Arrgh! Searching for Auto Treasure at Digital Dealer 18

Have you seen my treasure map? The “X” shows up heeeere…

After a long, cold winter, I was happy to arrive at Digital Dealer 18 in WARM Tampa, Florida. Like so many others, I was searching for the treasure of invaluable information to make me a better dealer with our digital efforts, while visiting with so many great friends.

Speaking of which, a lot of the folks I know in  automotive would have likely been pirates a few hundred years ago… (hey Twitter folks – note that I have linked most folks Twitter handles in this review, go ahead and click on each to follow some of the best in the industry!)

The Tampa Convention Center was a beautiful location for DD18

Nobody told me about thunderstorms in Florida…  I arrived on Monday after the most turbulent flight I have endured with commercial airlines (which is still an amateur day compared to my Navy flying days) and it sounds like a lot of the other attendees flew through these same storms. Monday featured severe weather so I missed any poolside time that I might have envisioned, however I did spend the afternoon with the VinSolutions team learning about their newest updates.

Since it was pouring outside when we finished, we decided to take a 2 minute cab ride across the bridge to our hotel. Cost – NINE DOLLARS! Wow, I think the modern day pirates are driving taxi cabs in Tampa now. Of note, I lost my Uber cherry while at Digital Dealer and picked up a ride at minimal cost later while returning from an after-hours function.

I think I like me some Uber… After a nice dinner with my great friend Alex Jefferson, we attended a mixer party on Monday night. See some clips here with the short Digital Dealer 18 video I put together.