I was supposed to attend a breakfast meeting featuring Julie Roehm, who was fired as WalMart's top Marketing position last year - but due to the snow and just being exhausted, I skipped.   But I heard it was a good meeting judging from the Mediabistro coverage:

"…..Former marketing SVP Julie Roehm speaks to Media Village's Jack Myers, as TV guru Shelly Palmer looks on

Julie Roehm might be the highest-profile marketing exec in America right now, after getting canned from Wal-Mart following just 10 months on the job. And since she's on "14 minutes and 33 seconds" of her 15 minutes of fame, she's talking to as many people as possible.

Speaking to a room full of sleet-laden media execs and entrepreneurs this morning at a non-descript room in midtown Manhattan, she was cagey about whether she's looking for a job, but did tell moderator Jack Myers about a venture she's trying that could, ultimately, undercut the "upfront" market. (For those of you not in TV, that's when TV networks try to whip advertisers into a frenzy to spend lots of money to lock up air time before a season has even begun.) Roehm and a colleague came up with an idea to auction the time, instead, and with eBay, she says, is trying it with cable, spot and scatter (meaning ad space that's not in the "upfront"). Today, it's a fraction of the $9 billion market, but if it works, could be much higher. It's based on a NASDAQ-like model, with the principles of "arbitrage, anonymity, flexibility and transparency," she said."

I found some of the other comments interesting:

"….Myers joked that the only things the press in the room would pick up was that Roehm said she likes men (she's a rare woman exec in many instances) and that she's seldom home (she's been traveling a lot). There. We did it."

Is she saying that there are not many woman executives (period) or that there are not many woman executives that like to date men?   Too bad I did not go.

I remember reading about Julie Roehm in AdWeek and it was big deal; glad she landed on her feet. 

One thing to be aware of, in real life and in Web Analytics - there's usually several sides of a story and it's good if you can hear them all, or as many as possible.