Before there was “The Internet,” there was Alan Meckler, Mecklermedia and Internet World. This trade show and publishing empire enveloped and exploded with the dot-com hysteria that consumed almost everything in the late 90′s. In one of history’s shrewdest examples of “getting out while the getting is good,” $274 million of Penton Media money gave Alan Meckler the fuel he needed to continue playing king-maker to this very day. In the same time period, Penton has gone from new media sweetheart to the Pets.com of print: bankrupt, downsized, merged, and again, and again. I was privileged to see an Internet World P&L in 1999, and the bottom line was staggering. If the dot-com era had lasted 3 more years, the world would be calling Read more…
I call it the Internet Probability Principle: If I can think of something that should exist on the Internet, it usually does. I think of it…I Google it…and there it is. This was my experience with efax services, large-file transfer services, online OCR, and my wife. I looked, and there they were. So, why has no one created a decent virtual event application in Facebook and LinkedIn. Has Google seen this gaping void? Is it seeking to fill the void with Google+ Hangouts. My quick search around the web reveals only a couple of freshman developer attempts. I won’t even post links because what I’ve seen is embarrassing. There is nothing that even pretends to be enterprise-grade. This is based on a very quick look around the web, but that’s usually all it takes. Am I missing something? Come on, Internet!
Someone did a smart thing and placed every app that could be of use to a meeting planner on a portal called, simply enough, MeetingApps.com. During my quick visit, I saw hundreds of apps listed, and some of the more popular apps are actually reviewed by meeting planners. Apps are organized in categories that are relevant to meeting professionals, like Air Travel, Meeting Management, Conferences, etc. You can also search for apps by platform, including Android, Blackberry, and iPhone. By joining their “App Alert,” you can be notified when new apps are posted. The site was created by Kirsten Strand, of Invenia Incentives in Vancouver, BC. The site is a very smart promotion for their services, as their offerings are subtlety integrated into the fabric of the site. Looking to develop your own app? Invenia can help. The commercial interruptions are minimal, and I didn’t mind, because the content is so great. Here’s the ultimate compliment: I’m wondering why I didn’t think of this.
Google NFC and what do you get? Lots of info about the Dallas Cowboys. Google “NFC -football” and everything changes: there are 37 million pages of info about Near Field Communication, the specification for simplified wireless transactions coming soon to a smart phone near you. I’m working with the Smart Card Alliance and NFC Forum to launch a big new NFC event next year in San Francisco. Of course the badging system needs to be NFC compatible, and we’re working with an NFC-savvy registration company. What I’m learning is that this technology, if it catches on, could change the economics of registration services at major events. With a “true” NFC badging system, any smartphone becomes a lead retrieval device. That’s great for event planners, right? Imagine everyone at your event, vendors, attendees, and press–scanning each other for networking purposes. If you’re running a registration company, you just had a heart attack, because that eliminates your main source of revenue–lead retrieval devices and services. We had a long discussion with the registration company about how to solve this problem and the answer was “Apps. Maybe.” This will be an interesting project because, if it works out, everything at the conference will be scannable: people, booths, technology demos, posters, food service stations, and who knows what else. I’ll keep you updated.
Sonic Foundry has long been a webcasting and teleconferencing thought leader, with an institutional understanding of the benefits of hybrid and blended events. For event planners it’s well worth your time to take a trip around their web site, which includes a number of uselful webcasts, whitepapers and case studies. A couple of great webcasts are available for free in their library: Try Strategic Planning for a Successful Hybrid Event which is presented by Victoria Fanning who is the Director of Hybrid and Online Meetings at EDUCAUSE. They’ve got a great slate of hybrid events–way ahead of the curve. If you’re interested in a user-driven webinar model (either as a participant or as a producer) try Hybrid Events: Choose Your Own Adventure. This is a deep dive, with 18 separate potential paths to follow. I see a lot of poorly produced webcasts out there–poorly lighted, bad sound, etc. To you people I recommend Lights, Camera, Action: Fool Proof Tips to Produce the Most Polished Webcasts on the Planet. This webcast includes Q&A with the respected Jan Ozer, contributing editor for Streaming Media and EventDV and blogger for AV Technology.
Few conference programmers can legitimately call themselves “curators.” Chris Anderson can. With a strong background in journalism, publishing and business, Anderson grew Future Publishing in the UK, sold it and moved on to the California tech boom in the 90′s, founding Imagine Media. I remember watching the Imagine empire grow in California during the dot-com boom. They always had great billboards along Highway 101 south of San Francisco. Imagine created Business 2.0 magazine, a seminal journal of the internet explosion, also the popular games website IGN, and over 100 other publications. In 1996, his success allowed him to create the private nonprofit Sapling Foundation, with the goal of tackling tough global issues by leveraging media, technology, entrepreneurship, and ideas. In 2001 got the conference bug, acquired TED and the rest is history. TED is what every business events should be: focused, passionate, and uncompromising about quality content. Plus, it’s mostly free to anyone with a browser. TED’s presenter guidelines, known as the TED commandments, will be useful to anyone recruiting speakers, especially if you’ve got talkers who are burned out or new to the game. There are a lot of ways to follow Chris: On twitter @tedchris, on the TED website, here’s a great interview with Chris on TED.com, here’s his Wikipedia page
Like you, my inbox and RSS feed is bursting with press releases. Most, I ignore. But I had to stop what I was doing and read The Most Amazing Press Release Ever Written. This release certainly lives up to its aptly descriptive title. According to sources very close to the author of this release, “the science behind this Earth-shattering news release lies in its simplicity–no science, just pure old press release craftsmanship.” Industry wags and mucky-mucks broadly echo this sentiment. According to some, just linking to this press release can greatly increase reader interest in a blog post. “I liked it, so I thought I’d blog about about it,” said I, the author of this blog post. “IMHO, others may be interested in it as well. Only time will tell.”
This year, I’ve noticed many of the major virtual events platform providers have begun to tout the benefits of the hybrid model. It started last December, with this blog entry from Dennis Shiao, Client Services Executive for InXpo, proclaiming 2010 the “Year of the Hybrid Event.” It hasn’t happened, but we’ve still got four days to go—maybe there will be an explosion of hybrid event activity later this week.
Looking ahead to next year, in a Business News Daily year-ender, Sharat Sharan, President and CEO of ON24, doubles down on Shiao’s expired prediction: “In today’s cost-conscious business environment, demand for hybrid events—a physical event with a virtual extension before, during or after the physical event takes place—will continue Read more…
Once or twice a year, one of the big media wags does a think piece on Virtual Events and this week it was the New York Times. Technology articles like this should include an index of previous articles on the same subject, like this one from 2007 I found in the Washington Post. Then we could have the fun of going back to read all the predictions that don’t pan out.
The Times article avoids the kind of hyperbole that we used to see back in the day, and the author was smart to speak with Michael Doyle at the Virtual Edge Institute, who wisely explains that virtual events need to be part of an ongoing (perpetual) social experience. The IBM example in the article is interesting, but these vendor-driven attempts at creating Read more…
It has been interesting to see the “virtual event” platforms forge closer and stronger ties with the gatekeepers of content, including media firms, consultants, and (in some cases) vendors. On24, Webex, and Unisfair have all pushed further in this direction. Now, Onstream Media has launched new virtual event platform (Marketplace365) that is pushing the partnership paradigm further, allowing a producer to start virtual events for free and pay only as they generate revenue.
At B2BPresence we believe that the Google AdSense “pay-for-performance” approach will eventually clone and adapt itself to every marketing ecosystem. Marketplace365 has opened the door for performance-based marketing in virtual events, and competitors will Read more…
