event, from the selection of sugar substitutes at the coffee bar to the presenter’s font choice for their slides. You could go full journalist — recorder running, questions ready, press badge front and center. You could play the part of the diligent student, sitting in the first row with a laptop open, furiously transcribing every slide like your life depends on it. You could be the laid-back learner who prefers to be in the moment, letting the information sink in as new ideas wash over you.
All valid. All been done.
But what I wanted from Digital Summit Chicago was something a little more personal than a thread and a little more honest than a highlight reel. I wanted to show you what I actually saw. So I charged up my iPhone, paid attention, and tried to capture the way it actually felt to be there.
More From Digital Summit Chicago:
What Recent Marketing Data Reveals About Attention and Performance
From the Stage to Your Strategy: The Most Quotable Moments from Digital Summit Chicago
The New Rules of B2B Marketing — Actionable Takeaways from Digital Summit Chicago
About the Author
Alexis GajewskiAlexis Gajewski
Contributor/AI Expert
Alexis Gajewski is a media strategist with nearly 20 years of experience in editorial leadership, content strategy, digital content creation, and search optimization. She is known for building the systems, training, and standards that help writers, editors, digital creators, and marketers produce better work more efficiently, without sacrificing accuracy or voice.
Alexis specializes in turning complex, emerging concepts into clear, actionable frameworks. Whether the subject is AI, search engine optimization (SEO), or editorial standards, she develops approaches teams can adopt quickly and apply with confidence. Her training serves every level, from foundational AI literacy to advanced workflows.
She is recognized for her work at the intersection of journalism, AI, and search. As audiences increasingly find content through AI assistants and answer engines, Alexis helps organizations adapt through answer engine optimization (AEO) and generative engine optimization (GEO), ensuring their content is well structured, authoritative, and readily surfaced and cited. She believes AI should strengthen sound writing and editorial judgment, not replace them.
An experienced educator and collaborator, Alexis has designed and led professional development programs for more than 150 editors across dozens of B2B brands and has aligned editorial, marketing, and audience development teams around shared goals. Her years covering the manufacturing industry instilled a continuous-improvement mindset that shapes her approach: identify inefficiencies, implement solutions, measure results, and refine.
Alexis also works as a freelance writer, editor, and consultant for publishers, agencies, and brands, specializing in content optimization and discoverability, AI-assisted workflows, content strategy, audience development and analytics, and editorial quality.
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