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, through the website VirtualEdge.org, and you receive a Virtual Event Handbook when you join the community. The event is May 28-29 in Santa Clara.

In a similar vein: Government scientific and technological research efforts often incubate and spawn important commercial innovations. This week, National Defense University is hosting the Consortium for Virtual Worlds Conference. The consortium seeks to “improve government collaboration through the use of virtual worlds to enrich collaborative online experiences.” While it may be too late to attend the event, the online agenda serves as a catalog of virtual environment technology in the service of distance learning, personal interaction, and information sharing.

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 job (maybe with a little lack of attention to detail, but nothing terrible).

Here’s the problem for business event producers:There are hundreds of companies now that can do a live video webcast. These companies typically aim at the high end: They bring in a full production crew and produce high-quality video content that cost tens of thousands of dollars. So now you’ve sunk a big dime producing content that goes out to desktops where everybody eats for free. How do you monetize that? What’s the business model? The sponsorship model only goes so far.

The nub of the problem seems to lie in this: Software Developers don’t produce events, and Event Producers don’t really understand software.

Full disclosure: My company is working on a new event model that takes on this problem. A lot of what I write about comes out of research that we’re doing to launch this model. I hope to write about it more specifically in the future. I’m posting here because I know a lot of event organizers are struggling with the same issues, and I’m hoping to share ideas.

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 proportions. Someday someone will have to capture the entire story in a business school thesis. ZDE continues to innovate. I spoke with someone there recently who surprised me with a long discussion about a business built on the development of widgets. And in February they announced a “new suite of Alinean-powered interactive, web-based, self-service calculators and sales tools.” That deserves a second look.

Extra Credit: Anyone who can point to other examples of live + virtual event media will receive a free subscription to B2B Presence. Do the math: that’s a savings of over infinity. Leave comments.