Aug 07 2017

Stop the Ad Hoc Agony Of Working With Event-Technology Companies

Event technology companies often tell me that there is no distinct event technology buyer role within event organizations. While many event planners love and respect new technology, most can’t do anything more than listen to a good pitch. Senior-level event managers and even the C-suite are hard to pin down no matter how the seller positions the technology.

The absence of a clear path for selling new technology into the organization underscores an even greater problem for event organizers. By making it difficult for new ideas to get through the front door or waiting until there’s a problem and looking through the technology haystack for a solution, organizers can’t react fast enough to the market forces impacting events.

Event organizers can handle this problem structurally. And while event technology companies aren’t completely off the hook (I’ll get into the complaints I hear from organizers about poorly trained vendor sales teams another time), this ball is in the event organizer’s court for now.

There are lots of reasons why event planners aren’t the best choice for managing the organization’s event-technology decisions.

The event lifecycle is a sales-opportunity killer. When an event is coming in hot, planners don’t have time to talk about new technology with a vendor. Getting a decision on an event app or platform purchase immediately before, during, or just after an event (or ever for a busy planner) is nearly impossible.

Understanding event technology isn’t a required skill for planners. Yes, there are tech-savvy planners in the business. They get apps. They understand the difference between an ISP and an API. But, the standard training, including the curriculum for meeting industry certifications (the Digital Event Strategist certification being the exception), doesn’t cover technology.

Most planners aren’t in a position to make decisions that impact the entire organization. So even if they like an event-management software platform, the more comprehensive the solution, and the more departments that are affected by it, the less able planners are to be the deciders.

The majority of planners operate at the event level and, consequently, can only buy technology budgeted for a specific event. That leaves planners and event-tech companies dependent on the event budget rather than how the technology fits into the strategy of the organization.

So if planners shouldn’t be responsible for event technology, who should be?

There is a solid case to be made for giving the job of purchasing and implementing event technology to IT were it not for the fact that they have lots of other responsibilities, not the least of which is keeping the organization up and running. Plus, they can’t always speak to the feature sets that get planners excited, attendees engaged, or sponsors buying.

The C-suite folks are likely candidates for taking on event technology providers, but except for the CTO (or, increasingly, the CMO), they’re not in a position to consistently monitor the tech landscape or make time for all the sales pitches from vendors. And it’s too costly for the organization to have them dealing with the day-to-day issues around procurement, implementation, and integration.

Some organizations make event technology adoption a team sport, asking multiple departments—operations, IT, marketing, and finance—to weigh in on decisions. But that approach can leave everyone and no one responsible for getting event tech adopted unless there is a decision-maker leading the discussion.

Not having someone whose job and expertise it is to evaluate and manage event technology at an organizational level is costing event organizers too. It means that the innovation setting other industries on fire can’t even generate a spark in meetings and trade shows.

It’s time for a new job function. Let’s call it the event technologist.

Event organizers have to begin taking the initiative to manage new and existing event-technology companies. To do so efficiently requires a person with the expertise and authority to manage this responsibility. Here’s what I think the job description for an event technologist should include:

You report to senior management.

You are available year round, i.e. you won’t be trotting off to every event in which the technology you select is being implemented or get sucked into the event timeline. You are a reliable resource even when chaos ensues at event time.

You take a strong role in purchasing decisions for new technology. You develop requests for proposal (if that’s what your organization uses) that speak specifically to the technology under consideration and you align your carefully considered recommendations with the pre-determined budget and strategy.

You take a rigorous approach to learning about new technologies through the various publications, resources, and events that are available to you.

You liaise with and take recommendations from multiple departments within the organization so you can map the technical needs of the users to the feature sets of the solutions. You also develop or manage an internal communications system to keep departments up to date on new technologies entering the market.

You hold regular “office hours” for event technology companies to learn about new solutions whether the organization is looking to purchase them or not.

You are in charge of a technology budget.

You maintain relationships with existing vendors, including making them accountable for sending data back to the organization in the appropriate format. You develop standards of performance and evaluate the vendors regularly against those criteria.

You negotiate service-level agreements and review and/or issue contracts to new technology vendors. You have the authority to cancel agreements for non-performance.

You oversee integration between your best-of-breed technology vendors with the goal of maintaining data integrity and functional efficiency.

You have a degree in information technology or computer science or the field-experience equivalent. You must be able to speak the language of digital with vendors.

Event organizers don’t have much choice at this point.

Digital transformation is no longer a nice-to-have objective for the event industry. Event technology is the critical ingredient needed to evolve. Someone in the organization (not the event planner) has to manage the day-to-day tasks associated with maintaining the event-technology stack, and a few organizations (like the Association of Equipment Manufacturers) have already created this job function. Event organizers have to stop the ad hoc agony of working with event-technology providers if they want in on the innovation and benefits of the Information Age.

If you’d like more information on the innovation impacting events, check out our sister publication eventtechbrief.com.

Mar 11 2015

When Millennials Take Over: Preparing for the Ridiculously Optimistic Future of Business

The below is a guest post from Jamie Notter and Maddie Grant as they launch their latest book on organizational culture.

A lot has been written about the Millennial generation in the last ten years or so, and to be frank, a lot of it is really not helpful, especially in a business context. So, why is the focus of our new book squarely on the Millennials and the way they might be changing just about every aspect of how we learn, lead and grow in organizations? They just happen to be at the right place at the right time. The Millennials are entering young adulthood at a unique point in our history, where society is poised for a tectonic shift, particularly around business, leadership, and management. There is a “perfect storm” of trends converging in a way that will generate an actual revolution in business – affecting organizations of all shapes and sizes.

Yes, a revolution. Our approach to management has been stuck in a rut—not just for the last few years, but also for the last several decades. We have been running our organizations like machines, and today’s lack of engagement and lack of agility to meet the shifting needs of customers, members and employees are indications of how our machine approach to management is crumbling. Add to this the shake-up that the social Internet has brought to business and society (that we wrote about in Humanize), and you’d think the revolution would have happened by now.

But it hasn’t. We needed another element, a catalyst that could connect the dots in a way that would bring a much needed management revolution to fruition. That catalyst is the third front in our perfect storm: the Millennial generation.

As the Millennials ascend into management positions over the next several years, they will simultaneously become the largest generation in the workforce. While the Millennials won’t formally “take over” (no single generation ever runs things on its own), they will serve as a kind of “secret decoder ring” for all of us, helping clarify what the future of business will look like, post revolution. Change is coming, and smart organizations will start making the necessary adjustments today to stay ahead.

Our newest book, When Millennials Take Over: Preparing for the Ridiculously Optimistic Future of Business, provides exactly that kind of guidance. We studied organizations with remarkably strong cultures and conducted interviews of Millennials who had been in the workforce for some time. What emerged from our research and feedback from our clients were four organizational capacities that we think will prepare organizations to be successful, both today and into the future: Digital, Clear, Fluid, and Fast.

The companies we found with ridiculously strong cultures had built these capacities into the heart of their operations and philosophies, and the Millennials we spoke to could not understand why these capacities were not woven into every organization to begin with.

Digital

Digital is about perpetual and exponential improvement of all facets of organizational life using both the tools and the mindsets of the digital world. Digital in the Millennial era has an unrelenting and disciplined focus on the customer or end user—including the employee. Millennials are the first generation to have only known a digital workplace, and they are used to being able to leverage that power on an individual basis. Digital organizations break through the assumed constraints of the previous approach to managing organizations, unlocking new value continuously in areas like internal collaboration and even human resource management.

Clear

Clear is about an increased and more intelligent flow of information and knowledge that supports innovation and problem solving inside organizations. Millennials have always had access to more information than they could possibly handle, and they are confused by organizations that control it tightly. Clear organizations make smarter decisions that generate better results. They will successfully build a transparency architecture that makes more information visible to more people to enable better decisions.

Fluid

Fluid is about expanding and distributing power in a dynamic and flexible way. Fluid in the Millennial era is about systems that enable an integrated process of thinking, acting, and learning at all levels of the organization. Since the social internet started distributing power across traditional lines, the Millennial generation now does not expect organizations to task the higher levels with the thinking and deciding, and the lower levels with the implementation. Fluid organizations serve customers more effectively and are more nimble in both strategy and execution. They may still have hierarchies, but they are created and maintained in a different way.

Fast

Fast is about taking action at the precise moment when action is needed. Fast in the Millennial era is about systems that can learn and adapt while still maintaining the efficiency and productivity of the previous era. Beta testing has become normal and expanded outside of the realm of software. We may call the Millennials “entitled” for wanting things right away or expecting more authority, but remember: That’s all they’ve ever known. Fast organizations leap ahead of the competition by releasing control in a way that does not increase risk. They go beyond efficiency and productivity to find the key variables that unlock true speed.

What This Means For You

This is not speculative, theoretical content—this is happening in the world today. One of the case studies in the book is the American Society for Surgery of the Hand, an association in Chicago that has embraced the digital mindset fully, not only investing more in technology than some for-profit companies its size but also redesigning its workspace around the needs of the employees. ASSH and the other companies that we profile are all tremendously successful by traditional measures, and their cultures are so strong that nearly all of the employees we spoke with could not even imagine working somewhere else. These are the positive deviants. They are role models that are showing us that the management revolution is indeed possible.

It is up to you now to continue leading this revolution in business. If you want to become more digital, clear, fluid, and/or fast, then take a hard look at your organization, particularly your culture. You’ll need to make a solid connection between what drives the success of your organization and what is truly valued internally—not the fluffy values statements, but what gets the attention, what gets the resources, what gets people rewards. When you can align what’s valued at that level to what drives your success, you have a better chance of creating a culture that makes sense in this new, Millennial era.

The above is a guest post from Jamie Notter and Maddie Grant as they launch their latest book on organizational culture.

Nov 13 2014

Four Reasons Why Selling Tickets Through Your Own Website is A Better Option

By Sean Hurley

Most event organizers outsource ticket sales to a third-party ecommerce platform. In doing so, they send buyers to a separate website to make the purchase. There are excellent reasons why they should keep would-be attendees on the main event website, from the first visit to the confirmation page. Sending buyers offsite to finalize their purchase transactions can cost organizers ticket sales and revenue.

Some buyers fall through the cracks

Studies have shown that redirects—when a user clicks a link and is moved to another domain—lose up to 5% of interested customers. These customers have already clicked on the “Buy” button but drop out of the sales process, costing organizers money.

Users are easily distracted

The jump from one website to another—especially one with a completely different look and feel—interrupts the buyer’s train of thought and can result in lost sales. Plus, keeping the buyer on one site helps organizers control the entire User Experience (UX).

Once buyers are gone, they’re gone

It’s unlikely that customers will return to the main website after they purchased their tickets elsewhere. Sending buyers away is a lost opportunity for organizers to deliver other information, engagement, and experiences, such as videos, photos, sponsor messages, and upcoming events to buyers.

Dwell time impacts SEO

Keeping visitors on a website for as long as possible impacts search engine results. The more time they spend viewing content (dwell time), the higher the website is ranked by Google. Ranking highly on Google (organically) is difficult. Event producers need every SEO boost they can get.

Despite the benefits, many event organizers still don’t sell tickets directly from their websites. They’re worried it’s too expensive or that they’ll need a dedicated IT guy to work on the website full time. Previous solutions have been clunky and expensive, opening the door to some new startup companies. Finding a service that works doesn’t have to be as difficult as it seems.

Let me know on Twitter or in the comments whether you’ve thought about this option for online ticket sales and what’s working for you.

Sean Hurley is the Inbound Growth Manager at Uniiverse, an event-ticketing platform. His focus is on event marketing and creating tools to help event organizers sell more tickets and engage their audiences. He is the leader of Event Organizers & EventProfs SF and an avid Jeopardy fan.

May 21 2012

Monetizing Digital Events

Apparently it’s fairly easy to monetize a virtual event if you have the customer base, an understanding about what works and what doesn’t for your audience and a platform with ample monetization opportunities. A recent Thought Leaders Live Webcast from INXPO shed some light on the myriad ways to earn revenue from digital platforms. Attendees also received a copy of the company’s white paper (registration required, but it’s worth it) detailing the assets (banners ads, messaging, Webinars, directories, lounges, etc.) and bundling strategies that event hosts can deploy.

Ali Libb, online event manager, American Marketing Association and a Webcast presenter, explained that she takes her cues from live event sponsorship opportunities. A veteran of 11 virtual events since February 2010, Libb outlined her success using tiered sponsorships—each level having a different mix of offerings from speaking opportunities to logos in email and branded landing pages. She offered three specific takeaways in her presentation:

Matching presentation topics with sponsors who would like to be associated with those specific subjects, while taking care not to allow overt selling, is a successful approach for attracting sponsors.

Content—Webinar presentations, videos, white papers—is easier to monetize than sales opportunities such as virtual trade show booths.

Making the content (and the sponsorship opportunities) available for at least 90 days after the virtual event is a good selling point for prospective sponsors and a benefit that physical events can’t offer.

Danielle Belmont, senior online events manager, BNP Media was the second presenter on the INXPO Webcast. Having produced 15 virtual events, she offered a long list of revenue earning tactics from her experience:

Virtual booths
Event sponsorship packages including a virtual booth, marketing collateral distribution, booth survey, promotional piece in attendee briefcase, attendee list and a podcast
Resource center sponsorship
Networking lounge sponsorship
Exhibit hall video sponsorship
Prize sponsorship

Matt Goodwin, senior account executive, INXPO, offered additional monetization schemes including entrance actions (slides on a screen or video playing as attendees take their virtual seats), interactive web space, sponsored polling in slides, product placements in the virtual environment and exit actions (directing attendees to a web site or booth at the conclusion of the presentation). Goodwin also left open the possibility of using game mechanics and mobile extensions as monetization platforms.

As with live events, the revenue potential is only limited by the sponsorship “real estate” and the event organizer’s imagination. As virtual and physical events continue to merge into hybrid experiences, the potential for monetization becomes even greater with online and offline strategies combining virtual and physical event properties.

Have you implemented any monetization tactics at your virtual events that were particularly lucrative?

Apr 30 2012

A Super Nerdy Way to Think about Growing an Event Community

Chris Heuer of the Social Media Club and a member of the SXSW Badgeless movement closed our recent Twitter conversation about attendees that attend, but don’t pay at SXSW with the following comment:

@michellebruno make it easier for the related communities the event serves to participate, maybe #EPI not #API, Event Programming Interface

Heuer’s tweet made me think about the parallels between organizations in the live event industry and device manufacturers (among others) that use application programming interfaces (API) to grow a community of users—one that can be monetized.

In simple terms, an API is the gateway, tools and implicit permission that hardware manufacturers make available to enable third-party application developers to create products and services around its products. Think about the Apple iPhone and all of the independent companies that develop apps for it. More applications = more reasons for people to own iPhones.

The concept of an API isn’t limited to hardware manufacturers. Oren Michels of API management firm, Mashery, told Mashable that, “Ultimately, the API is a means for growing your business — and I use the term ‘business’ to include whatever your mission is, be it traffic or commerce or a nonprofit improving the world or a government entity serving its constituents — faster and larger by virtue of engaging with others. Understand how and why your API can do that and you will be successful. ”

If what Michels says is true, live event organizers (nonprofit associations and for-profit companies) have to re-think their mission and their modus operandi. In my Twitter exchange with Chris Heuer, we discussed the need for SXSW organizers to find ways to include even the non-paying attendees, especially those like Heuer who have contributed to the wellbeing of the festival by blogging and paying in the past and are legitimate members of the broader interactive community that SXSW aims to serve. If SXSW’s mission is reach and retain a larger community, they will have to develop some type of outreach—not unlike an API—to accomplish that goal.

All face-to-face event organizers share a common mission: to grow revenue opportunities by growing their communities. This goal exists at a time when the live event industry—trade shows and conferences in particular—is under pressure. Event organizers can only access a fraction of the community of potential users. New research indicates that the potential of face-to-face events is limited because total visitor time at events is decreasing. At the same time, corporate budgets are being overtaken by digital marketing expenditures, digital channels can be as productive for the discovery of new product information as face-to-face events and live event participation is fraught with friction for participants.

An API model could be the gateway for live event organizers to expand the revenue, retention and reach of their unique value proposition (UVP), which is NOT, by the way, the ability to bring buyers and sellers together face-to-face. Since the UVP of b-to-b event organizers in the digital age is, I believe, “frictionless customized engagement,” an API from a live event organization should facilitate access to two classes of information and draw two types of net new community members:

On the event level: attendee feedback, demographic information, customer preferences, audit data, organizational challenges, task force findings, sponsor/exhibitor case studies, exhibitor advisory committee discussions and other information allows application developers—mobile, virtual, social and other technology suppliers—to derive solutions. More technology solutions = less friction for event participants = more attendee/exhibitor/sponsor participation.

On the industry level: research (free or low cost), education (free webinars), digital events, data, news, industry challenges, demographics, statistics, thought leadership, think tank discussions, case studies, white papers, content and other information makes it easier for new companies and individuals to offer solutions around it. More solutions = a growing industry = an expanded event community.

Of course, the use of an API-like outreach model requires work. The care and feeding of the solution developers and new community members is no small feat. However, it just makes sense that in the Information Age, live event organizers should use information to improve their events and grow their communities of potential participants.

Digital

Clear

Fluid

Fast

What This Means For You

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