Here is the slide deck. Some notes from the presentation are below:

[slideshare id=3344908&doc=emec2010virtual101-100305101811-phpapp02]

What is a virtual event? How are people using them?

This presentation contained some insights and ideas from my participation in the “Virtual 3rd World” at the Virtual Edge Summit (Read more here). Where I tapped into some of the latest research data from Virtual Edge and George P. Johnson regarding virtual event usage and statistics. Also, I discussed the big question: What is a virtual event? and showed some of the graphs from Kelly A Graham’s presentation on Virtual Events.

Three Types of Attendees in the LikeMinded Community

One of the radical ideas that I proposed – was this idea that there are three types of likeminds in your event community:

1. Those that are attending.

2. Those that cannot or do not attend

3. Those that don’t know who you are but believe how your attendees do.

In my opinion, the virtual event is very powerful for giving the people that are your fans (and cannot attend) a platform for participation and sharing. In this sharing, your virtual participants can help draw in other likeminded individuals that don’t know about your organization, brand or event.

New Opportunities that Digital Technology Creates for Events

I shared my framework of the four opportunities that digital technology creates for events: Extend the Event Experience, Include More People, Increase Interaction and Leverage New Formats. Then, I discussed four different types of virtual technologies that could be used for their events and explained the advantages and differences.

One of the points that I tried to make in this presentation is that events are an explosion of content. While that is great, virtual events help us extend that content explosion and spread it much further. Also, they help us re-use the content that goes into these events over a much longer time.

Also, I shared some planning timelines from Cisco, where I made the point that a “Virtual Event” is a real event. You need to still go through your planning process in the same way that you would for another event.

Metrics and Best Practices

The final section covered some metrics and best practices that I wanted to share with the audience. In fairness, I could have developed this a little further – but I considered these bonus slides. I didn’t think that we would even get to these slides.

Questions and Comments

If you have any questions or comments on the presentation or the content, please let me know. I would be more than happy to answer any questions and expand on any of the ideas that were discussed.

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For those of you stuck outside of the room on Tuesday, I am sorry that you were not able to attend live. Hopefully, this video is an acceptable substitute.

To set expectations – the video is not professional grade. We shot it with my home movie camera. So please excuse the camera position, video quality and the start. We missed the introductions and first ARS questions.

The video is 52 minutes long – so watch it with a fresh cup of coffee and a pastry!

Finally, I hope that you find some usable ideas that can be applied to your 2010 events. Enjoy!

[wpvideo fLHzsmLz]

Special thanks to Maarten Vanneste for operating the camera, getting a decent shot of the presentation and moderating the session. Without Maarten’s help, we wouldn’t have this video to share with you.

The post 2010 Event Technology Shopping List Presentation appeared first on Interactive Meeting Technology.

Worlds Are Colliding

The digital world and the face to face worlds are colliding and I see several new opportunities emerging for events. Yesterday, we tackled these four new opportunities that have emerged for events to use event technology to transform the event:

• Extending the Meeting
• Including More People
• Improved Interaction
• New Formats

Extending the Meeting

We have the opportunity to stretch event experiences from 1-2 days to several days, weeks and months. Rather than looking at the meeting as an isolated event – we can look at it as one point in a conversation stream. By using your digital touch points wisely, you can start relationships earlier and change the nature of the face-to-face interactions onsite. Webinars, webcasts, social networks and social media tools are some of the technologies making this possible.

Including More People

The people that come to your event are a subset of your event community. For one reason or another, there are some people that cannot come to your event. It has nothing to do with you, your program, the venue, the destination or the price – they just can’t come. Rather than ignore these “potential” attendees – the technology tools like the backchannel and live streaming help you include them in your event experience.

Increasing Interaction

Attendees are smarter than they have ever been. The gap between the experts on stage and the attendees in the audience has never been smaller. The collaboration tools that we have at our disposal have made it easier than ever to create this interaction. Equally important – there are a large number of audience response keypads, gadgets, handheld devices and mobile applications that put the power in the attendee’s hand and make it easier for you to engage them: Ask questions, collect ideas, vote, etc.

Alternative Formats

We still live in a world where good projects (meetings, marketing plans, etc.) are being cut in favor of better projects. Telepresence and Virtual Events are two event formats that have emerged as viable lost cost alternatives (or compliments) to full face-to-face events. While some face-to-face diehards may initially raise their noses at these two formats – I suggest that you take a closer look. I would prefer that you keep some options in your back pocket and fight for your projects – rather than accept defeat when the finance department and management want to cut your event.

Bottom Line

The collision between the digital world and the face-to-face world creates several new opportunities for events. By framing the discussion in terms of these new opportunities – you can strategically approach technology rather than look at it tactically.

That’s my take – what do you think?

The post Worlds Are Colliding to Create New Opportunities for Events appeared first on Interactive Meeting Technology.

The questioner didn’t want to hear –“well there are several choices depending on your needs – blah, blah, blah.” He wanted one answer. He wanted it on the spot.

For me, this was gut-check time. So – I blurted out: Virtual meetings and hybrid events.

I made a good choice. Though, I imagine some of you are thinking that I must be riding the crazy-train to loony land.

So, here’s the deal. I will share the reasoning for my choice below. Then, I need you to push back. Pick an event technology that you think offers a better ROI and make your case.

Why I Chose Virtual Meetings & Hybrid Events

This event format is building communities and including more people in events than ever before and doing it for less.

Save Money

Cisco recently reported that they cut their event expenses by 90% by hosting a virtual meeting. It makes sense – when you host a virtual event you avoid travel, venue and F&B charges, etc.  GE is using massive 60 person Telepresence centers to avoid long distance travel and save money. One executive traveling to Asia for a meeting can cost more than $30,000 and more than 6000 pounds of carbon emissions.

Include More People

Another powerful benefit is using the hybrid format as a compliment to a face-to-face event to include more people. Here are two examples:

• BlizzardCon in Anaheim, California, USA was sold out. They had 20,000 participants onsite and over 100,000 people attend virtually or through pay-per-view on DirectTV.
• In October, ITU’s Telecom World in Geneva had 40,000 participants onsite and Broadcast the entire conference to over 100,000 people around the world.

Drive Virtual Attendees to Face-to-Face

Equally important, I think using virtual as a compliment to face-to-face is good for your event. Imagine using virtual activities to drive people to your face-to-face event. 34% of the Cisco virtual attendees reported that they would like to attend a face-to-face event in the future.

A Word of Caution!

Virtual events are not right for all meetings. Forbes recently published a report on “Business Meetings: The Case for Face-to-Face Meetings.” In that report they interviewed 750 business executives that agreed that Virtual Events are best for “Presenting Data” and “Information Dissemination.” In all other cases, the executives agreed that Face-to-Face meetings were the best solution.

Bottom Line

Virtual & hybrid events offer event planners another way to connect to a larger community, drive attendees to your face-to-face events, save money and reduce carbon emissions.   Sounds like a great ROI to me?

Ok – the floor is yours – Make your case.

The post Which Event Technology Delivers The Best ROI? appeared first on Interactive Meeting Technology.

Most of the discussion revolved around Social Media and how it is redefining events, event experiences, communication and marketing/promotion. Here are a couple of ideas that caught my attention.

Credit: Fred Cavazza, Creative Commons license

Shift Happening in Marketing  of Events

The shift from Push to Pull puts customers in control. Customers here means participants, exhibitors and sponsors. As people start collecting information in new ways event organizers need to be prepared and change accordingly. For example, email marketing with graphics that looks nice on a computer screen ends up garbled on a mobile phone. On the other hand, through communities it is now easier to reach out and connect with your customers directly. Nicole Buraglio said “we listen to our customers and give them what they want.”  To adapt, her company has redefined the way that they are doing business. How are you adapting?

New Competitors And New Opportunities

Today’s social media tools allow us to share, collaborate, communicate and self-organize. I got the sense through the webcast that many event organizers are trying to grasp with this new reality. RD Whitney, a commercial events organizer, said his largest competitor for one event is a blog. Yes! One guy with a Macbook blogging from his mother’s basement is threatening an entire event!  On the other hand, RD Whitney said his organization uses online communities to create new events. They create communities, establish a beachhead, and if there is interest in a face2face event – they create one.

Communities are the Gateway to Live Participation

The panelists agreed that connecting with participants through online communities are vital for an event’s success in the new world. The panelists indicated that they had successfully used social media to connect with their communities to achieve the following: creating new events, learning what participants wanted, generating word of mouth marketing, getting qualitative feedback and getting people to attend the event. Stephen Nold shared a story how MeetingTechOnline asked speakers to tweet comments and increased attendance at a face-to-face event by 8%.

Controversy: Should you Create Your Own Event Community?

When it came to the tactics and actions that you should take for using Social Media for your events, the panelists and twittersphere started to disagree. There are some that would prefer to connect through the existing Mega-One-Size-Fits-All-Communities like Facebook (200 million), Linkedin (40 million), Twitter (12 million). While others preferred to create separate private online communities. In my opinion, you should always engage people on Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter. Then, create a private community if you want people to have conversations about who’s coming, the hot topics and exchange information about your event.

What do you think?

So, those were my observations from the webinar. Anything else that you would like to add?  Are you using Online Communities to engage your participants? What types of results are you getting? Please share your opinions and insights.

The post Insights from Experient’s Technology and Meetings in the Future Webcast appeared first on Interactive Meeting Technology.