Conference Bites Blog

Where to find my latest posts.....

2009-10-08T10:48:24-07:00

Please note that I am in the process of migrating my Blog to its new site: www. BuildingAlliancesBlog.com . The last couple weeks have been a blur of events. I hope to write something more reflective there in the near future, especially about Next Agenda, which promises to be a new frontier in the integration of live events and online experiences.

In the meantime, I am posting quotes from each stop on my recent journeys at my website, www.conferencebites.com and I invite you to look in over there at the latest.

Google Moderator

2009-04-07T11:09:33-07:00

I had my first experience of Google Moderator at the Web 2.0 Conference the other day. John Battelle used it to CrowdSource questions for his keynote interview with Will Wright.

This seems to me to deliver on the promise of hand held voting devices that were all the rage at events some 8 to 10 years ago. Now the smart phone or laptop is the device. We also have the social-media norms of voting up or down others' questions so that the best can rise to the surface. This function takes it a step beyond just tweeting questions to the moderator.

While according to the shot above, click here to see it in more detail, perhaps only 30 out of the hundreds in the audience were playing (for this round) this looks to me to be the wave of the future.

Another sign of that—this is the technology the White House used last month for President Obama’s online town hall meeting.

As important as it is to increase the value of an event’s Q&A, we also need to go one step further, and to think about the other more creative uses for this kind of tool:

As an example to start the brainstorming in that direction, check out Tip Jar , another Google site that brings the moderator technology to life for everyday advice.

How could you use this type of interaction in your event, your business, or your daily life?

"The people formerly known as the audience" raise the bar for the Events Business

2009-03-19T18:52:55-07:00

Growing evidence points to both the mounting challenges facing the conference business right now, and the fact that somewhere within those challenges lurk great opportunities.

Consider:

1. The recent 4A’s conference (American Association of Advertising Agencies) Conference, as reported by Michael Bush in Ad Age, came up short both in numbers of delegates (off some 30 or 40%+),and in the delivery of practical solutions the delegates were looking for.

2. There are several amazing blog posts and a vibrant tweetstream about the "New Models for Old Publishers" Panel at SXSW Interactive this week. I highly recommend searching through this stream from Sunday the 15th during the panel, either at #sxswbp or through a site like icerocket.com (which I prefer). Either way, you’ll find what Michael Tobis, one of the many bloggers to report on the panel described as… "Most of the panel presentation was irrelevant (and rather pointless) exposition on the part of the panelists… Why? Because almost everybody in the audience was on a pre-announced twitter channel #sxswbp. And by the time anybody in the crowd got to ask anything, most of the crowd was in a very collective and connected foul mood… the event was ironic because it was ultimately not about long form writing at all but about the very short form, i.e., the 140 or fewer characters in a Twitter message. For all I know it was a watershed event in the history of instant messaging. It certainly was a revelation for me, and that's why I'm glad I was there. Twitter is nowhere near as silly an idea as it appears at first glance."

A similar reaction from Yen was... "On the one hand, the conversation on Twitter was related (and a reaction) to the offline panel discussion; on the other, it took place without the involvement of the panelists—the Web 2.0 equivalent of passing notes behind the teacher’s back. Welcome to the New Think."

Seth Godin’s challenge to the community of event producers gets more relevant with each passing week. The current economy paired with the richness of what is available online continues to raise the bar.

The NY Times report the day after SXSW Interactive sums up what event producers have to compete with: "It was obvious after a few days here that the people formerly known as the audience were too busy making content to consume much of it, unless it came from their friends. The medium is not the message; the messages are the media.”

How does that sentiment jive with your experience? What live conference or session have you been to lately that was really worth it?

6 ways (and counting) that Twitter is transforming events, Part 2

2009-02-12T08:47:00-08:00

When it comes to what Twitter means for events, there are far more unknowns than knowns at this point, but here are some of the early indicators:

1. Twitter is the new back channel for communication:

In any event that appeals to early adopters, and increasingly a greater and greater segment of the population, people will be using Twitter for the digital equivalent of passing notes back and forth in class.

All events will want to establish a designated hashtag (#ted, #davos, etc…) to allow these users to connect with each other easily onsite, just by including it in their tweets. Or just stand back, they will create one for themselves.

The emergence of this phenomenon is a two edged sword for events. Even sophisticated events trying to build community around their Facebook pages are finding the grassroots nature of Twitter impossible to control. The conversation is out in public and flowing freely, and once underway can’t be easily corralled into a more structured environment. At least that was my experience at the OMMA Social Conference a few weeks ago, where a rich twitter stream included at least a couple of invites from the promoters to bring the conversation back to the established Facebook community pages, with little or no response.

This may also affect more established Event community and collaboration suppliers, such as Jive Software and others, but more about that category in a future post.

2. The back channel becomes as public as your conference website, maybe more so:

This designated hashtag will immediately enable anyone anywhere searching for what is going on at your event to follow along on the comments in real time, to join in, and allow them to follow posted links, photos, etc…

This is a powerful outbound communication stream that you will want to nurture,

participate in, and appropriately leverage. Best practices are still evolving, but will certainly be based around adding value to others’ experiences. One of the best pieces I’ve read on being true to this spirit is a wonderful post by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh on How Twitter can make you a Better and Happier person.

3. Twitter is also a pre-conference marketing channel all its own:

Think 140 characters is too small for effective marketing? Pete Cashmore of Mashable only needed half that many to launch the following seemingly effective promotion related to its Sponsorship of the User Generated Content Expo (just follow the UGCX link for the details).

Comment Contest: 4 More Free Passes to UGCX
http://tinyurl.com/bhy8on

4. Twitter is also starting to impact how people travel to events, where they stay during events, etc…
…and this impact gets more and more mainstream every day, as witnessed by this piece in USA Today

5. Twitter is a speaker support tool

As top moderators like John Battelle, of Web 2.0 Expo, Web 2.0 Summit, and the Conversational Marketing Summit (this last a client of mine), use twitter to crowdsource the best possible questions to pose to key leaders onstage.

6. Twitter is a force pushing the evolution of the structure of events themselves

For example, the desire for tweeple (twitter users) to get together in-person, through cause-marketing undertakings like this week's Twestival, which looks like it’s going to both fabulous and worthwhile, or through tweet ups happening informally within all kinds of other events. Or the creation of entirely new event formats, like the interesting twebinars that Radian6 and Chris Brogan hosted earlier this year.

But Twitter is just getting started. To go back to quoting Evan at his TED talk, "I have no idea where Twitter is going". Keep in mind that there are currently 3400 independent developers working with the Twitter API, and currently 2000 registered applications. Given that many of them will continue to impact the world of face to face events, this is an important area for continued exploration.

Beyond these few possibilities described above, what are you seeing about the ways that Twitter is starting to make impact in the events you attend, put on, or sponsor? And what is your dream for how its full potential can come to pass?

6 ways (and counting) that Twitter is transforming events, Part 1

2009-02-09T13:28:39-08:00

Maybe it’s the Buzz of TED (see favorite quotes here, gathered from afar and mostly through Twitter), but as I turn my attention to the specific new technologies that are transforming events before our eyes, Twitter seems to me to be first and foremost.

As Evan Williams, Twitter’s Co-founder and CEO said in Friday’s talk: "We had no idea Twitter would be so big to cover events".

He made this comment while fans were live tweeting much of his talk. He was sharing his own "Wow, it's bright up here, and lots of people are staring at me. (Giving my talk at #TED.)" Then Host Chris Anderson basically punk’d him, offering up for all to see on screen "Evan Williams is just DYING on stage here at #TED. Worst talk ever” via the live posted feed...

While some may have been put off by the self-referential nature of the Twitter session at TED, it's driven not by Evan (he was wonderfully low key as always, as I think can be seen in Loic Le Meur’s live blog of much of the session). Rather the hero worship is driven by those getting huge value out of the service, perhaps best encapsulated in the tweet of SdGeek "Evan Williams, Twitter CEO on stage? This guy is essentially the same as a heroin dealer to me and my friends."

Wherever you may be personally in your exploration, testing or love for twitter, one useful yardstick for measuring your progress can be found in Rohit Bhargava’s excellent Five Stages of Twitter Acceptance:

See part 2 of this post, for some more specific thinking on what all this means for the events business.

Meetings 2.0

2009-02-06T08:00:00-08:00

In starting to explore further about the Conferences and Events business and the role of social media tools in making them better, I came across this brilliant must-read post by Seth Godin (who incidentally used to be one of my (and everyone’s) favorite speakers back in 2000 when I was involved with Sponsorship matters for Fast Company’s Real Time Conferences):

"I think the standard for a great meeting or a terrific conference has changed.

In other words, "I flew all the way here for this?" is going to be far more common than it used to be.

If you think a great conference is one where the presenters read a script while showing the audience bullet points, you're wrong. Or if you leave little time for attendees to engage with others, or worse, if you don't provide the levers to make it more likely that others will engage with each other, you're wrong as well.

…. here's what a conference organizer owes the attendees: surprise, juxtaposition, drama, engagement, souvenirs and just possibly, excitement."

I absolutely agree about the need for events, conferences and trade shows to step it up, especially in this economy.

For starters the talking heads model is more broken than ever, and provides less and less incentive to leave the house. Increasingly, I can see videos of the best presentations from the best conferences (like this week’s TED) right at my desk.

Part of my vision with ConferenceBites is to continue that progression of bringing the best of events to us rather than our always having to go to them.

While face to face networking is in many ways irreplaceable, I find I can get a lot of business done with people I’ve never met, and that email and the phone allow me to cast a wider net than ever before.

While this perspective may be troubling if you are an event producer, this is ultimately a challenge that is good for events in general, and for conferences in particular. We will all now have to grow to provide a new and different value proposition.

The social networking sites and related programs at most events, even those in the tech and Web 2.0, space tend to be pretty lame. In my view those programs have the best shot at meeting this challenge, but from what I’ve seen so far they're still in their infancy in terms of delivering truly engaged continuity before, during, and after an event.

I would love to hear from you about who you think is doing it best, either from the event side, or the technology provider side?

Do you share my disappointment with the tools as they’ve been deployed to date?

How about my optimism that these tools will grow up to dramatically change events, and the role they play in our business lives, for the better?

I hate conferences.

2009-02-05T02:00:00-08:00

I would much rather work from home in my bathrobe rather than wrestle with figuring out how casual is “business casual” these days. I’d rather not drive and deal with parking much less airport security and delayed and overcrowded flights with too little leg room.

Beyond the hassle and expense, there is the ROI factor. Even when I get truly inspired at a conference, there is always the question of what next. How do I make those insights real in my life the next Monday morning back in the office?

But I’m not by nature a whiner. I am actually very optimistic about the ability of new technology to solve all the above, and to make our experience of events better.

A big part of why I have started this blog and the related Conference Bites Website is to launch a joint exploration of exactly how this will come about (as well as which tools show the most promise, etc…)

My premise is that ongoing community and connectivity is the ultimate answer to the dilemma of how to derive enduring value, and that events and social media tools both have key roles to play in that solution. Is that your experience?

I love conferences.

2009-02-04T13:55:00-08:00

These words came to me last Sunday morning in the shower, as I thought about the week to come, including an upcoming day long social media gathering.

I love the stimulation of quality content being shared from the stage, guided by an insightful moderator. I love to lean over to the person I am sitting next to and introduce myself, always with an eye towards what we might be able to do for one another (admittedly mostly on what they can do for me, though I try…)

But my pictures of being at that event this week are different than they used to be. I picture myself with my hands on my keyboard, or at least my iphone, getting some work done while I’m listening. I hope they have a section for live blogging of the event, not because I plan to live blog the talks (though I will certainly keep my ears out for quotable quotes), but mostly so my keeping up with everything back at the office won’t look out of place. And god I hope they have a place to plug in!

I hope they will have some kind of social network in place that won’t be lame, that more than a handful will really use it, and that it might lead to one on one meetings with some of the people there that I already know I want to get to know better or do business with.

Increasingly, I long for a conference-wide or session-by-session twitter discussion or other online back channel equivalent of passing notes back and forth in class. Nothing is better to enliven a clueless presenter and generally celebrate the continuing breakdown of the talking heads model of being droned at from the front of the room (Bueller… Bueller...)

I’ll report back on what I find when I get there, but in the meantime, let me know—what do you look forward to when you are heading to a conference, and what kind of a role is online media playing in it for you?