Event Philosopher

Leaders of the future

noreply@blogger.com (cheshirecat) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 18:33:00 +0000

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.
- John Quincy Adams

I’m in a leadership class through the employee resource groups at my corporation and we’re studying a great book called “Leaders of the Future 2.” My team recently taught a chapter on leading through crisis and complexity. One of the sections talked about nonprofit leadership, another on Army leadership, and another on corporate leadership.

I was completely fascinated by the differences among the three, and the subsequent threads that can be woven through them. Army leadership (or armed forces, more accurately), promote their leaders 100% from within. They don’t put out job openings for commanders or generals. Therefore their entire culture is focused on teaching, training, mentoring, and teaching every person how to teach, train, and mentor. Amazing! I have seen very few organizations that have a good succession plan, even among the rank and file team members. I see groups that are shocked and totally unprepared when a team member finds a new role. The majority of corporations hire “important” roles from outside, believing that experience in a similar role in another company will bring wisdom far beyond anything learned within the walls of the company. I don’t understand. I don’t disagree or dislike it because I’m sure one day I’ll be looking to leave and find a role based on that principle, but it got me thinking about my organization.

I confess that I don’t know how to mentor effectively. I can train. I can teach. But how do I mentor someone to take over my job? I honestly don’t know how I got my job myself, so how could I possibly mentor someone else to take it over? Are there training classes on how to be a good mentor? I should look into that...

One of the teachable moments about crisis for me was that corporate and nonprofits leaders spend their lives avoiding crisis, while the Army trains their leaders for a crisis, understanding that crisis are inevitable and you’re sure better know how to lead and manage through them if you want to survive.

Nonprofits also fascinate me, having worked at two of them and volunteered at many of them. Due to the unfortunate salary discrepancy, a lot of leaders in associations are very young, needing a lot of mentorship from their board of directors (many of whom are more experienced in their roles or have experience in corporations). Taking the lessons learned in the military and in corporations to the board of a nonprofit is a vital way to nurture nonprofit leadership.

From this, I took away the importance of fostering leaders, nurturing leaders, and mentoring leaders for the future. I was inspired to rejoin a nonprofit board I left about five years ago. I was inspired to seek out a mentor of my own and try to feel my way through this mentorship idea. My next challenge: learning how to take someone that I want to mentor and convince them that they need mentoring… where’s the book on that?

The zombie apocalypse and my skills

noreply@blogger.com (cheshirecat) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 18:29:00 +0000

You're a great friend but if the zombies chase us, I'm tripping you.

- Anonymous

So I’m reading this book about the zombie apocalypse (I know, completely silly… it’s called World War Z – TOTALLY recommend it), and it’s presented as a historical account of the zombie war. One chapter talks about the skills of the population in the face of this unique society-rebuilding challenge. It calls out the service providers versus the workers, and gives a fictitious example of a maid having to be the manager of her former employer because the maid has actual useful skills, as opposed to the former employer who was something like a marketing executive in a corporation.

The topic really piqued my interest as I’ve been thinking lately about how I really don’t produce anything anymore. I manage people and I manage projects, and I write words electronically, but I don’t MAKE anything. What useful skills do I have that would transfer into a post-apocalyptic world? I could maybe cook something. Or lightly mend the mildly wounded. Or nail some boards together, if asked. I learned to make a pillow in my 8^th grade Home Economics class.

Zombies, aside, what skill could I learn that would make me useful outside of the corporate and computerized world?

Mining your networks for a cause

noreply@blogger.com (cheshirecat) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 18:22:00 +0000

The way of the world is meeting people through other people.

- Robert Kerrigan

Social media buzz – loads of fun, keeping up with friends, updating your resume, posting pics of the kids. But where’s the value? I have a real-life case study of the value of my LinkedIn network. I hosted a Corporate Event Marketing Association event in Austin and, not knowing a whole lot of event marketers in the area, I began leveraging the network.

First, I posted about the event to my network, and asked them to share with their network.

Next I started using the search bar to locate networked friends of mine in Austin, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio.

After that, I searched on the terms of interest like Events, Tradeshows, A/V, and other key terms.

LinkedIn doesn’t let you spam people you don’t know, nor does it let you put a URL in a message to people not in your network. But it does let you send an invitation to connect. Through LinkedIn, I was able to connect with more than 50 people who were not originally in my network to invite them to the event. And in the process, got 50 new connections in my world to share information with in the future!

I absolutely do not advocate spamming random people. But if your goal is to build real connections or a tight community of like-minded folks, using the network of your network you already have is priceless!

Thank you, American Airlines

noreply@blogger.com (cheshirecat) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 19:15:00 +0000

The average American is nothing if not patriotic.
- Herbert Croly

While sitting on an American Airlines flight on my way to a site visit to Vegas, I witnessed something that warmed my heart. Say what you will about the airlines, but I just saw a flight attendant gift a U.S. Army serviceman an upgrade to first class when there was a seat left. I absolutely love seeing things like that! Congratulations to American Airlines for considering our servicemen and women, and thank you to those who serve our country!

Why I love hotels.

noreply@blogger.com (cheshirecat) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 18:38:00 +0000

I stayed in a really old hotel last night. They sent me a wake-up letter.
- Steven Wright

I love hotels. I have always loved hotels. I have wonderful memories of checking into a hotel with my parents, my dad handing me the ice bucket, and sending me on my mission: locate the ice machine and bring back a full bucket. I really don’t remember my parents ever using the ice, but it was a very important mission for me.

As an event marketer, I have the pleasure of really nice hotel rooms during site visits, and really bad lower-than-run-of-the-house rooms during the actual event or during regular travels. No matter the hotel, no matter the property level, there are a few things that I just love about hotels. Some may sound like pet peeves, but it’s these qualities and features that I find endearing about hotels!

Behold my photo essay.

The Kleenex flower.

Why do I have a flower made of tissue on top of my tissue box? When I need a tissue, it’s usually because I sneezed or actually just need a tissue. With the tissue flower, I have to pull out the massive lump of tissue that is now unusable because someone else touched it and crumpled it together so I can’t easily get a single tissue from it. My favorite was the time when I removed the tissue flower only to discover a completely different color of tissue in the rest of the box. I was given a “previously owned” tissue flower! Ew!

The little shampoo and conditioner and lotion.

Of course the lotion is only in the nicer of the hotels. More recently, hotels have begun renaming things from the mundane “Shampoo” and “Conditioner” to the more glamorous – and frankly confusing – “Hair Revitalizer” and “Hair Protectant” or "Hair Mask." If you have to think for more than two seconds to determine if they are actually shampoo and conditioner, then it’s too complicated for the guests.

Free coffee.

Why is the coffee free, but the water is $7?

The magnifying mirror.

I love this thing. I do not actually own one at home, but when I go to a hotel, I look forward to checking out my giant pores and random eyebrow growths at ridiculously intensely magnified levels.

The wake-up call.

Since I can never trust that the alarm clock is set, I really like this service. I especially love it when it’s a real person who tells you good morning and offers the weather for the day. I do not love it when it is 15 minutes late, which leads me now to always use my phone alarm clock as a 5-minute back-up to my wake-up call.

The phone in the toilet room.

Has anyone ever used this phone? I don’t know, and that is exactly why I will never touch it. What kind of phone calls have they had on the toilet? Were really amazing business deals lost or won from this phone?

The TV in the bathroom.

I don’t watch TV in the mornings when I’m getting dressed. Nor do I have a TV in my bathroom. This is exactly why I always use the TV in the bathroom in hotels that offer this feature.

The remote to the bedroom television.

The things this device has seen… oh lordy. Why don’t they put a protective cover on it? Much like the toilet phone, I cringe when I touch this remote. I believe I will add a plastic bag to my travel carrier to protect myself from this going forward. Brilliant.

Non-HDTV.

And along the lines of this remote are the HD televisions in all the hotels without a single HD channel. So I get to watch my favorite Seinfeld episodes all squished and out of proportion. And why does it take so long for the channels to change? What’s up with that?

The stationary.

When was the last time you wrote an actual letter. When was the last time you wrote an actual letter on hotel stationary? I actually remember the last time I did this: I was 13 years old and in a city in Japan. I wrote a letter to myself about my trip using the hotel stationary. Now I check to make sure it’s in the drawer when I get to the hotel. It provides comfort.

The Gideon Bible.

More important than the hotel stationary, this item must be in my nightstand drawer. If I am in a hotel that the Gideons have not visited, I go online and report it to the Gideons immediately. I’m not kidding.

What are you favorite things about hotels?

Conference justification letters

noreply@blogger.com (cheshirecat) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:10:00 +0000

The most important persuasion tool you have in your entire arsenal is integrity.

- Zig Ziglar

I’m seeing a lot of conference justification letters around the internet these days. I like the concept: provide a ready-made letter for managers to understand the benefits of sending their employee to a conference. But the execution of a lot of these letters is cheesy and pure marketing language.

I have also seen some really awesome ones, though they border on something a little too formal for an employee to hand to their boss.

When preparing a form letter for your attendees to use, consider the audience. This isn’t a brochure. This is a real, active letter of persuasion and value proposition for a manager or finance team to evaluate whether the money should be invested in sending a person to this engagement. It feels incredibly silly to type this, but consider what you would need to convince your management to go to an event. I found one industry conference justification letter that pointed out the evening events, the bands that were playing, and the opening pool party and reception. Really? Not helpful.

Be brief, but impactful. Don’t talk about the parties and don’t over-talk about the networking. Networking is a key reason anyone goes to an industry conference, but education, uncovering opportunities for sales or new vendors, and bringing back knowledge and perspectives to coworkers.

If you’re going to build a conference justification letter, be sure you also send out conference notes and key take-aways to your attendees so they can show the true value of the content they just experienced.

The complexities of your event mobile app

noreply@blogger.com (cheshirecat) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 21:17:00 +0000

Please all, and you will please none.
- Aesop

What do we want out of a mobile app for our event?

Feedback (surveys)
Engagement with content or people (QR codes, connections, check-ins)
Maps of venues
Agendas, especially if they are personalized
Notifications from partners or updates to agendas
Partner content
To work on iPhone, Android and Win 7 phones

And then there's all the random stuff we might want to add: games, rewards, etc.

I haven't found any off-the-shelf solutions to meet all of these needs, but have worked with some custom design companies to get us what we want. With mixed results.

My recommendation is: Choose your vendor well.

Vet their personality as a company - are they willing to work insane hours to meet your goals? Are they willing to partner with you to allow your event to shine? Are they willing to be onsite to help if anything goes wrong? Do they intend to work with you again, and will they support you throughout the build and implementation process to ensure you want to work with them? Have they ever gotten apps approved through the four majors marketplaces (iPhone, Android, Windows, Blackberry)? How many have they done? Can they code in such a way that even after the app is approved and in the marketplaces, a few tweaks can still be made?

Be careful as you get into mobile app development for your events to determine why you are doing and what you hope to gain. Apps are awesome and they are fun and they are cool, but usage rates are still relatively low for the majority of event participants. Some have corporate phones that prevent them downloading apps. Some are on Blackberry and can't get any cool features. Some prefer paper. Some just prefer to save their battery for more important things.

To do an app right, you need to have amazing content. If your intent is to meet the minimum requirements of app-coolness, pick an agency that will load in your agenda for you. If you actually plan to have loads of cool info in the app, ensure that you have the internal resources to gather, edit, and manage the inclusion of the killer content.

Have a plan for the future. The first thing I do after an event is usually remove the app from my phone. That's 3MB-6MB my phone doesn't need on it! So if you expect me to keep your app on my phone, tell me why and then make sure it's something I want to keep. Just about all the conferences I've been to in the last 2 years have changed app vendors year over year, making me download the new app anyway.

Perhaps there are other methods you could pursue - like leveraging LinkedIn or Facebook. Or perhaps going with an event social network like a Vivastream or SocialGo.

So when it comes to signing up for an event mobile app: think before you ink! :-)

CEMA Forum: Austin - 9/19 Roundup

noreply@blogger.com (cheshirecat) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 04:11:00 +0000

Everyone has a 'risk muscle.' You keep it in shape by trying new things. If you don't, it atrophies. Make a point of using it at least once a day.

- Roger Von Oech quotes

I was thrilled to have the opportunity to host the Corporate Event Marketing Association's first regional event with content in Austin, Texas on September 19th. CEMA is a California-based industry association for corporate event marketers, primarily in the high tech sector, but expanding to other corporate areas as well. The majority of our regional events have been social in nature, so we tried an experiment with a half day of content at the W Austin Hotel. Nearly 50 attendees from all over the country joined us!

Our day began with a roundtable lunch with table topics that attendees selected when they registered. Gathered together by a common interest, conversation could flow freely at the table. By all accounts, few tables actively pursued their table topics, but having a common interest to seat attendees together was a great start to the day.

I kicked off the meeting with my favorite reminder of corporate life: Dave Grady's The Conference Call.

THANK YOU
Carlson Marketing was our underwriter for the event, and they shared a great video about their services. Opus Solutions managed registration for our event. PSAV supported us spectacularly with their A/V set and personnel. Love those guys! And we can’t forget Vivastream – a new social network and mobile app that let our attendees connect with the people who match their interests. Anyone who didn’t attend in person can still sign up for a Vivastream account and join in the networking!

Opening Keynote
After lunch, the content began with Michael Gale of PulsePoint Group. He is a recognized industry expert in integrated technology marketing, having founded Strategic Oxygen in 2001, which is widely seen as one of the technology industry’s primary data toolset for marketers. The company was sold to Forrester Research in 2009.

Michael shared industry insights into how executive engage at face to face and virtual events. Notably:

65% of C suite go to vendor events based on a personalized sales invite
30% of Tech influencers who have gone to one physical event will go to another
25% of the follow up from an event involves a hook type of marketing
Virtual event only (and not physical event as well) is three times more likely than physical event only
Physical and virtual events work equally well (or badly) at each of the awareness – consideration and purchase stages
Over 40% of occasions C suite are looking for customer and industry based insights at these events
Social and events link extremely well through what we call the Social engagement quadrant
C suite and IT only share about 38% of the physical event experience but some 65% of the virtual experience
Do not extrapolate from the US to the rest of the world – Asia, EMEA and LATAM - Events

Case Studies

Rinse and Repeat: How Dell prioritized the globalization of event content
The first was by Denise Michaels, event content strategist for Dell’s Small & Medium Business division who has been driving the global rollout of their content consolidation program. They began their content journey in March 2010 with events managed and executed locally, with no centralized view or standardization.

As they audited the presentations that were being given to customers, they labeled them “Frankenstein Presentations;” local sales teams were building their own slides with content pulled from various (not always current) sources.

Event managers were also on their own for events in their region. The regions were disconnected from each other and they were each reinventing the wheel for every event.

To tackle the problem, they broke the plan into four areas:

Listen & Learn

Connect to customers and providers
Recognize pains/needs

Solve & Simplify

Create reusable, relevant content
Make easily accessible

Socialize and Market

Network, network, network
Communicate value constantly

Rinse & Repeat

Listen, improve
Communicate

About a year and a half later, they have now completed the creation of standard invitation, event leave-behinds, standards for room dress, event content, and have begun the roll-out of speaker training. Next stop: the online content portal and event measurement consolidation.

How do you L.I.K.E a company?
Ryan Lewis, social media strategist with The Ferren Agency shared some tips and case studies on social media in live events. He used the acronym L.I.K.E. to showcase his points:

Linkable: Content and Understanding/Sharing Ease

Using a URL shortener like bit.ly, you can make links usable in social media. But by customizing your URLs, you can give people a clue as to what you’re about to link them out to see (check out this cool short How To video here).

Incentivized: Making Tasks Fun

The gamification of event content makes engaging with content rewarding! “Game the mundane!” Earn points or baubles that you can redeem for prizes through various interactions like downloading content, checking in to a location, etc.

Knowledgeable: Is Learning Easy? Complex Theories?

Making difficult concepts simple with infographics and analogies makes attendees more likely to share with others.

Exclusive: What Is The Reward For Action?

Attendees like to feel like they’re getting something exclusive. Offer things just to them for attending, or offer to them first and let them share with friends and colleagues. Feeling like they are “in the know” is a great way to bring exclusivity to the masses.

Virtually Perfect: Putting Content when and where attendees want it with hybrid events

Chris Meyer, COO of INXPO, shared some great industry insights on virtual and hybrid events. Some snippets:

Virtual events are rated as more influential than many social media marketing tactics
Hybrid meetings are not a threat to face-to-face, but an opportunity to raise the bar
Getting content to attendees who can’t travel is a vital part of a marketing campaign
Cisco saved $19m by making their global sales conference hybrid
42% of virtual event attendees are international
Data from SAP Sapphire and Cisco Live! shows face-to-face attendee growth driven year over year by offering the content virtually

After our case studies, we tried a fun Town Hall format. Tom Booker and Asaf Ronen from The Institution Theatre led us in some great audience discussion on the topics of:

Tradeshow Property: Rent or Buy?
Event Apps: Custom build or buy off-the shelf?
Roadshows: Dead or Alive?

While there were no definitive answers from the crowd, most prefer the idea of a custom rental for large tradeshow property, they agree that event apps are mostly overrated and don’t provide very much useful engagement beyond the agenda and some feedback mechanisms, and roadshows only work when actively planned and managed by a consistent program leader.

Closing Keynote
We closed the day with GasPedal CEO Andy Sernovitz. With his bag of tricks (ranging from chocolate to Facebook and Twitter earrings to fake mustaches to autographed copies of his book Word of Mouth Marketing, Andy closed out our day with a bang. He shared stories about how to harness the power of the buzz to keep event attendees talking about your event and telling others why they should go.

Some pointers from Andy:

Give people a reason to talk about your stuff
Make it easy for that conversation to take place

Before your event:

Find Big Talkers

Get your VIPs in early – celebrity bloggers in your industry
Other stakeholders in your event – sponsors/partners

Give them reasons to talk

GasPedal gives attendees a welcome box mailed to them including signed copies of books by presenters at the conference
GasPedal gives speakers customer shirts with a custom URL – speakers video themselves wearing the shirt and put it online
Give sponsors extra passes to share
Do audio previews of each speaker and share them online

Give them tools to share

Tell-A-Friend campaigns for attendees, speakers, sponsors, VIPs
Tweet interesting things that can be retweeted

Give them status

Discount code campaigns where you tell people they have “the inside deal” to a discount and let them share it with the people they think should get it
Passes to share

During your event:

Social media support

Live blog it – so people can just re-blog/re-tweet instead of trying to write while they try to listen
Twitter: Hashtags, constant reinforcement, have staff tweet easily retweetable content

Reasons to Talk

Surprise your attendees constantly… but not with bad things (like a naked lady covered in sushi as a centerpiece)
Half-time show: every heard of BlendTech? What if they did a demo in the middle of your event? Blend a cell phone! Now THAT would get people talking.
And, of course, always have great content

Buzzworthy Swag

Make sure you are giving away stuff that people will keep like:

A genuinely good bag
Signed copies of speakers’ books
All swag must be travel friendly

Plant post-show conversations

Book signing with author + photos shared online
Photo booth, other sharable memory-makers

After the event:

The conversation is just starting when the event is over. Capture as much buzz after the show as you capture at the show to build demand for next time.

Post-event content

Assign photo album staff and allow it to be user-generated, too. If you get everyone tagging and sharing, you can spread the buzz far!
Summaries, trip reports, wrap-up videos that share the content make it super-easy for attendees to reuse or share
Record sessions and share snippets to start word of mouth for next year
Share slides from every presentation on slideshare

Post-event community

No one has time for a community created just for the event. We’re too busy. But if you keep the conversation where people already are, you can keep the buzz alive

Keep it to FB and Linkedin group – often the best because 100% people are there already
Share speaker Q&A, discussion of sessions, and networking in those areas or through smaller in-person get-togethers

Post-event experiences

Ship the giveaways/handouts/gifts home for the attendees
Have videos and content to share with non-attendees

Amazing thank you’s

Send something nice to your speakers. GasPedal sends a Carnegie cheesecake!
Thank your sponsors with something nice – food! Include the booth workers.

Remember that happy customers are your best ads!

So as you can see from my wrap-up, I was blown away by the stories shared at this event. The networking was great and the content was wonderful. Thank you to our sponsors, our attendees, and our speakers for making this a truly spectacular engagement. Please contact me if you have an interest in learning more about the Corporate Event Marketing Association, our future events, or any of the content we shared.

Does social media make you feel old?

noreply@blogger.com (cheshirecat) — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 02:43:00 +0000

"Facebook is for old people."
- 14-year-old when asked if she uses Facebook

I was recently at a board of directors meeting for the Corporate Event Marketing Association and attempted to give an overview of my recommended social media plan for the association. For the most part, I was met with blank stares. As I mentioned in a previous post, it seems that many of my high tech event marketing brethren are unschooled in the ways of social engagement. Meaning they don't know how to tweet, rarely use LinkedIn except to update their resumes, and may not even be on Facebook. Most haven't the slightest idea how or why to be on Google Plus (honestly, I'm still working that one out myself...more to come...).

Social media is no longer simply a shiny object that people use to tout their lunch plans. Social media is another vehicle in a full marketing portfolio to communicate with customers and have a two-way conversation. It's a way to share content and allow customers to generate content of their own. Social media isn't just Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. It's YouTube, Flickr, SlideShare. It's Digg, Wikipedia and Google Docs. It's Four Square, Chatter and Yammer. It's Groupon, Skype, and Yelp. Only heard of a few of those? Yeah... it's tough to keep up. Makes you feel old, doesn't it?

The thing is, if you ask "the young people," they'll tell that you they don't hang out on all of those all day long. They'd never get anything done! But here's a real-life case study of what they do:

They send a birthday party invitation through Evite, and track the potluck foods in Google Docs. They may post to Facebook and Twitter through FourSquare that they're picking up 3 dozen cupcakes from Hey Cupcake, which they bought through Groupon. They might even throw a photo of the delicious 36 cupcakes onto Flickr and post the link on Facebook and Twitter. Videos from the party are quickly uploaded to YouTube from the dozens of smartphones carried by partygoers. And finally, they might Skype their parents to get Happy Birthday greetings from 4 states away.

Even thinking about this is exhausting. But digital natives don't even bat an eye when they read that.

So how do you use this for your events?

You can use social media to drive attendance, and you might even get 2% of registrants from there. But better than just sharing registration links, you can encourage conversation on LinkedIn or Facebook groups. Put teaser videos on YouTube. Set up viral ticketing through your registration site (this encourages the event invitation to be shared by discounting registrants for every shared registration). After the event, put the full presentations on SlideShare. Edit recorded sessions down to a 5 to 8-minute clip or interview speakers to put on YouTube. Create a Flickr stream that people add their photos to and share their experience.

It's not as overwhelming as it may seem when you realize that you can use the social media content channels as they're intended to be used, and not have to assign 24/7 staff to sit around watching a Twitter feed.

Now excuse me while I locate a 14-year-old to explain Google Plus to me...

.

Building a Bridge Across the Valley of Engagement

noreply@blogger.com (cheshirecat) — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 18:16:00 +0000

Every season has its peaks and valleys. What you have to try to do is eliminate the Grand Canyon.
- Andy Van Slyke

I recently attended the first-ever user conference for eTouches and heard a fabulous presentation by Suzanne Carawan on social media and events. As this is obviously my topic du jour, I wanted to share her story and explore it in a series of posts.

This first post explores the possibilities beyond the normal social media plan of Before, During, and After an event.

An event, if used properly, is a vehicle in a comprehensive marketing plan of touchpoints with a customer or potential customer or like-minded group of individuals. The annual conference can be viewed as the Pinnacle of Engagement for most companies, as it brings together in one place a dedicated base of fans eager to learn, share, and engage with your company, product or topic. But if the annual event is the Pinnacle of Engagement, the rest of the year can be called the Valley of Engagement. What we must explore are the strategies and tactics behind building a bridge across the Valley of Engagement from Pinnacle to Pinnacle to keep your tribe active throughout the year.

Most people view social media and event engagement activities as the Trifecta Approach: “before, during, and after.” But in order to build a lasting community base, consider thinking of the plan as the Leveling of Mountains Approach - a continuous circle year over year.

The Trifecta Approach might look like this:

Before the event:

• Event registration site and hypersite

• E-mail blasts for audience acquisition

• Sales enablement to drive attendance

During the event:

• Icebreakers based on social media contests/inquiries/discussions

• Live twitter stream

• Meet the speakers, authors, keynotes

• Mobile app for session updates and wayfinding

After the event:

• Post-event survey

• Blogs

• Photo Galleries

• Archived content

Now consider the Bridge Across the Mountains approach:

Climbing the mountain of engagement:

• Grassroots conversations begin online about the coming event

• Event registration site and hypersite

• E-mail blasts for audience acquisition

• Sales enablement to drive attendance

• Event groups or advisory boards on content

• Industry roundtables to focus the conversation on specific audience sets

• Contests (social/viral/user-generated-content competitions)

• Pre-event attendee directories, and allowing attendees to pre-set meetings with others before the event even begins

• Content teaser videos, vlogs, discussions and blogs

• Creation of pre-event communities to drive connection before attendees get onsite

• Polls, surveys, and conversations about event features that drive attendees to share and talk to each other virtually

• Allow attendees to build a profile, upload a photo, and use that information onsite by printing the photos on the badges, along with things like Twitter names and QR codes that connect attendees to a vCard or address book

• Create Birds of a Feather sessions out of the community members and offer engaged attendees special access to VIP receptions or other perks

The Pinnacle of Engagement

• Ample signage for Birds of a Feather meetup locations

• Physical space for meetups, working groups, birds of a feather conversations

• Special VIP parties, cocktails, rewards

• Live twitter stream

• Scribes per industry, topic, etc

• Meet the speakers, authors, keynotes

• Mobile app that encourages continued engagement at the event through QR codes, acquisition of points for engaging with content (like attending breakout sessions, or downloading white papers, or checking in at a booth or activity)

• Live streaming keynotes

Building a bridge across the valley to make the next climb even shorter:

• Archived content

• Webinars to deep-dive on content sessions

• Blogs to wrap up the event

• Guest blogs from the speaker pool and attendee pool

• Photo Galleries

• Video Testimonials

• Monthly topic discussions and calls born out of the Birds of a Feather sessions

• “Meet the Attendee”: First Timer’s View, etc

• Ongoing community to share perspectives on content and crowdsource topics for upcoming events

• Package event content in an “on the road” format for sales teams to leverage with top accounts – includes videos, collateral, recorded webinars

It requires year-long dedication to keep the engagement, and very few companies have dedicated the resources to make this possible, but in order to truly provide value to customers, the journey must begin with a single step.

Social listening

noreply@blogger.com (cheshirecat) — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 17:10:00 +0000

To listen well, is as powerful a means of influence as to talk well, and is as essential to all true conversation.

- Chinese Proverb

Social media is good and fun... but what are you doing with the conversations you're having? Jeff Hurt's post on "why your event needs to increase social media monitoring" is dead right!

If you used social media during your last similar event, the data to be mined is almost limitless. You can see trending topics, audience segments, gaps in engagement, and most importantly: tone of the conversation.

If your events are put on for the benefit of your customers or users (like training or advisory events), creating a listening channel to gather feedback and input for the agenda is a highly valuable and appreciated way to engage with your constituents.

If your event is marketing/sales-driven and you aren't seeking input from attendees, having conversations with them during and after the event is very important to shape your future experiences. If you actually do not care what your customers think at all about your event or your content, well then you probably won't have a whole lot of them next year. :-)

Onsite, there are a number of innovative ways to connect with your attendees via social media. You can create and publicize a specific hashtag for event help and have a group of event volunteers monitoring the feed and working to answer questions or solve customer dilemmas. If you have a customized mobile app, you can add a virtual helpdesk or other mechanism for requesting assistance. In your app, you can push real-time feedback surveys to ask about specific event elements, as well as get session feedback through the app. If you just want to pretend you're high tech, but don't really have the money to BE high tech, you can set up QR codes throughout your event which link to a simple form or survey. When scanned with a smartphone's QR reader, the form would open allowing the attendee to put in a question or answer a question (depending on what you are trying to accomplish).

Customers are more and more annoyed at companies that don't listen. If you're inviting them to attend your event, they expect that you will care about their needs. Show it through social media.

Where did the Twittersphere go?

noreply@blogger.com (cheshirecat) — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 14:25:00 +0000

The people drawn to Twitter are people on the cutting edge, the real nerds who are resentful of the fact that the general population have found and taken over Facebook.

- Steve Dotto, host of Dotto Tech (Source)

Merely five years old, Twitter has had a skyrocketing rate of adoption. The statics still show that its use is on the rise, and events like Obama's town hall have made it a completely mainstream way of adding conversation and engagement to live and virtual events.

There are fantastic How-To's like this one out on the web about aggregation and management of information.

But why are so few high tech event marketers using it? There is a vibrant #eventprofs community composed of a huge variety of event managers from associations to vendors to wedding planners to event management agencies. Great content, great sharing, great conversation, and even an organized event chat on regular occasions.

Organizations like #MPI, #TSEA, #PCMA all have conversations, but tweets generally include the #eventprofs in their conversations so the messages are virtually indistiguishable except to say they are members of these industry associations.

But in following #cemaonline, the Corporate Event Marketing Association's hashtag and #hitechevents, the hashtag for marketers working in the high tech industry, I find absolutely no engagement. Why would the set of event marketers MOST likely to be on Twitter not be anywhere near it?

Just too busy? I know our group in high tech events manages more than 1,000 events a year with just 9 event managers, so busy is an understatement. Or is it that event managers in high tech are at companies that have entire groups devoted to social media (like we do at my company), so the event managers do not feel the need to engage. Or is it because high tech event managers don't understand the value of networking beyond their doors with other high tech event managers?

Personally, I find Twitter to be highly valuable when seeking out new ideas and technologies. I use it for research on competitive events. I use it to search hashtags for conversations about certain topics that will be at my event. I don't spend a ton of time idly staring at and reading random things, but when my Outlook is frozen as a 13MB file comes in, or while I'm on a conference call waiting for my moment to speak, I peruse the feeds and click on some links and bookmark great articles to go back to later.

I find the engagement of the people on Twitter exciting, and I want to know why there aren't more high tech event managers out there with me!

What I learned from the first-ever, global eTouches User Conference, Aug 16-17, Norwalk, CT

noreply@blogger.com (cheshirecat) — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 16:19:00 +0000

At the point of commitment, the universe conspires to support you.
- Anonymous

I have been an eTouches user and advocate for going on three years now. My company has implemented the tool globally as the standard, registration system for the majority of customer and internal events. Having taken the plunge three years ago with a relatively unproven company (in the mind of corporate America), and forming a great long-term partnership with them over the years, I had full faith and trust that spending two days at the conference would be well worth my time. I was definately going to go.

Before I had a chance to register, I got a call from Leonora, the eTouches CEO, asking if I would present our case study at their conference. “Of course!” I said. I was more than happy to share my story with 20 people in breakout sessions. As I think back on it now, she gave no indication that it would be just 20 people in a breakout session...

Then one day, a colleague passed me in the hall and said, “CONGRATULATIONS! I see you’re keynoting the eTouches user conference! That’s AWESOME!” I said (very eloquently, I might add), “HUH?” I ran to my computer and scrolled through my inbox to find an announcement that I would be keynoting the conference, followed by 4 more emails from other colleagues congratulating me on my keynote spot.

So I called Susanne Carawan at eTouches and said, “Yeah, hi… so what’s this about me keynoting?” She said, “I know! Surprise! Awesome, right?” Of course, it was totally awesome, and I give presentations all the time at work, speak to hundreds of people frequently by conference call and webinar format…but I had never actually spoken “for real” in front of an audience in any kind of “she’s our featured presenter” sort of way.

So the first thing I learned about eTouches at their user conference was that they were willing to show me the same level of trust that I’ve shown them. They trusted that I would come up with a story that would kick off their conference in a meaningful way. They trusted that I had some sort of ability to stand in front of people and speak coherently.

Only the survey results will truly tell how I did, but I sincerely thank eTouches for giving me the opportunity to share, learn, and grow. And I hope I didn't suck.

But about that conference… I really did learn actual useful stuff. So here’s my recap:

My first awesome moment was when I arrived at the offices. I was on a conference call about an event I have coming up, when a man entered the room - I'd never met him, but after three years of talking to him pom the phone, when I heard him say hi, I knew instantly who he was. Julian Ward!

I told the folks on the phone, "Hold on a sec - I have to put you on mute and hug someone." I know it sounds cheesey, but It was a magical moment!

A colleague of mine from Dell attended with me, and then I got the pleasant surprise of another colleague of mine from another Dell office showing up to attend – I had never met her in person, either!

eTouches CEO Leonora Valvo kicked off the conference with some great “burning questions”… and let me tell you that a crowd of 75 software users have tons of questions and ideas. The eTouches team graciously answered the questions, shared the solutions that already exist, and took in the ideas for consideration.

We learned about upcoming roadmap plans, new mobile features, and got some great demos of modules that many of us see in the tool, but have yet to use. The agenda was jam-packed minute-to-minute with great stuff.

One of the eTouches board members presented an industry perspective on content, sharing some best practices and ideas on how to generate and syndicate event content. Personally, I have no shortage of content at my events (and in fact find that we have to curate it down to the really important points before launching an event), so I would have liked to see a little more from him on the reuse of the content. I have other commentary on The Long Tail of Content, and I think his presentation could have been shaped to expand on that a bit – maybe next year!

On the evening of the first day, we attended a clam bake at the beach… but this was no ordinary clam bake… after getting some clams and clam chowder, we were each served AN ENTIRE LOBSTER. I have never seen anything like that at an event. I was blown away!

I have a mantra that when I attend conferences, the experience is whatever I make of it, so I officially designated our dinner table as “the fun table,” and hilarity ensued. Great conversations that ranged from the naming of grandparents to Facebook privacy to the death of email. We ended the evening with a surprise afterparty at a local dive with an AMAZING band call Tangled Vine. If you’re in the northeast, you must book this band. I’m from the Live Music Capitol of the World, and I was very impressed with this Greenwich, CT, group!

Our previous Death of Email conversation from was put aside the next day when we got a presentation from eWay talking about email marketing. Relevant points, great statics, and reinforcing metrics behind why email is still a viable marketing tool for events.

We had an interesting conversation about mobile apps for events… I think the topic still stumps everyone. Should we build? Should we buy? Should we ignore? No right answer has emerged.

We had an exciting and energetic conversation about social media and extending the life of an event community, led by Susanne Carawan, and the eTouches team announced their eSocial platform (replacing eConnect), and featuring a full private community portal for attendees to connect before, during, and after the event.

Finally, we ended the conference with some Meet the Experts and advisory-type sessions, which were extremely valuable and ton of fun (attendees love to provide input and ideas, and it turns out, I’m no exception!).

As a self-professed disruptor and early adopter, I was absolutely thrilled to be a part of eTouches first-ever global user conference. The people I met, the stories I heard, the experiences I shared will be with me for life.

Thank you to eTouches and to the loyal user-base for making my two days in Connecticut so very worth my while!

Rethinking QR codes

noreply@blogger.com (cheshirecat) — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 03:19:00 +0000

Creativity, as has been said, consists largely of rearranging what we know in order to find out what we do not know. Hence, to think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted.

- George Kneller

In response to my recent post about my frustration with the uselessness of QR codes, a dear friend introduced me to a friend of hers who is an expert on the subject. So today I had a great chat with Andy Meadows at a company called 44Doors.

Andy's task today was to convince me that QR codes are not, in fact, useless. He began with real use-cases (albeit in a consumer setting) of nightclubs who seek to better serve their customers. In a loud, crowded place, it can be hard to get your waitstaff to come to your table, but with a QR code, and a socially enabled waitstaff, you can let them know that you need another bottle of bubbly at table 10.

Clever. Didn't really fit into my event needs, beyond the really cool exciting thing we're planning at Dell World this October (which I will tell you all about afterwards!).

My biggest complaints about QR codes are as follows:

Less than half of attendees have a QR reader on their phone.
The half that don't have them, don't know how to get them.
The half that do have them, spend a laughable amount of time trying to get them to work at varying distances from the source QR code image.
When you do get them to work, they tend to either take you to a contact form (which most of us are highly unlikely to complete on our phones), or they take you to a generic website, that we're certainly not going to sit around and read right then and there in the middle of an expo floor. Sometimes they open a pdf... and on my Android phone, opening a .pdf is such a hassle that I give up.
From an event manager perspective, I get no metrics beyond the number of hits, potentially the type of device that hit the URL, and the IP address it came from.

So Andy had some big objections to overcome. Here's what he said (...basically - I'm totally paraphrasing our hour-long conversation):

First of all, you're thinking about QR codes all wrong. You don't just create a code and link it to a generic, non-mobility-enabled URL. You work with a company (maybe a company like 44Doors!) to create all of the QR codes for you.

You can have a QR reader embedded into your mobile event app, so when attendees download the app for their agenda, they get the QR reader, too.
Now they have one.
By staffing your expo area with trained company folks who know the proper technique, scanning a QR code can be a conversation engagement opportunity between staff and attendees.
The QR reader from the app can be attached to their profile from the app and their registration so they never have to go to a long contact form that they would skip. At most, they would enter their email address to connect it - not a huge obstacle for smartphone users.
By using a QR code programmed into the app, you capture all of the information about every QR code scanned, what kind of device was used, timestamp, and all contact information for the person using it. You can even do timed URLs on the QR codes so that if it is scanned at noon, they get a special lunch coupon, but scanned at 5pm gets them a drink ticket.

Touche, Andy. You have made me reconsider QR codes. Perhaps there is potential for them yet.

A case of the 4 P's

noreply@blogger.com (cheshirecat) — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 02:07:00 +0000

That sounds like a case of the Four P's: Piss Poor Prior Planning.
- my college roommate's grandfather

This post made me laugh out loud. We've all seen it: some element at an event that made us think, "Who did they put in charge of THAT?"

Here are a few of my favorite "Worst Of" experiences at recent conferences:

Shuttle bus stops that were so poorly marked that no one rode the buses.
Name badges with font so small that you absolutely couldn't see the names from more than 2 feet away.
More than 5 hashtags for the same event, leading to absolutely no meaningful social engagement on Twitter.
Online engagement built purely on flash - guaranteeing that anyone with an iPad or iPhone had no way to participate.
No pocket guide due to pure reliance on the event app... and event app didn't work.
Ran out of coffee cups 30 minutes into breakfast buffet (plenty of coffee, though!)

And here are a few little brilliant nuggets that I experienced at recent conferences that made me think, "Now THAT was a brilliant event team":

Eggs at breakfast! THANK YOU for some protein!
Hashtag table tent signs in every breakout so attendees knew how to notate their Tweets.
A mobile app that let me complete a profile and locate people with similar interests and meet them in a lounge area.
Interactive way-finding digital signage so I could touch the screen to figure out where I needed to go next.
Name badges that were printed on both sides so when it turned around, I could still see people's names.

Got any favorites?

I am quite awesome, thankyouverymuch

noreply@blogger.com (cheshirecat) — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 18:12:00 +0000

I actually look forward to performance reviews. I did the youth beauty pageant circuit. And I enjoyed that quite a bit. I really enjoy being judged. I believe I hold up very well to even severe scrutiny.

- Angela, The Office

Great post on Harvard Business Review about eliminating the self assessment part of annual reviews.

The point of the post is that it turns the review into a negotiation, as most A-ranked employees are afraid of being Bs. Most Bs are scared they’ll get a C, and most Cs believe they are As.

I recall my husband helpfully advising me when I was trying to write my own self appraisal many years ago, “Why would you ever rate yourself a B or a C? Always put A! Even if your boss doesn’t agree with it, you have on record a positive spin on all the great things you’ve accomplished.”

As a recovering manager of a rather large team, I love the HBR suggestion to avoid asking employees to actually rate themselves, and instead ask them to send you their top 10 accomplishments for the year. This way, you as a manager can evaluate the value provided to the organization and/or the personal growth each team member achieved during the year.

Now to find some advice on writing a performance plan that is actually not a waste of time...

Is it worth the risk?

noreply@blogger.com (cheshirecat) — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 18:33:00 +0000

No power in the 'verse can stop me.
- Kaylee (Firefly)

Life is about choices. Do I want to fight my 3-year-old to get dressed faster, or do I want to play with him and have a really fun morning, but be 10 minutes late to work? Do I want to take that new job, or stay comfortably where I am? Do I want to be a keynote speaker at a conference, or say no and attend like my peers?

This Harvard Business Review blog post got me thinking about risk... and I don't think I take enough of them. I have definately taken a few, and they have all worked out perfectly. Some ended in massive failure, but what I learned from that failure prepared me for another task later.

My first big risk was college. Upon graduating high school, I left my home state of Georgia and moved over to Texas, finding a roommate from the university's off-campus housing department (because all the dorms were full). Best risk ever.

About a year out of college, I quit my high tech marketing job to work at a high tech recruiting firm. It was a blast! Then the economy tanked and there weren't any jobs to recruit for. So they asked if I would like to spend a week in Boca Raton getting trained on how to become an account executive and recruit jobs (instead of people). I'm no salesman. I couldn't sell girl scout cookies to my own mother. But I figured it would be interesting to take the class, so I did. I made sales calls for about a month after that, to no avail. The company closed about 3 months later. FAIL. But what did I learn? Well, I definately reinforced to myself that I'm no salesman. :-) I also learned that I enjoy solving problems. When the problem was no jobs to recruit for, I decided to try and solve it by learning how to get more jobs for the company to help with. I learned that as a salesperson, marketing is vitally important. Even the basics! If I didn't have any collateral to give my prospect, there was no way they'd ever think of me when they needed to hire someone. Actually spending a couple months in sales was really the best marketing experience I could have gotten.

I've been at my current company for more than 6 years now, and have taken relatively few risks, but have been fortunate to have opportunity find me. I did take a professional presenting course through our Executive Briefing Center, and was encouraged to go take an improv comedy class. That was a spectacular risk! Standing in a class with 15 other people being spontaneous for 2 hours a week, enouraged to fail. We were taught that "there is no such thing as failure, just unexpected results." Most fun I've had in the last 5 years!

Recently, I was asked to keynote at a user conference. It's only 50-75 people, but it will be my first time truly in the spotlight telling a story. It's a risk. I'm SUPER excited about it... but this time, failure is not an option!

As the article I referenced above mentions, the key to risk is preparation. So I've hired my professional presentation instructor to help me prepare for my keynote, and my improv training will undoubtedly prove very valuable. In this instance, there should be minimal risk of failure. I'm ready!

Giving for the greater good

noreply@blogger.com (cheshirecat) — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 15:31:00 +0000

True charity is the desire to be useful to others without thought of recompense.

- Emanuel Swedenborg

I love my company! Last November, we instituted a meeting points donation plan through our Dell YouthConnect program. We do not use meeting planning points from our events for personal gain, but instead capture them throughout the year and donate them to charities through the Dell YouthConnect network.

Just for fun, I checked our account balance. Without much effort, and just with a few folks remembering to put our points number on contracts, here's our current point amount:
41,000 points on Starwood
56,000 points on Marriott
7,000 points on Hyatt
Unsure on Hilton, as all points go directly to the Boys & Girls Club of America

Our next step is to ensure that all of our suppliers are aware of our program so they can begin sharing the account numbers as they book events. How awesome will it be to say that our events gave more than a month's worth of hotel stays to organizations with recipients in need.

If your company is interested in setting up a charitable points program, I'm happy to share our best practices. Just comment here or tweet me @lizlathan.

Virtual gatherings

noreply@blogger.com (cheshirecat) — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 14:31:00 +0000

Internet: absolute communication, absolute isolation.

- Paul Carvel

When I saw Botox, Skype, and face-to-face meetings in the title of this post, it was a must-read. Then when I read it, it was a must-respond.

It takes me right over to my little soapbox about virtual event environments with their little static fake people standing around. Some looking like they’re talking to each other, some standing alone, even some illustrated holding a cell phone to their ear. Really? This is how I’m supposed to engage and experience a virtual event? By pretending I’m there in person, when I'm really alone at my cube or in my home office?

I think we’re all mentally stable enough to know that we’re not physically there. I also think that we go to virtual events for a specific purpose, not to create a cartoon avatar to show up in our profile. At least for me, I attend a virtual event to either watch presentations I couldn’t get to in person, or download content that will help me on my quest to solve a problem. If I engage with other people in the environment, it was to ask a question about a product or solution from a vendor. Sitting in a chat room with 3 professionals and one kid who snuck in and randomly types profanities is not my idea of a good use of time.

So why do we continue to see virtual event platforms that try to mimic in-person events? They are a different kind of engagement and should be included in the customer journey planning for virtual audiences as a parallel path to the in-person experience.

Online should be viewed as a content channel. If you’re going to have breakouts online, then plan for it and use something like Skype or Google+ to have a 5 to 8-person web breakout. The virtual event can no longer be project managed as separate entity. It must be folded into the entire customer journey and experience strategy so attendees, whether in-person or online, leave your event happy that they acquired the knowledge they hoped to gain and satisfied with the connections they made.

In other news, Why Virtual Events Fail.

Event professionals' social use stats

noreply@blogger.com (cheshirecat) — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 17:31:00 +0000

Quit counting fans, followers and blog subscribers like bottle caps. Think, instead, about what you’re hoping to achieve with and through the community that actually cares about what you’re doing.
– Amber Naslund of Social Media Today

A recent Successful Meetings article announced that social media use among event professionals is on the rise, but as I dig into the statistics a bit, I find more than meets the eye. Let's dissect it a little.

71 percent of the 830 people surveyed say they use Facebook for networking or marketing purposes. There are no more detailed statistics beyond this very high-level number, but I would be interested to know the conversation density of the activities taking place on Facebook, and whether the site is being used by event marketers as event-specific communication, or as a vehicle in a larger marketing campaign program.

41 percent use Twitter regularly - close to double the number who used it last year. Twitter is an interesting beast. If you're not following a hashtag of interest or datamining for a specific hastag, it's largely just a bunch of useless drivel from a bunch of friends and random people. When used appropriately, however, Twitter provides a wealth of information. When used for an event Twitter handle, you must either have a strong following or have a limited following of strong influencers with strong followings. Without an audience for updates and interactions, Twitter serves no purpose. I think Twitter can be used better than it is currently being used and we should advocate for some training for our event professional colleagues!

69 percent of people used LinkedIn. Ah, but are they using it to keep their resume up-to-date and gather connections and recommendations, or are they cultivating the hidden communities lurking beneath the LinkedIn surface? Because, man! Some of those are great!

25 percent use YouTube. I can argue a number of perspectives on this one. Rich media content is awesome and more people should use it where appropriate. Interviews with keynote speakers and breakout session leaders, and interviews with customers and event staff can be really great! But you don't just stick that on YouTube and hope people will watch it. You actively have those ideas included in the marcom plan and feed them into your event hypersite, while simultaneously promoting them via other social channels. However, I rarely sit around watchin YouTube videos. When I do watch them, I usually found them via Twitter and they are usually under 2 minutes long. So that's my advice.

24 percent read blogs. Well, that's because there are 800 bazillion million gajillion blogs out there and no one has enough time to keep up! But that's where Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn come in. Sharing an interesting blog post encourages others to read it. No one comments on blogs anymore, so what? The idea that a blog is a two-way conversation was a facade from the beginning. It's one-way, with the chance to comment, and if you're lucky the blog author will comment back to you. What blogs really do (including this one), are provide an outlet for the author to share thoughts and opinions. If they are good ones, other people will share them, too.

16 percent use QR codes. Just as I suspected and wrote about previously... We haven't really figured out how to use those things very effectively, have we?

The biggest question I have for event marketers trying to harness the power of social media is this: Is social media an integral part of your face-to-face experience and the long tail of content afterwards, or is it an add-on vehicle that you have for your event because you feel you must? If the former, great! I love to watch the feeds from events like that and feel the buzz from the event. If the latter, I recommend not even trying to make social a part of your event and just let it happen naturally. It will happen anyway, and you'll get better results with organic social than forced social.

Are you a disruptor?

noreply@blogger.com (cheshirecat) — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 14:05:00 +0000

Change before you have to.
- Jack Welch

I caught this link on a Twitter feed on the #eventprofs hashtag and identified with it immediately. Sometimes I get frustrated trying to implement and manage change at work and revert back to the easy path of "follow the rules, do what your boss says, and don't make waves." But my nature is to push the envelope. I'm no Richard Branson or Steve Jobs, but in my own little world, I'm known for making people think beyond what they are comfortable doing. I want to find efficiencies and foster creativity.

In events, this means making more meaningful engagements happen in more surprising ways. Like I mentioned in a previous post, it's important to create memorable moments throughout your engagement.
People are at your event for the session content and the networking, so taking opportunities to surprise and delight them in unexpected ways is what disrupts their view of "yet another business conference."

I'm a huge advocate of disruption for the sake of breaking status quo (not disruption without purpose). I was an early adopter of eTouches registration tools, for examples, because I believed they were truly thinking from an event marketer's perspective, with a software hat on, rather than thinking from a software perspective with an event marketer's hat on. They get events, they get social, and they get the need to customize things for each customer. They are disruptors like I am.

Innovation is the buzzword of the moment, and it's a good one. Disruption is the activity we must do to pave the way for innovation.

How to not work

noreply@blogger.com (cheshirecat) — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 18:34:00 +0000

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
- George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists

I love the book The Four-Hour Workweek . I love The Energy Project. And I love this Harvard Business Review blog post.

The gist of these grand tales is that we should stop working so much, and start prioritizing our lives to be what we want them to be. The risk inherent in this, of course, is that a) we fail to meet deadlines, b) we fail to look like we're working as hard as other people, c) we fail to get as much stuff done. So I think we're seeing that it's a fear of failure here (at least it is in my world).

But I like the principles and I am learning from my new manager (of about 6 weeks now) that this is actually possible. If you ignore the chatter of the silly, you can focus on the challenges that matter. One more book for you: Long Fuse, Big Bang. This one has a great quote that really stuck with me - "Don't let the tyranny of the urgent stifle the pursuit of the important."

Set aside time to think. Prioritize prioritization. Calm your mind and reflect on the day behind you. Then calm your mind and prepare your head for the day in front of you.

Now, to get to that 4-hour workweek... (though I'm fairly certain I could never really just work just four hours a week as I would be bored out of my mind...)

How to write an RFP

noreply@blogger.com (cheshirecat) — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 18:42:00 +0000

It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.

- Oscar Wilde

I have had some really great successes creating RFPs for event projects (and have received some great feedback from my partner companies responding to the RFPs), so I thought I'd share some of my guidelines.

My RFP template comes from an amalgamation of RFP templates provided to me by my industry friends including 3D Exhibits, Czarnowski, Jack Morton, Event Marketing Partners, and Derse, among others, and my learnings from the last half-dozen or so RFPs I've completed in the last year!

Cover page: I always name the project and provide the contact information necessary throughout the process, as well as the due date for the proposal.
An overview of the business issue: This is the place to describe the project in a brief paragraph. Be specific and concise in describing what the final product should look like.
Description of product and services: In a few paragraphs, describe what you are looking for the company to produce. I also like to put in this section the type of partnership I am looking for from the company (execution-only, strategic consulting, etc.)
Company information needed for proposal: In this section, I share all of the details of the project and about the company or department that would be helpful to the agency to know. Not a place to air dirty laundry, but be very upfront about the way the group likes to work and any challenges that the company may face.
Proposal format: Let the respondents know what you are expecting by way of response. If you want giant, bound books of designs, or if you want everything done in a pdf or Power Point, share that here. One of my best practices is creating a survey (even a short one in Survey Monkey) to gather the basic information from each respondent in an easily-comparable format.
Due date: Very important!
Timeline: Respondents understand that this may shift, but sharing the basic timeline for them is very helpful. For example:

February 11, 2011: RFP sent out
Week of February 14: Q&A calls with (Company Contact 1 & 2)
Week of February 21: (optional) (Company Contact 1 & 2) available to pre-review proposals and make suggestions
March 4, 2011: Proposals due
Week of March 7: Internal core team reviews proposals. Core team made up of (list names here). Core team to set up calls with candidate companies to review proposals.
March 11, 2011: Business awarded, planning calls begin

8. Questions: On some of my RFPs, I let respondents know that we will answer questions at any time and all questions emailed to us will be shared with all respondents, unless the respondent requests the questions be kept confidential.
9. Estimated budget: This is a very debatable section - especially between myself and my procurement team! My procurement team believes that we should let the companies come back with their own proposals. I firmly believe that the respondents need parameters. I generally like to give a budget range, but ask for the proposal to be priced out in an a la carte format so I can understand the pricing structure (hourly, project-based, etc.)
10. Detailed Business Requirements: If not already covered in the sections above, I spend about a page here describing the details of the project and the outcomes we are seeking. If we are RFPing for booth design, there are a number of specific questions to ask... including what rush charges for graphics are!
11. Selection criteria: In this section, I clearly articulate what we are looking for in our partner and how we will evaluate the proposals. I also list the names of the selection committee and their roles as it relates to the project. I like to use a spreadsheet with weighted criteria for areas like account management, pricing, customer references, creativity, case study examples, previous relationship with our company, etc.
12. Performance Metrics: Here I describe the cadence of partner reviews and evaluations. I make sure the partner knows that they will be evaluating us as a client, as well. Partnerships do not work with the client just gets to evaluate and blame the partner - it's a two-way street!

I'm very happy to share my RFP templates with anyone in need. Ping me on Twitter @lizlathan, or drop me a note here!

Social engagement at events

noreply@blogger.com (cheshirecat) — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 02:58:00 +0000

Social media is just a buzzword until you come up with a plan.

~ Zach Dunn

A recent blog post I read about mistakes event planners make with social media got me thinking about some of our success... and failures in the social space.

We're doing some amazing things at my company to bring social engagement to life at events. From QR codes for information (basic, and truthfully not always successful), to fully engaging mobile apps that are built in to the event strategy process.

You've often seen me type that "events are the original social media." I firmly believe this to be true. Even with social media online and in mobile, people make the most important connections face to face.

But let's look at some of the social engagements for events that I've seen succeed and fail at recent conferences:

QR Codes - We like to think these encourage interaction and engagement among our attendees. In reality, either very few people know how to scan them, or you have a bunch of people playing with their phone trying to figure out how to scan them, only to scan them and be taken to a URL that was built for a regular website and is pretty much useless on a mobile device. Bottom line: They make you look tech savvy, but I've rarely seen them offer real value.

Mobile Apps - Most of the mobile apps I've used at events act as a replacement to the traditional paper pocket guide. They have maps. They have session schedules. They have sponsor advertisements. They save trees. Bottom line: You really can't do an event without one and still look professional. If you don't have one, get one.

Gamification - pronounced "Game-if-ick-a-shun" - means offering rewards to the attendees who engage with your event in different ways. From Four Square badges to Facebook Places rewards, these activities can draw attendees toward an activity for either a physical prize or a "title" award (Mayor of booth #310!). Bottom line: Good for fun, but may not get the most qualified attendees to your booth for the right reasons. When used at your own branded event, gamification can be modified for your activity and can help you move the flow of traffic around for the attendees who are using their mobile devices to engage.

Augmented Reality - Using geolocation or the GPS in phones, you can overlay an augmented reality layer onto you event; for example, onto your show floor. This allows attendees to hold up their phone like they would using Google Street View and see content related to each area of your floor. You could put exhibitor information, cool facts, customer comments, ratings from participants, and so much more. Bottom line: Super cool to play with. Who has extra money just sitting around to throw at this? And is there anything valuable there other than the cool-factor?

I believe that the key for event marketers is to evaluate the technology for it's value to the attendees first, then its coolness factor second. If the event must showcase the latest and greatest just for the WOW effect, that's valid. If the event should be focusing on content and personal engagement, let the social engagement happen without the guided hand of the event gods.

The best social media engagements at events are the conversations about the event, not the conversations about the social media at the event.

The long tail of content

noreply@blogger.com (cheshirecat) — Wed, 11 May 2011 01:44:00 +0000

"In world of infinite choice, context, not the content is the king."
- Chris Anderson

My group does over a thousand events a year. Some are small 10x10s. Some are large user conferences. Some are internal events. For most of them we reinvent the wheel as though we had no idea this event was even on the radar. But this year we're getting smart and creating a true content hub. It's the only way to keep up with the speed of our event lives. Create once, execute multiple times. The "Rinse and Repeat" model.

But as Chris Anderson points out, all content all the time, anywhere you want it provides little by way of direction or usefulness to your customers.

We must take a cautious approach to our event portfolio's content. Categorize the audiences so we can categorize the content, or we risk the wrong message for the wrong audience at the wrong time. It feels good to have strategic direction again, and it will be such a lifesaver to have a hub of content to draw upon for an event anytime it's needed, and have the right content available to audiences online who missed an event or who are seeking more information. What a great feeling!

The secret to creating a thriving Long Tail business can be summarized in two imperitives:

Make everything available
Help me find it.

I believe this works internally as well as externally. If we create the content and make it easy for the internal teams to find and use, we will get much more use out of it. If we get it to the attendees when and where they need it, we will have a much greater insight.