Subject: How do you keep attendees engaged during virtual meetings?

Do you have any suggestions on articles, books, etc. that address Virtual Meetings regarding how to engage the audience, stop multitasking and keep them engaged?

Here’s how we answered his email:

Hi Gary,

We have been heavily involved in this topic for a long time. IMT led the research study for MPI (Meeting Professionals International) to develop a research base and a “How-To-Guide for Creating Hybrid Events.”  (Download it at mpiweb.org.) We have been involved in creating several hybrid meetings applying those lessons.

Here are some things to look for in terms of engagement:

(1) Is the content appropriate to the audience? Most people try to do a 1 size-fits-all approach with their content. People lose interest much faster online. So, you need to do a better job with targeting.

(2) What does the content look and feel like? Most people’s reference point for online content is live television (Election results, live sports and talk shows.  Think Oprah.). Are you trying to emulate these formats for content delivery OR are you just recording subject matter expert lectures with boring PowerPoint slide shows?

If you think about how live television works – it moves very quickly from segment to segment and topic to topic. The content is much shorter than a live in-person meeting. Camera angles change as well.  In addition, reconsider the length of your virtual sessions and how you put them together.

(3) What are you doing to engage people?  I would look for two things: (1) What tactics are you using? and (2) How much time are you allocating to engagement?

Your attendees are one click away from doing ANYTHING else on the Internet and you only control a small window for their attention. Most online events are Subject Matter Experts talking to people for 56 minutes with 4 minutes allotted for Q&A.

If the attendee has nothing to contribute (ideas, comments, etc.), then you are “betting” that your speaker is strong enough that they will resist the temptation to click away. In my opinion, that is a big ask!  I don’t know any speakers that can keep 100% of the audience’s attention.

The person responded and thanked me for our help. Then, he told us that his virtual meetings concentrated on the following:

• Product info
• Shipping concerns
• New policies/processes
• Info such as upcoming training or meeting

This is boring stuff, especially when you can’t see people face-to-face. His situation sounded similar to a challenge that Ebay Europe faced with its internal team briefings.  So, if you find yourself in a situation where your content is capital “B” boring, I would recommend that you read the following Case Study:  http://www.mpiweb.org/_secure/eBayCaseStudy.pdf

Have a virtual meeting or interactive technology question?  E-mail us at: info@interactivemeetingtechnology.com or visit our site for more information about our digital solutions.

The post IMT Mailbag – How Do I Engage the Audience at Virtual Meetings? appeared first on Interactive Meeting Technology.

I would go with adventure 10 times out of 10.

Boston Scientific chose adventure, too. They skipped the General Session that would have stuffed 5,000 employees into chairs to listen to PowerPoint presentations.  Instead, they created an Expo environment – in the spirit of the Shanghai Expo – where employees could engage with the company, its products and people in many different ways.

Watch the video to see how it turned out. Then, put your PowerPoint down and get started creating your own Adventure.

The post Which Would You Choose: Four Hours of PowerPoint or an Adventure? appeared first on Interactive Meeting Technology.

I do.

In a followup to my last post (Real World Likes – The Next Big Thing in Social Media in Events), I want to show you two fresh examples that will help you open your mind to new possibilities for social media at your events.

New York City Marathon 2010

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnrzClsOlyU&feature=player_embedded]

See how Asics used videos and location based tracking to help family and friends at home cheer on their marathoners. This is really cool stuff. Fans record videos and leave messages for runners. Then as the runners go past a checkpoint, the videos and messages play on large screens. 

EpicMix Ski Application

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.993748&w=425&h=350&fv=]

See how Colorado skiers track and share their ski experiences with their friends and social media buddies. This is the skiers version of Nike Plus (watch video). It provides gaming elements, badges, community engagement, performance reporting and social sharing.

Lessons for Social Media in Events

1. Look at how these digital experiences compliment the IRL (In-real-life) experience and enhance it.
2. Look at how mobile, social media, RFID and communities are all working together to create remarkable digital experiences rather than as individual components.
3. Look at how the gaming elements or leaderboard and rewards are included (especially in EpicMix).

The Bottom Line

Hopefully, this post gets you thinking beyond Facebook and Twitter for using social media in your events. As you saw in the videos here and in the previous post, there are a number of ways that technology can be integrated to create remarkable digital experiences.

Have you seen anything like this? What else would you add?

The post Social Media in Events: Beyond Facebook & Twitter appeared first on Interactive Meeting Technology.

All of this negativity can make the daily grind even more challenging. People are more snippy around the water cooler. There is lots of finger pointing, complaining, etc.

It is easy to forget why you are great. It is easy to forget what makes you so special. In other words, it is easy for you to lose your mojo.

Helping Employees Appreciate Your Company

It’s time that we “flip” the conversation. We need to start talking about what we do have instead of what we don’t have. If you are a fortune 500 company, you aren’t going to go away overnight. Things might be rough, today, but there still has to be something for you to celebrate.

Maybe it is your new product pipeline. Maybe it is your best in class customer service. Maybe it is your awesome channel power. Maybe it is your organization’s ability to persevere.

Whatever it is – are you using your internal events to rediscover your magic and appreciate it? You should.

5,000 Events for 5,000 people

This summer, I was part of an event team that took employees of a medical company on a personal journey to reconnect with their company. We brought manufacturing, operations, R&D, marketing and the top leadership together. Then, we created a museum type environment where they could go rediscover the great things about their company. Their awesome products, their awesome patients, their awesome physicans, and….their awesome colleagues.

For most of these employees, it was the first time that they had ever met the people who depended on them – their customers, their physicians and their leadership. For most of these employees it was the first time that they had stood shoulder to shoulder with each other.

While the event was remarkably busy  (5,000 people can do that to you!) – at one moment, I caught the CEO enjoying a silent moment watching videos that employees had created about the best kept secrets of the company. He was just listening to these employees talk about what was important to them. It was remarkable.

Constructive Conversations

At this event, my team used Pop-up Workshops (something that I made up), Informal Town Hall Meetings, Employee Tube Video Kiosks, Idea Kiosks and Reflection Stations to get people to release their positive energy and start talking constructively about the future.

These workshops and interactive kiosks yielded hundreds and hundreds of ideas and support from employees. Some came in the form of videos, some on post-it notes, while others came in the form of questions and other comments (digital, written and verbal).

Using User-Generated Content to Manage “Monday Morning”

While the immediate reaction to the event was – “WOW, that was awesome! It was just what we needed”. The real question is how do you maintain the momentum. What actions do you take on Monday morning?

We talked with the internal communications about this. They took on the challenge of repurposing this massive amount of user-generated content (video, questions, comments, etc.) on their intranet website, leadership blogs, internal e-blasts and in internal company newsletters. Very quickly after this event, the intranet site had content posted and the first e-blast went out from leadership. Regular updates are planned over the next several months.

So far so good.

Bottom Line

One event is not going to work like a magic pill and solve all of your problems. You can strategically use events to reconnect your employees and help them rediscover why your company is so great. You can use events to get your mojo back.

What are you doing to rediscover your organization’s mojo?

The post Are You Using Events To Get Your Mojo Back? appeared first on Interactive Meeting Technology.

In the past, we might have given an event a local or regional name. This name helped the event connect and identify with the city, state, or region where the event took place. If the event was a big one we might add the descriptor “National” or “International” to the name.

What about in the digital world? Do these naming standards apply?

Let’s look at Event Camp Twin Cities as an example. We called the event – Event Camp Twin Cities – because it took place in the twin cities of Minneapolis-St.Paul. The Twin Cities is the name for Minneapolis-St.Paul around here. We expected to draw most people from the area. So, the name seemed logical at the time.

What happened in reality is that we created something much bigger. We had 75 people participating in Minneapolis. Most people were from Minnesota, Canada (a northern suburb) and Wisconsin with a few East and West Coasters sprinkled in there for good measure.  Then, we had two remote sites that had about 20 people in them – one in Dallas, Texas and another in Basel, Switzerland. Finally, we had over 550 people participating live online from all over the world. These people came from all over the place.

Using digital technology, we took a regional event and created a global one. I think that we are going to see more events doing things like this. Calling these events “National” or “Regional”events – just doesn’t seem appropriate.

So what should we be calling these events? The Big One?

The post Naming Events in a Digital World appeared first on Interactive Meeting Technology.

The general consensus at MPI’s World Education Conference in Vancouver last month was that the Twitter conversations were up and complaining via Twitter was down.

So, I did a short analysis on the Twitter conversations from WEC to see if this was true. My analysis was purely structural and did not allow me to do any deep categorization of the tweets.

Here are some statistics:

• 511 Unique Tweeters on the #wec10 hashtag from 24-28 July
• 5126 Individual Tweets under this hashtag.
• 80% of the Tweets (4100) were made by 20% of the Tweeters (97 people).
• 36% (1826) of the Tweets were “RT” version retweets.
• The word love appeared in 161 Tweets, the word great in 469 tweets and the word like in 200 tweets.
• The word bad appeared in about 40 tweets.

For those of you that are curious, the word “Fiasco” appeared zero times.

What do these statistics mean?

First, they show that we can measure and frame the conversation. However, statistics on their own need to be put into context. I don’t have any statistics about the other MPI events to know if these statistics are above, below or on par with the normal tweetage. (I just made that word up.)

Second, the large number of retweets tells me that the twitterati found ideas tweeted by others worth sharing with their own social networks. Since, we were trying to spread ideas and information outside of the MPI and WEC community – I think this is a valuable statistic.

Third, I did a light keyword analysis and found that the sentiment was mostly positive among the tweeters. I think this is great – because at some events – the twitterati can be brutal. If I had the resources, I would have taken a closer at the keywords and phrases to see what appeared to be the most popular. (The wordcloud above is the best that I could do.)

Finally, these statistics give us insights on participation. Social Media participation does not follow a standard bell curve distribution. You rely on a few people to create most of the Social Media content and a larger group to comment and share that content.

A Word About “Social Media Kung Fu”

Live Tweeting during a session takes some Social Media Kung Fu type skills. Speaking from experience it is hard. Here’s what your live-tweeters have to do: Listen to a sound bite from a speaker, synthesize it into a simple 140 character message, type it into your smartphone without errors and tweet it. All of this happens in seconds. It takes practice to become proficient at it. Not all Social Media people can perform at this level on-site at an event. I still consider myself a student.

Bottom Line

If your intent is to spread ideas from your event to the world, then be sure to recruit some twitterati to live tweet during sessions. When selecting them make sure that they know Social Media Kung Fu and have some tools (like a table and chair with power) so they can type faster.

There is a lot here for us to talk about. What else would you add?

Note: I did receive partial registration reduction for agreeing to participate in the Social Media Guru program at MPI’s World Education Conference.

The post WEC Final: Love 161, Fiasco Zero appeared first on Interactive Meeting Technology.

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How Can Technology Enhances Live Meetings?

Are you looking for some innovative and forward thinking on the role that technology can play in meetings? Checkout the Webinar and White paper from the IACC (International Association of Conference Centers) on Technology. This webinar is loaded with advanced thinking in communication, collaboration and co-creation using technology and live events.  They cover everything from the brain to space utilization to technology trends – and much more.

> IACC Though Leadership Summit Video (first 90 minutes had me scribbling ideas madly)

> Summary Blog Post

> IACC WhitePaper

Can Technology Make You Happy? You Betcha!

A recent survey of 35,000 people found that technology was linked to happiness. People of all ages agreed that they liked the things that technology can do for them. The statistics are counter-intuitive to those that say that technology is harming our lives – and that we need less of it. (Read More)

Helping Students Learn How to Enjoy Learning

“A classroom should be the place for students to open their minds and also express themselves”, says Travis Allen founder of the iSchool Initiative. Travis’ group is bringing the student perspective on technology use into the learning development process. (Read More)

How to Optimize Your Texting Response Rate

Speakers – Are you looking for strategies that help you improve your response rates with audience polling? PollEverywhere recently summarized several tips together in one place. This summary is super-helpful. (Read More)

Sidebar: The speaker Jim Carrol used Poll Everyhwere to solicit answers to the question – what is the biggest challenge for the meeting industry going forward?

Seth Godin Offers Sound Ideas for Developers Creating iPad Applications for Meetings

There are a lot of people that are predicting the role that the iPad will play in meetings. In fact, I have been a part of the prediction parade twice: iPad – It just works -but will it work for events? and What iPad Means to Meetings. The marketer, Seth Godin put together some sound advice for anyone developing an iPad application for meetings of all sizes. (Read More)

The post Five Perspectives on Technology in Learning & Events appeared first on Interactive Meeting Technology.

The report “Best Practices in Online Community Management” produced by Pathable reads like a secret decoder ring for first time event community managers.

While the report is loaded with with helpful advice, I thought these four things stood out:

Recruit the Stars

The report recommends that you go find “stars” to come hangout in your community and contribute to it. Just like in night clubs, these stars draw others into the conversations and to the community, etc. The report offers seven different tips for recruiting stars and engaging them.

Find A Champion

This is the internal leader that is committed to make sure that the online community succeeds. Based on my experience in corporate america, the stronger the champion the better the project result.

Control the Trolls

This report offers strategies to contain and mitigate negative actions by troublemakers (trolls or Wild Things) that want to pollute your event’s social network. Think about the tips in this section like “Rodent Killer.”

Cross-Pollinate

Most event communities allow attendees to connect their friends/contacts, status updates, etc with other social networks (think Linkedin or Twitter). This allows attendees to leverage their connections and engagement in other places with the event social network.

Bottom Line

If you find a champion that can bring the stars into your online event community and squash the trolls – then you will increase your odds of ending up with a rich thriving event community.

You can download the original report from Pathable directly here: Best Practices in Online Community Management (sorry, you must register with Pathable.)

What other resources would you recommend to first time community managers?

image via: fashionartiste

The post Stars, Champions, Trolls and Your Event Community appeared first on Interactive Meeting Technology.

The slide deck is below and the webinar recording is available here: Webinar recording.

[slideshare id=3469467&doc=march18inxposmwebinarfinal-100318131139-phpapp01]

Bottom Line

Social Media is creating new opportunities for you to connect, engage and educate your attendees. As your attendees get used to having more of these two way experiences in their real lives – they will start expecting similar experiences from your events. While there are many technologies that can help you – you need to make sure that you (1) set your objectives, (2) assess your audience and (3) map your needs to the resources that are available to you.

The post Free Webinar: Beyond Social Media – Uncover New Ways To Connect, Engage and Educate Your Audience Physically And Virtually appeared first on Interactive Meeting Technology.

Friday Dinner At Event Camp

Here are some lessons from Event Camp on engaging attendees that I hope will help you.

Pre-Event Community

Event Camp created an event community around the event with the Omnipress Conference 2.0 solution. This turned out to be helpful for many attendees. I noticed that many would received the daily digest and then add their ideas or comments. Three things came out of the community: (1) High Awareness in the Hybrid Events Session and Fishbowl Sessions, because these sessions were discussed on the conference community. (2) Informal Dinners and Social Gatherings were arranged by the attendees. (3) Several attendees were invited to share and shared their reasons for attending with the larger audience.

[Read Jenise Fryatt’s post on How Social Media Creates a Need For Attendees To Meet Face2Face for another excellent perspective.]

Big Blue Buffalo Hats

The Social Collective has an interesting solution called CrowdCampaign that was used by the attendees to choose some swag that the event staff had to wear. Fortunately, the organizers were very gracious in purchasing and wearing the Big Blue Buffalo Hats. However, there is a second use of CrowdCampaign happening right now. The attendees are trying to decide on their number one takeaway. The list is starting to get really interesting. [crowd campaign list of takeaways]

Reinforcing Messages with Multiple Channels

The backchannel was projected on screens throughout the venue – but most people had one eye on the laptop or iphone and another eye on the speaker. Personally, I found it really helpful to be able to scroll through the backchannel messages on my new iphone. Being able to see these same messages delivered in a second medium helped reinforce some key points for me. (Not to mention that there is a transcript of tweets that I have used to go back and review the event.) While, I recognized that this helped reinforce the messages to me – it was Ray Hansen of IML that actually pointed this out. Thanks Ray.

Including More People

Thanks to Mike McAllen of Grass Shack Events & Media and the team at Core Staging this event had a hybrid component. The main plenary hall of the conference was being broadcast on Livestream and secondary sessions were recorded. As an attendee, I found it really engaging to get input, ideas and questions from these virtual attendees. Equally important, we made sure to wave once or twice to our friends at home too. I think this was a nice touch.

[Read Emilie Barta’s post – Live and Virtual Events Compliment Each Other, Not COMPETE with Each Other for more]

Bridging the Virtual And Face-to-Face Audience

This community was active on the twitter backchannel, making comments asking questions, etc. Mike McCurry was an excellent conduit between the face-to-face audience and the virtual attendees. He made sure that any questions the virtual audience had were integrated into the face-to-face discussion. This is a key role to making sure that their voices were heard, too. [Read Christina Stalling’s post on some of her backchannel learnings]

Engaging Virtual Attendees During Breaks

Breaks can be quite boring for virtual attendees that are watching the room be reset or attendees getting coffee.  So, it was very cool to see Emilie Barta (a professional tradeshow presenter) interviewing speakers and attendees during the break. I think this is a low effort – high return way to enhance the virtual attendee’s experience.

Let’s Jump into the Fishbowl

My session was a collaborative session that used the fishbowl format. In this session, I turned the attendees into the experts and took the “guide on the side” role. This allowed us to do more learning from each other – rather than have me go through 6400 slides in 40 minutes. Since, I am the host of the Interactive Meeting Technology Blog – I would have let all of you readers down if my session didn’t have an interactive component.

[Read Lara McCulloch-Carter’s post – Fishbowl session through the eyes of the virtual attendee for some discussion and feedback on my session]

User-Generated Content

Event Camp was loaded with User-Generated content. There was a “bloggers row” type space that was designed to make life easy for people using computers during the sessions. So far – there are atleast 10 blog posts on learnings and ideas created from the event. There will probably be several more. Also, there were dozens of photos taken from the attendees. Thanks to Social Media guru – David Berkowitz – the iphone application Cat Paint became the big hit of Event Camp. Cat Paint allows you to drop cats onto iphone photos before sending them out over twitter. Some attendees made sure that we all got a good laugh out this. Here is a picture of me with a cat on my shoulder. (Personally, I think the applications of this tool in terms of a sponsorable item would be amazing. take out the cat and insert – your event logo or product name.)

Bottom Line

Event Camp evolved out of an online community of individuals that has a passion for Social Media in Events. From the speakers to the attendees to the sessions this event was one of the most comprehensive and complete learning laboratories on Social Media in Events.

Ok – Event Campers – what else would you add?

(PS: Eventprofs recently celebrated its first anniversary on 9 February 2010 )

The post Lessons in Engaging Attendees from Event Camp NYC 2010 appeared first on Interactive Meeting Technology.