Fork In The Road Blog

Events: Technology. Design. Strategy.

How One Meetings Organization Interpreted Digital Disruption

betaThe time we live in can only be described as bordering on the unfathomable: infants use iPads, celebrities show up at music festivals post mortem and human beings serve as wireless hotspots. We have gone from analog to digital overnight. The change is even reflected in our workplace terminology. We connect (meet), download (inform our colleagues about a project) and kvetch about bandwidth (time required to accomplish tasks). How can any industry keep up?

I left last week’s PCMA Convening Leaders conference in Orlando thinking about a number of statements, but one in particular has stayed with me. Thomas Friedman’s keynote, which alternatively addressed the failures and mandates we have as a country to avoid becoming a mid-day snack for China, mentioned the mantra of Silicon Valley start-ups, “Always be in beta.” It seemed to be the perfect solution for an industry of analogs trying to cope with digital disruption.

Even as the gauntlet of digital disruption—social media, mobile, virtual events, new content channels—was thrown down, PCMA looked it square in the eye and said, “Bring it on.” They attempted to scratch the surface of the issues surrounding digital technologies and meetings in a panel discussion, which I moderated, including industry luminaries from both sides of the aisle. We succeeded in laying out the issues and even discussing the “elephant in the room”: live events are not immune to the disruption.

In fact, PCMA not only exposed the obvious, they embraced it with their continued collaboration with the Virtual Edge Institute and their support of BOBtv. Virtual Edge education is now seamlessly blended into the Convening Leaders programming including an opportunity to sit for the Digital Event Strategist certification exam. An undercurrent of anticipation of the rollout this year of BOBtv was ever present during the meeting. The live streaming of the keynotes and several popular sessions from the conference was another hat tip to digital.

PCMA took mobile a step further this year by deploying a game on the existing mobile platform provided by Active Network. Participants were encouraged to complete evaluations, scan QR codes, add sessions to their agendas and perform other tasks in order to earn points and a coveted position at the top of the leaderboard. Then in typical PCMA style, staffers invited participants to a discussion of what went well, what could be done better and how the game layer performed overall.

The signs of social media were alive and well this year again. PCMA sponsored an official Tweetup. The mobile platform offered plenty of opportunities to tweet, post and upload content—and according to PCMA staff, they did. The three year-old Learning Lounge introduced attendees to a new platform called Tout (scheduled to be a part of the event next year), which developers describe as “Twitter for video.” Tout allows users to create 15-second video updates and add them directly to their Twitter and Facebook streams while enabling other users to reply with their own videos.

More than any specific program feature or technological innovation, it was PCMA’s attitude toward digital disruption that was so obvious at the event. They must have trepidation about keeping pace with technology and the future of meetings—their members surely do—but they didn’t let that paranoia stop them. If the level of experimentation at the meeting (lunch four different ways and the trade show reimagined) was any indication, PCMA is always in beta, trying new form factors and delivery systems. It almost seemed as if, despite some of the glitches that come with the territory, they embrace digital and disruption in general as a matter of policy. What a difference (non) denial makes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crowdfunding Your Conference

The trade show and conference business used to be far more entrepreneurial than it is today. Back in the day, almost anyone with a great idea and a few friends could launch an event. Today, most of the new launches come from corporations, media companies and trade associations. The number of entrepreneurs in the b-to-b event industry has dwindled not because there are no more great ideas, but because the cash is harder to come by or the risk is too great for just one or a handful of friends to give it a go. That could change if the crowdfunding tactics being pioneered by artists and techies catch on in the conference world.

Crowdfunding is a system of investment that pools the financial resources of friends and strangers together to finance specific projects. Most of the online crowdfunding platforms employ an all or nothing approach—projects don’t receive the funding unless the financial goals are met within a specific time frame. In exchange for their pledges, supporters receive rewards (designed by those asking for funds) when the projects are funded. The leading platform is Kickstarter.

XOXO gets crowdfunding love

Earlier this year, Andy Baio (Kickstarter’s former CTO) and Andy McMillan used Kickstarter to raise $175,911 (the original goal was $125,000) to launch their XOXO Festival—a combination conference, exhibition (Market) and citywide funfest (Fringe) taking place September 14-16 in Portland. The festival is designed to bring together artists and technologists. After the 400 tickets to attend the festival ($400 each) sold out in 50 hours, they raked in another $15,000 selling “goodies” from local merchants, T-shirts and access to digital content. It’s not surprising that Baio and McMillan, who both have insight into using the Kickstarter platform, were successful. But, what about mere mortals?

Tiny Kitchen raises too tiny a sum

Not all projects are ripe for crowdfunding.  Just because the idea gets traction on social media channels or the event organizer has existing über-successful events doesn’t mean the followers and friends of said organizer will actually pony up for something new. That’s what Denise Medved of The Tiny Kitchen discovered. The Houston and Washington, DC installments of her Metropolitan Cooking and Entertaining Show are successful with a huge following. But, when she turned to Kickstarter to launch a new event in Dallas, the crowd went cold.

Medved set a goal of $15,000, but only raised $1,000. She estimates that it took at least 20 man-hours just to create the pitch video—an essential component of the Kickstarter regimen—plus the time it took to fill out the forms and pour through the rules. She attributes the failure to two factors. Her existing crowd was formed around events in other cities. “Most attendees were from Houston or DC.  I’m not sure they cared about launching a show in Dallas,” she says. Another reason is that Kickstarter does very little to help. “The [Kickstarter] project requirements didn’t tell the whole story.  I thought they would reach into their database to help market,” she adds.

Chicago writers write (and video) their own future

Mare Swallow selected Kickstarter to launch the Chicago Writers Conference—an opportunity to place writers in the same room with publishers and literary agents. “It was a process much like starting a business. We put together a plan, did a lot of planning and talked to people that had a lot of experience on Kickstarter or had supported other Kickstarter campaigns,” she says. Her idea worked. The event will take place September 14-16 at the Tribune Tower in Chicago. The project was fully funded in 30 days by backers who pledged $7,725 (103% of their original goal).

Swallow used Kickstarter as a crowdfunding tool, but also as a community platform. “It was a constantly ongoing process that included networking every day. We were constantly adding rewards and I keep it updated for Kickstarter supporters,” she explains. Although her investment in time and effort paid off, Swallow admits it was hard work. “You need to be present with it every single day. You are doing just as much work in person [as online]. It’s not for the faint of heart,” she says.

Even Denise Medved agrees that crowdfunding could be a viable fundraising mechanism for events. Those who have been successful no doubt support that optimism. Wired magazine summed it up nicely when referring to Baio and McMillan’s efforts on Kickstarter. “They also believe that there’s a real underutilized potential for launching more events on Kickstarter. Baio, who helped build Kickstarter and who launched the event-coordinating startup Upcoming.com (acquired by Yahoo), points out that many event organizers have to lose money fronting venue deposits and planning for unknown attendee numbers. Kickstarter secures that audience ahead of time.” Who knew rewards like tickets, cupcakes, books and T-shirts could fuel an event-funding revolution?

Should They Stay or Should They Grow? Pushing a Show Community’s Collective Buttons

The 2012 Summer Outdoor Retailer Show concluded on Sunday, but the decisions about where to go next remain. Show managers are using an online platform called The Collective Voice to take the pulse of the outdoor community about where to move the show (it has outgrown Salt Lake City) and how to grow the show, or not.

The Collective Voice is an online forum that exists as part of the Outdoor Retailer website although it’s accessible by invitation only. To avoid influence from regional interests or the media, show organizers invited 20,000 attendees, exhibitors, non-profit advocacy groups, outdoor athletes and other stakeholders to talk freely about the show they love.

The issues that Outdoor Retailer is looking for input on, besides where to move the show include whether they should grow the show and, most importantly, “what does ‘outdoor’ really mean? “If we include fishing, stand-up paddle boarding, yoga and travel [for example], that changes the conversation about how we should grow. If we don’t want them, maybe we can fit in Salt Lake City,” says Kenji Haroutunian, VP of Nielsen Exposition’s Outdoor Group.

Outdoor Retailer has surveyed the community on these issues before, but Haroutunian says that surveys aren’t enough. “What [The Collective Voice] will do is fill in the gaps—the reasoning behind why people will check a box on the survey. The success in Salt Lake City is because of the culture and intangibles that you can’t get from a survey.”

So far, The Collective Voice has logged several thousand registrants and about 300 or so comment threads. “We already have people happy, ecstatic and upset,” Haroutunian says. The majority of comments suggest that stakeholders would like to stay in Salt Lake City and make it work. Haroutunian notes that companies with great locations on the show floor and those with 40+ shows under their belts are in the “stay” crowd. They are asking whether the show really needs to go. It’s the exhibitors crammed into tents and in meeting rooms that are feeling the need to move on.

From the beginning, The Collective Voice wasn’t designed as a forum. It is a variation of the GoExpo tradeshow management and matchmaking platform that already exists for the show. The majority of users access the Collective Voice forum using the same login information they use as attendees and exhibitors. “We wanted it to be efficient and to encourage people to use the same tool they are already familiar with,” Haroutunian explains.

Show organizers spent a lot of time providing the community with information to make informed decisions on the platform. They have listed the other destinations that could handle Outdoor Retailer complete with the housing and city service requirements. The site contains a comparison chart with metrics on how each destination stacks up to one another. The issues around the future vision of Outdoor Retailer are addressed at length in the FAQ section.

The Collective Voice platform is a departure from the traditional way that trade show organizers make decisions and Haroutunian wanted it that way. Most organizations fall back on a leadership group or volunteer strategic planning committee. “Coming into this industry, I was a bit surprised at the secretive decision making. I thought it was something that needed to be changed. One of my roles here is to change that model so that the trade show is not seen as necessary evil,” he says.

The open commenting period may be coming to an end soon now that Outdoor Retailer 2012 has concluded. The summer show—Outdoor Retailer has both summer and winter installments in Salt Lake City—is causing the most pain. “By fall,” Haroutunian says, “we should have a really good idea from the initial survey, the post-show survey and The Collective Voice platform about where to go from here.” Depending on the decisions, the final reveal could be dramatic.

The Collective Voice is only the beginning for Nielsen. “You will see more of this coming out of Outdoor Retailer especially for tapping into the collective intelligence and diversity of thought to create products and events. Our evolution is at stake. We want to use these tools to crack open the secretive approach to running the show. The broader the reach, the better the show,” Haroutunian explains.

Tapping into the voice of the community isn’t particularly new. Surveys have been around forever. Many organizations use calls for presentations to tap into the collective knowledge of their members come annual meeting time. But, the genuine desire to meet the needs of customers (especially for a for-profit company like Nielsen) by digging deep into the culture and psyche of a community is a sign of things to come—a sign that the community matters most of all. The Collective Voice platform just made it easier.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blogging for Booths: One Association’s Bid for Customer Loyalty

One spin around the blogosphere will show you that trade show organizers use blogs to attract new readers and draw attention from search engines. But IAAPA—the association for amusements and attractions—turned to its blog to solidify the association’s relationship with exhibitors/members by using it as the central communication channel for the IAAPA Attractions Expo 2011 Space Allocation.

Exhibitors in the IAAPA show do not select their own booth locations. A committee of 15 people—each dedicated to a specific market segment—assigns space from a “war room” of computer screens projecting the interactive floorplan on screen in real-time via the Internet. The committee makes selections based on seniority rankings and exhibitor requests, but the ultimate goal is to “design the best show possible” for exhibitors and attendees, says Jeremy Schoolfield, senior editor of the association’s magazine and the chief blogger.

The space allocation takes a day and a half. Schoolfield gives regular updates “either every half hour or so,” he says, or “when nice, round numbers are hit, whichever comes first.” Exhibitors follow along knowing their place in line from a pre-published list. Those that want to make a change can email the sales team after their initial assignment is made. This year was the fourth year that the space selection was live blogged. By the end of the second day, the committee had allocated 669 booths on the floor covering 357,000 net square feet—more than 60 exhibitors and 55,000 square feet than the year before.

Live blogging the space draw process came about out of necessity. Before that, exhibitors watching the space assignments online would email the sales team asking when their assignments were coming up. With the running blog account, they can follow along more easily and even get a little excited about an otherwise dull process. “[Space Allocation] has a live auction feel,” Schoolfield says.

Beside the obvious posts like “10 a.m.: Showtime Pictures LLC was just assigned, which means we now have 550 booths on the floor. Getting close now! A little more than a hundred to go,” Schoolfield inserts pictures of the war room, references to other blog posts, discussion about articles in the association magazine, and ad hoc comments from the committee members into his posts. These “extras” give him an opportunity to break up the monotony and get new information to a captive audience.

There are other advantages to blogging the space allocation. Besides keeping the process transparent and drawing more attention to the association’s other offerings, it helps members know that the blog exists.  “Our industry is not a ‘behind the computer industry.’ They are more apt to look at a mobile phone than sit down and look at something on the computer, yet we have set a record every year for blog readership,” Schoolfield says.

The Takeaway: By live blogging the booth selection process, IAAPA kept the proceedings accessible, transparent, and orderly. They created a value-added member benefit and placed the control over a process that could be perceived as uncontrollable back into the hands of exhibitors. For some like Kees Albers of Unlimited Snow-Tape My Day from the Netherlands, it was worth staying up all night for. Loyalty like that doesn’t come easy.

Be in the Room Streamlines Hybrid Event Search and Remote Access

Hybrid events (live events with a virtual audience) are becoming more popular. Tools to live stream content, platforms to handle Q & A, and remote attendees comfortable with Twitter are commonplace. However, bringing all of the virtual channels together into one “room” is still a little clunky. Plus, finding virtual events that weren’t previously on your radar is nearly impossible. A start-up out of Sydney, Australia is working to streamline the search and simplify the access to virtual events.

Be in the Room developers describe the online platform as a directory for digital events. In fact, it does offer event organizers in the social, digital, tech, leadership, entrepreneur, marketing, public relations, design, Web, journalism, and psychology sectors an opportunity to add their events to the list. The directory is searchable by hashtag, name, city, country, or topic. A separate search function allows visitors to search for speakers on the above topics—a great tool for event producers looking to hire speakers in the niche fields that Be in the Room covers.

Be in the Room also serves as a “dashboard” for virtual attendees. The platform pulls the Twitter stream, live feed, and Foursquare check-ins into one window. The “Noticeboard” updates visitors on programming updates, schedule changes, and news alerts. “The Presentations” window lists links to speaker presentations on SlideShare. A “Ticket Sales” tab takes prospective attendees to the EventBrite Ticket Widget for advance ticket sales. Recent updates allow the event organizer to add event details, a logo, and the event schedule.

Feedback from event organizers has been positive, says Lucy McFadden, the brains behind Be in the Room. “There will always be people and topics compelling you to be there. You won’t always be able to. The virtual experience is changing things and opening up a lot more opportunity for event organizers and remote attendees,” she says. “Early adopters are attracted to being able to learn more,” McFadden adds. Some Web aficionados would rather “watch” the Internet than television (I’m one of them) and now they can.

The Takeaway: As the lines between face-to-face and virtual events blur, Be in the Room and others could be the missing links between the online and offline worlds.

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