Fork In The Road Blog

Events: Technology. Design. Strategy.

Questions to Ask When Creating a Virtual Event Strategy

I recently contributed to the EastVirtual Event Workshop taking place on May 18, 2011 in Washington, DC. I worked with the organizers on a take home resource for attendees covering all aspects of virtual events from the perspective of trade associations. Here is an excerpt from the workbook.

Virtual events of any kind present both opportunities and challenges to an organization. Associations in the process of researching or integrating virtual events should first address a number of strategic questions:

Brand Considerations: Is a virtual event the appropriate vehicle for brand extension? Will virtual events enhance or dilute our brand? Are there other platforms that provide a better opportunity for brand extension than virtual events?

Security Issues: Do virtual events provide our association and our stakeholders (exhibitors, attendees, sponsors) with the appropriate level of privacy and security? Is there a possibility that unauthorized individuals would be able to access our confidential information via a virtual event? Do virtual events fit within the guidelines we have established for privacy and security in our organization?

Legal/Liability Issues: What are the legal obligations and liabilities of the association regarding virtual events? Have we approached our legal counsel for an opinion on integrating virtual events into the association’s event strategy?  What federal and state laws govern the use of virtual events?

Organizational Objectives: Do virtual events fit within the organization’s goals and objectives? How do virtual events address the organization’s areas of greatest need? How will virtual events enhance or detract from the organization’s mission? What are the short-term and long-term expectations of virtual events as they pertain to the organization’s goals?

Marketing Objectives: Do virtual events fit well with the organization’s marketing style, message, and current marketing strategies? How will virtual events enhance or detract from the association’s marketing objectives?

Educational Objectives: Do virtual events fit within the organization’s current learning/education strategy? Can virtual events offer members opportunities for certification and continuing education? How do virtual events affect members’ abilities to access content and education?

Budget Considerations: How will virtual events affect the association’s profitability? How will virtual events impact the organization’s budget? What kinds of budget allocations are available for virtual events? Will virtual event budgets be separate from live event budgets?

Resource Commitments: What will be the human resource commitments for virtual events? What departments will be responsible for managing the virtual event program? Would a virtual event program require additional employees or outside consultants?

Suitability for Audience/Members: Are virtual events suitable for our member demographic (tech savvy, time zones, bandwidth, access to computers)? What training or preparation would be required for our members to achieve the greatest benefit from virtual events? What types of virtual events would be the best fit for our organization?

SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats): What are the association’s strengths and weaknesses regarding the integration of a virtual event strategy? What opportunities do virtual events present to our association? What threats do virtual events present to our association?

Member Value Proposition: How do virtual events enhance or detract from our member value proposition? How do virtual offerings fit with other member benefits? Would virtual offerings exclude any members? Could virtual events attract new members?

Event Portfolio Integration:  Do virtual events fit into the organization’s current event strategy? Where is the best fit for virtual events in the “continuum” of current association events (preview, wrap-up, hybrid extension of live event)?

Social Media Integration: How do virtual events fit into the organization’s current social media or content marketing strategy?

Association Management Systems Integration: Can virtual events be integrated into the association’s current management (ASM) system including registration and membership databases?

Risk Tolerance: What are the risks involved with launching a virtual event? How does the risk associated with launching a virtual event correspond to the association’s overall risk tolerance?

The Takeaway: If you haven’t considered at least some of these questions in the course of developing plans for a virtual event, you may already be behind the curve. What have I missed?

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.

The Road Less Traveled: Event Industry Suppliers Move from Aggregation to Curation

This blog post is sponsored by AV Event Solutions offering audiovisual rental, audience response for polling, computer rentals for registration, LCD displays, and more to event planners throughout California.

Event industry suppliers—general service contractors, sales and marketing firms, and exhibit designers—are stepping out of their comfort zones to take advantage of the innovation that is sweeping over the industry. What might look like a desperate move by some companies to hitch their wagons to a star or an attempt to make up for the shortcomings of a flat industry is actually a smart business decision. A clear precedent for the trend comes from social media and the growing practice of content curation.

A hint that something was amiss came in the last half of 2009 when Maritz, a sales and marketing service company that relies on face-to-face events, introduced a suite of virtual offerings including their “Maritz LIVE initiative for delivering virtual events and experiences.” When Freeman, the 84-year-old general service contractor et. al. and kingpin of the trade show and live event industry, announced late in 2010 that it too would be offering virtual events as part of a new business unit, the door of opportunity flung wide open.

Virtual platforms aren’t the only star technologies being curated. MG Design recently rolled out plans to offer its exhibitor clients RFID (radio frequency identification), QR (quick response)/Mobile, Augmented Reality, and social media integration with their exhibit design and fabrication services. The company offered attendees a hands-on look at the four technologies during Exhibitor 2011 in Las Vegas:

  • Surveys and RFID tags matched visitors’ hot button issues with specific audio and video content
  • QR codes were peppered throughout the exhibit leading visitors to information about MG’s products and services.
  • An augmented reality demonstration helped attendees understand how to put interactive content in the hands of prospects without physically bringing more products and collateral to the booth.
  • Social media tools illustrated the potential for exhibit marketing programs to go viral.

MG Design’s Director of Marketing, Ben Olson, frames it this way, “We have clients that date back 10 to 20 years. They look to us to bring these solutions to them. We do a 360-degree deep dive. When we’re developing the exhibit concept, we work these technologies into the recommendations where it’s appropriate.”

The curation of services is different from the aggregation of services. In the old days, suppliers offered related services (domestic trucking, pop-up displays, freight forwarding) to their captive audience of customers, but the transactions were consummated between the sub-contractors and the exhibitors directly. In the curation model, related and even seemingly “competitive” services are hand selected by industry suppliers who stay involved in the work stream—hence the suppliers’ value-added position with customers.

A May 2010 article on Mashable.com by Steve Rosenbaum highlights the importance of curation in content strategies. The same points Rosenbaum offers about content validate the service curation strategies in the event industry. Rosenbaum quotes author and NYU Professor Clay Shirky; “Curation comes up when people realize that it isn’t just about information seeking, it’s also about synchronizing a community.” Even industry suppliers are saying as much when they explain their partial shift away from their core competencies with statements about their desires to utilize a “holistic approach to provide multiple value to customers” or “lead [clients] to a more successful event experience.”

Rosenbaum brought up another point that is analogous to the emerging practice of event industry suppliers. “A lot of it is economic — doing more with less — and it has crossed every media industry,” explains Allen Weiner of Gartner Group. “If you think about the tools you want to give an editor to make him or her more complete, you want to give them curation tools.” It could be “something they add to their own content. As more old media companies attempt to do more with less, publishing tools that allow this efficiency without demeaning the product quality … [are] going to be very important.”

In the previous aggregation model, suppliers were not operating under any imperative to explain the outsourced service offerings to their customers. No one needed a sit down to understand the importance of shipping your exhibit to the show using a domestic carrier with no waiting time in the marshalling yard, an empty trailer at the ready during move-out, and a presence in the exhibitor service area. But with technology, there is a huge need to explain to clients the relevance, impact, and execution of the offerings. As Rosenbaum explains, “from a user perspective, well done curation is a huge value-add in a world where unfiltered signal overwhelms noise by an ever increasing factor.”

The Takeaway: For now, service curation may be a road less traveled. In the past it was uncomfortable, financially risky, and a point of criticism for established companies to make a sea change in offerings. Social media has helped us understand how it can be done, where it fits into business models, and how to minimize the risk. What we may be seeing is the beginning of an assimilation of event technology into the backbone of the industry—great news for suppliers, exhibitors, attendees, and the platform developers that see it as a new sales channel.

Pop Up Sessions and Unpanels Coming to a Conference Near You

Welcome to the world of the unexpected where restaurants, stores, and classrooms pop up overnight with the spontaneity of a pimple on prom night. While impromptu conference sessions have yet to appear in the traditional conference setting, there are signs that instant gatherings of like-minded people tipped off by the lightning fast transmission of messages over social media channels could be coming to a conference near you.

Here’s how a pop up session might look: Let’s say Chris Brogan, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Seth Godin attend BlogWorld. Shortly before lunch they tweet to their followers that they will be in Room 2204 to talk to anyone who wants to listen about how they made millions of dollars blogging (or their biggest blogging blunders). The tweet (or Facebook post or text message) also informs readers that Ford Motor Company is providing lunch for everyone and a cherry red Ford Mustang car for the first person through the door (OK maybe just signed books from the speakers to the first 200 people). Who wouldn’t want to go?

Flash sessions, “unpanels,” and impromptu meetups are the logical next steps for conference producers looking for viral “sugar.” The fact that many conferences have tweetups (CES had over 1,000 people show up at their tweetup last January) demonstrates that attendees respond to informality. The flash mob phenomena, which gives the appearance that people just spontaneously start dancing together in the middle of a conference center foyer, garners YouTube love every time a new video appears. Pop up panels like the one with Jeremiah Owyang and friends on the future of content creation during SXSW was covered on a number of blogs. In fact, SXSW conference organizers presided over a number of instant initiatives: flash mobs, pop up stores, unpanels, and lots of user-generated publicity.

In addition to the yen to experiment, conference organizers would need to plan ahead of time to perfect the look and feel of spontaneity:

  • Non-programmed blocks of free time when attendees are available to attend
  • Speakers, topics, and incentives with broad appeal to attract followers
  • Forward-thinking and flexible sponsors to underwrite costs
  • Open spaces capable of accommodating large crowds

The Takeaway: With all the talk about unconferences, barcamps, and other self-organized gatherings, pop up conference sessions seem like a natural fit for organizers looking to breathe new life into an old format or attract the newly social hipsters who have outgrown the rave parties but still crave the excitement of the unexpected. They’re also a great way to get more followers using the conference’s social media platforms. Who knows, could pop up trade shows be next?

The Virtual Rescue Plan for Face-to-Face Events

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If I had a dollar for every time I heard or read the phrase “nothing will replace face-to-face meetings,” I would be rich (er). The sad truth is that in some cases they’ve already been replaced. The recession, green movement, costs to exhibit, travel hassles, generation Y’s social networking predilections (pick one) have opened the door to virtual events with good reason—they save money and environmental resources while attracting a new audience of exhibitors and attendees. Rather than run towards the exits with brains on fire fearing the cannibalization or elimination of live events by virtual platforms, it’s time to take stock of the real opportunities that virtual event platforms offer to stimulate live attendance and grow face-to-face events.

The bad news

At the same time virtual events are on the rise, face-to-face trade show producers are experiencing their share of challenges. Many organizers are struggling to get a handle on how to grow their events in the face of increased competition from new media channels, continued economic volatility, and rising costs. Exhibitors remain irritated by labor practices and the ever-increasing costs to exhibit. The recent uptick in attendance numbers at some shows doesn’t change the general lack of industry growth overall.

The good news

When done well, virtual experiences stimulate immersion, flow, and presence—the primary reasons why virtual games like World of Warcraft (WOW) are so addictive. To a lesser extent, virtual trade shows and conferences perform in the same way. Like every great concert, sporting event, or cocktail party next door, watching and listening to the action from a distance only makes you crave being there when the opportunity comes along. Incidently, BLIZZCON, the live conference for WOW gamers, sells out almost immediately after the dates are announced every year.

The plan

To prevent the further shrinkage of live events, producers must develop a strategy that allows each of the two mediums—face-to-face and virtual events—do what they uniquely do best and treats virtual platforms like any other content strategy that adapts to address the various stages of the sales funnel:

Stage I: Webinars. Bring in live subject matter experts to deliver regularly scheduled, FREE, and interactive presentations to an audience that is both familiar with the live event (jazzed from attending the year before) and entirely new. Content delivered virtually at this stage should create brand awareness, pique the interest of newcomers and reinforce the loyalty of your customer base.

Stage II:  The Virtual Preview. Use your live event speakers and keynote presenters to offer a glimpse of what’s in store at the face-to-face event. However, lest you think you can get away with something brief, commercial-like, and only at 50% power, think again.  This is the point at which you MUST go after potential live attendees with both barrels, offering original content for FREE with the understanding that the virtual attendees are in a buying mode.

Stage III:  The Hybrid Event. Stream content live from the physical trade show and conference to the virtual audience. This is an opportunity to appeal to serious potential participants—remote attendees, exhibitors, and even sponsors—who want to learn about the event with the intention of participating the following year. This is your opportunity to showcase your product in a three-dimensional way. The best way to do that is to not treat the virtual audience as voyeurs or second-class citizens. You have to engage them, give them a voice, allow them to participate, and frustrate them (in a good way) so that they regret not having attended the live event.

Stage IV:  The Live Trade Show and Conference. Reward loyalists who have made the shift from virtual attendee to live attendee with an experience that emulates the online environment but cannot be duplicated online—rich human interaction, unlimited opportunities to engage in small groups and intimate settings, information on demand, and plenty of tactile experiences. The content and engagement delivered by the live event must be so compelling and actionable that it pushes live attendees back into the post-event virtual stream to form the live event’s virtual community.

The Takeaway: This virtual rescue plan forces live events to differentiate themselves from virtual platforms by offering a level of engagement that virtual events cannot deliver. The richness of the live experience drives attendance. The online content (unique information delivered by live speakers, not archived presentations) recognizes where virtual attendees are in the buying (attending) cycle and delivers content commensurate with that stage of the sales funnel. It allows potential participants—attendees, exhibitors, and sponsors—to jump into and out of the content stream all year long. Yes, this is a long-term approach. Yes, it requires deviation from conventional growth strategies and a level of investment on the part of the event organizer. But, some would argue, the only way forward for the live event industry is not to look back.

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