I‘ve tried hard to make B2BPresence at least a weekly part of my work. However, I’ve recently been very busy launching a new concept for business events at my company, Cnxtd Media Corp. Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows of my fascination with all forms of “hybrid events.” Hybrid events combine both live and webcast components, occur in real time, and involve direct person-to-person contact.
I’ve felt, for a long time, that there are inefficiencies in the traditional trade show/conference model that can be remedied through a judicious use of technology (nothing cutting edge) and a business Read more…
A discussion about new models for B2B event would be incomplete without a look at appointment events. I’ve seen an up-trending in two appointment formats: 1. The pure play appointment event. At these events, sponsors pay for, and are guaranteed a certain number of one-on-one meetings with potential clients. 2. The speed-networking approach, where an attendee and sponsor are brought together at a pre-existing event by the organizers.
1. The pure play appointment event: Min’s B2B recently ran an interesting article on appointment events, featuring Questex’s Mclean Events. As with the executive roundtables, this format is well-suited for tough Read more…
Just as there are many songs about singers and many books about writers, there are many conferences about producing events. I recently came across an event that actually understands the current digital evolution in event media: VirtualEdge 2009 has assembled an impressive program of event producers and technology leaders in a program that emphasizes business imperatives over technological flash.
I spoke with the event producer. Michael Doyle is a B2B veteran with experience in both print and event media. VirtualEdge 2009 reflects the coming transformation in event media. Especially impressive is a slate of speakers that includes Nielsen, Ziff Davis, and United Business Media. These are companies that are on the front lines of B2B event media evolution. The concurrent technology showcase has a unique format, with individual meeting rooms with interactive demonstrations. They’re developing the audience for this event as a community, Read more…
I saw this at last night’s New York Tech Meetup: Event press releases usually get lost in the mass of PR spam that editors have to deal with. PR MatchPoint matches your press release or story pitch to editors or bloggers who are likely to actually be interested in your information. It looks at a database of articles to try and pick out keywords that match those in your release, then it tells you which editors are closely matched. Other people at the Meetup said that this was a lot like a tool called Cision. I’m not closely familiar with either of these sites so I can’t recommend them. But event PR Read more…
I’m ready to state, without reservation, that Second Life has become a “must know” platform for business event managers. A simple description for neophytes: In Second Life you move a character around a three dimensional environment. The character represents you. You can speak to and interact with other people, who are represented by their characters. It feels like a video game. It’s free to try, but you have to download it and install it on your computer.
Second Life first caught my attention when Visa committed to a sponsorship of over $75,000 to create their own environment and event on Second Life. This was at a time when I was trying to get Visa to take out a minimal sponsorship on a live event where we had a proven audience. I was surprised that they were willing to spend so much on an Read more…
Some interesting discussion around this topic, below. Of course virtual components of live events have been around for over a decade. The biz model has been elusive. I remember sitting through a disastrous demo of an audio simulcast tool in 98. The product had horrible latency (audio delay) problems. Me and my colleagues sat there yelling at a PC for ten minutes. It kept echoing back at us, until the guy doing the demo disappeared into a fog of echos. That company disappeared in the dot com bust.
I did some checking around on the ZDE platform. It’s apparently based on tools developed by Stream57. I spoke with them and they seem to have a lot experience with live webcasting. I also spoke with someone who has worked with them and they said they do a good Read more…
At B2B Presence we pontificate in a self-serving way on the benefits of face-to-face media, and take pains to point out the shortcomings of webcasting and other “virtual” events (would you be happy with a “virtual” vacation?). However, we’re not blind to the glorious digital sunrise and we’re frequently scanning the horizon for signs of the inevitable convergence of live and virtual media.
Now comes Ziff Davis Enterprise, a company that frequently “gets it” before many others. This recent press release on their new tool to bridge virtual and live events is extremely promising. They appear to be leveraging this in their custom event business, so I would expect this to start small. The proof will be in streaming—we’ll keep an eye on this.
The rise and fall of ZDE’s custom events business is a story that deserves its own mini-series. This group, under Martha Schwartz and then Kirk Laughlin grew to mammoth Read more…
We regarded Twitter as a forum for teenage chat until we gave it a try and found that it drove a lot of traffic to our web sites. Audience acquisition is an obvious application for Twitter, as I wrote previously. A quick look around the web shows that a lot of event managers are using Twitter to connect with attendees and exhibitors prior to events and on site.
BusyEvent in their blog entry described a number of interesting ideas for integrating Twitter into the activities of a conference, including digital signage. One comment: they suggest setting up a twitter feed based on the name of the event. I would suggest that the event Twitter feed be delivered under the name of someone associated with the event—conference chair, editor, association executive. A person-to-person feed always grabs the user much more than a “brand” feed. Great Idea: get attendees to provide their Twitter name when Read more…
I have been working in the events and media space for close to 15 years and would consider myself a “hard-core” face-to-face events supporter but over the past two years I have had to acknowledge that virtual events are a platform that I need to embrace and learn about. So I get asked question all the time by experts in the events industry: “Do you think virtual events are the answer? Are they going to replace face-to-face events?” (no way–never), “Are they going to add excitement back to the events space?” (maybe), “Are they going to a major part of advertisers budgets? (maybe).
Obviously, no one knows the answer to those questions except for the first one. It is evident that in-person events will never go away. Yes, they will go through cycles and events that don’t remain relevant will struggle or go away but nothing can replace the handshake and the in-person relationship building–not the online communication and interaction of a virtual event, not the virtual business card exchange (who made that up?), not the online chat Read more…
We do a lot of posting to promote events and web sites. For almost a year, I’ve focused heavily on LinkedIn, and LinkedIn Groups, Facebook. (There also seem to be a lot of Ning-based industry sites popping up recently.) Twitter seemed like a lightweight entry into the category of social media, and I regarded it as a playground for tweens with a lot of free time.
This month I finally got around to making a half-hearted promo effort on Twitter. I was surprised to see the number of “followers” we were able to acquire without much effort, and after a few brief promotional “tweets” I was startled to discover that Twitter was driving almost 20% of the traffic to the web site we were promoting.
So I’m sold on the potential, and trying to develop my own brief on best practices. A couple of orgs that seem to be doing a good job touting their events: Glue Conference, Read more…
