15 Ways To Build A Kick Ass Corporate Meeting Production Company Show Podcast 134

Here is the podcast from the blog post from here.  I hope you enjoy it.

Photo credit

Here are five quick tips to get you feeling more comfortable to present at your next company gathering. I watch many presenters make the same mistakes over and over again bringing the high cost of meetings higher.  Use your companies time wisely and everyone benefits.

1) Know your attendees in the audience.  Think about who they are, demographics,  even what generations they come from.  Tailor your presentation to engage and educate them.

2) Practice, practice, practice- before you arrive.  Rehearse as much as you can.  Ask your event organiser or production company to build in ample rehearsal time.  Getting on that stage will make you more comfortable and it will show when you do your presentation. (Did I say practice?)

3) When you hit the stage breathe and take your time.  If you make a mistake dont point it out; you are the only one who probably noticed it. Try to tell stories. People love stories.  Even if you are talking numbers, put some real life stories into your presentation to engage the audience.

4) Visuals-  Ask the production company for help.  The graphics people do this every single day, so they can help you.  Hopefully, you will ask before you get to the venue, like way before if possible.  Use images to make points not long bullet point lists.  Also, don’t read your slides. (see #1 above)

5)  Have fun and be real.  No matter what level you may be on the companies organizational chart,  everyone likes someone who smiles and enjoys presenting. Everyone knows you aren’t a professional speaker so relax.   If you aren’t having fun then fake it till you make it!  (see picture above- Mike faking it)

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I moved on from there to spend more time in LinkedIn and Jigsaw to try to increase my client base. I graduated to using Twitter for hours and hours a day to Facebook to engage and interact with my network. One big takeaway firm all of this, I still follow a few folks who have held my attention from the first time logging on and discovering them.

Justin Kownacki is one of these people. I have only engaged with him a few times, basically to praise his work. (Here I go again.) But what he has done really caught my interest. I have been part of producing hundreds of corporate production video: conference opening videos, testimonials, instructional, internal and external marketing modules, instructional videos etc… over the years. I am also surrounded on these video projects by guys and gals who wanted to be the next Spielberg. But, they needed to pay the rent, so they do corporate work and then slowly lost their mojo to make their Spielberg dreams come true.

Justin put together an internet sitcom in 2003-2009 called Something to Be Desired (search on iTunes store for free downloads) which I loved. At that time Adam Curry was telling his audience that audio podcasting was going to change the world.

Justin is at it again….. and he needs help. Join me in helping him start a new series by throwing him a few bucks to make it happen. He is using the website Kickstarter.com to raise money. Justin has all sorts of offers for incentives to get you more involved if you contribute to this project. Get a T-Shirt, coffee, even a character named after you!

So join me in helping him get this web show off the ground: Head over to Kickstarter.com and throw this creative dude a bone or two.

Moments from Everynone on Vimeo.

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1) Find a network of trusted vendors ( Audio Visual, Scenic, Graphic and Motion Animators,creative directors, directors of photograph, leadership speakers, entertainment etc…)

2) Rent equipment and resources. Keeps overhead down, best and latest equipment used onsite.

3) Save Meeting Planners and Marketing Communications time, money and cohesive events.

So it is nice to see the regular world outside the ballroom can have this same model with Zilok now.  Zilok.com is a website where you can find other peoples unused stuff and rent it.  Lets say you are putting up a fence and need a drill for 3 days .  Instead of heading to Home Depot for your production tools which will be used that once and then stored in your own garage for years on end, you can rent your neighbors drill.

So join Zilok, get an account. Zilok will process the fees involved, tracks reputation of your renting partner and in some countries insurance can also be bought in case of damage.

Swaptree is another service for books and CDs.

Shared Earth lets Gardners use other folks land to grow food.

Zimride lets people share rides with facebook friends and friends of friends on facebook.

If this type thing floats your boat check out Rachel Botsman new book- “What’s mine is yours”
What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption

Do you know any other cool sites like this?  please share.

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Sitting down doing my morning meeting production work. Billing for last weeks show and I saw a shiny object that caught my attention on my tweet deck.  (tweetdeck is a twitter desktop client I use)  It was Jeff Hurt pointing out a Michael McCurry posting on ASAE which is going on right now.  His post was about virtual access to the ASAE conference in Los Angeles.  Pretty interesting take on the emergence of virtual access for people who cant make it to the conference. The price for the access was pretty spendy. $795 dollars.

I also saw a news post about OchoCinco the football player who was fined 25K by the NFL for tweeting during game time.

“Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver and conductor on the ego train Chad Ochocinco faces a hefty $25,000 fine for tweeting during a game. Rules laid out by the National Football League prohibit the use of cell phones, computers, or other gadgets by players and coaches from 90 minutes before kickoff to the end of the game.
Ochocinco took to his Twitter account to post a response, tweeting, “#OCNNnews I’ve been fined by the league a substantial amount of money for tweeting, 1st time twitter hasn’t made me money but cost me money.” He followed up the “news alert” with an apology of sorts to the NFL: “Dear NFL I apologize for tweeting during the game but that was 2 monthsof my Bugatti payments you just took from me,I won’t do it again.”

In both instances the associations and the league don’t get social media and the interwebs.  Both Michael McCurrys post and OhcoCinco, understand personal branding and the importance of networking.  To make something cost too much or keep people from hearing from a star, both are idiotic in my mind.  Marketing 101 is to try and get people to your events or watch it,  so you can collect fair revenue.

If ASAE wants someone like me to attend their live event they should make the virtual access free, or affordable, or get it sponsored.  Show people your cool content and fun hallway conversations. Make people want to attend. (Production can be expensive but not ASAE expensive)

The NFL should be rewarding OchoCinco (full disclosure I think he is an ass) to build the NFLs brand and get people talking about it- interacting and  ultimately get people to watch and go to the games. He is promoting himself and the league.

Now- I head back to my daily work!

Question? What is the most you have paid for virtual access to an event?

What is the most you have been fined for Tweeting?

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I am currently sitting at the control desk for a week long project where we are doing all the meeting production plus video production for our client.    This is a particularly challenging client who shoots for perfection onsite. The main challenge is the CEO makes many of the decisions the day of the meeting. This is kindling to start little spot fires of budget overages and stress but we contain the fires and find solutions.   As all of this is going on, the first thought that comes to mind is oh crap we could have done this weeks ago.   Looking for blame seems to be the answer as the long hours take their toll on everyone’s patience.   But, as I looked around at my core team they were unfazed. They rolled with it and pushed forward to make it a perfect show. (Like a duck to the client. Smooth above the water – but underneath their legs were paddling furiously)
For the fires we found solutions, and the client never even saw any smoke. Love that I helped build a kick ass production company that can work under this kind  of pressure flawlessly.
1) It is all about attitude and using your teams strengths to the fullest.
2) Build a strong Team.  Start with a great event producers, then build your cohesive, creative teams.
3) Size does not matter anymore. Resources do.  Obviously, the Internet has changed on how many companies do business. You can now hang your shingle on a web page not a building.
4) Remember business is hard. Simply put, if it isn’t hard you aren’t trying hard enough.
5) Take as many shots as you can. I still follow my coach Peter McCoy who told me when I was a kid playing for #1 AYSO soccer team The Hurricanes. Pulling me aside during a game he said. “Mike, The more times you shoot the more times you score.”   This is something I have used my whole life, to start scoring more goals, baskets, friends, girls, and for the past few years, more clients.
6) Build a family. The company I came from before starting Grass Shack Events & Media build a great company family. When the talk of how great the old days was the  constant topic I  knew it was time to move on to the next stage and start Grass Shack Events & Media.
7) Success happens in stages overall.  Overnight successes rarely happen.  Shoot for stages. Your drive will be the success of your business.
Vision. Work with your clients vision. Don’t let your own agenda get in the way of the clients vision. Solve their obstacles, provide solutions, and uniquely push their message to their audience. That’s why corporate meeting production companies and video production companies exist.
9) Help everyone.  I mean everyone. Competitors, resources,  everyone you can. One of the video editors we have here is a new guy. But this new editor thanked me. When he moved to San Francisco a few years back he called me and told me I gave him some names to talk to to find work.
10) Figure out what do you do and do it better than everyone else. Obsess that your company
Keep planning. When you stop planning you aren’t pushing
11) Perception- Perception in business it’s almost everything.  Obsess on how you want your company to be perceived and drive that perception.
12) Commit- Commit to goals. Tell others this commitment. You will be amazed after telling others how much faster you will accomplish them.
13) Credit- Start working on it now. Talk to your banks small business representative. Corporate shows are expensive and large companies procurement departments are slow as molasses.
14) Insurance- shop for insurance to cover your events. Some hotels try to get clients to use in house AV by having the production companies show proof of 1 million to 2 million dollars of coverage. And protect yourself and your crews.
15) Website. You need a place for people to find you and a place to send people to find out more about you.

As we work through this last General Session for today and do final preparations for tonight’s award dinner I again think about that first even and how Grass Shack Events & Media has evolved into such a great, fun company to work with and for.

Can you think of anything I missed in my list?  Love to add to it.

Please email me if you want to work with us on your next sales meeting or product launch!

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The local CEO Steve Jobs runs Apple and Pixar at the same time. Here at Grass Shack Events & Media we have a Steve Jobs of our own. No, she does not wear mock turtle necks and jeans everyday. But she does wear Monolo Blahnik heels pretty regularly. Her name is Carrie McAllen.

Grass Shack Events & Media and Meetings Podcast has been quite successful as start up event businesses go. Our very first large meeting(s) production was with Siemens Medical Solutions. We were lucky to have such a great client in Ede ten-Weges who led the effort from Germany. His vision was successfully brought to life. 6 meetings, 2 client events all in one week. Since then we have provided solutions for our clients sales meetings, and a burgeoning video production department.

The foundation of all these successes is our President Carrie McAllen.

Carrie started Grass Shack Events & Media, and when the team was in place and humming nicely, she was recruited by a headhunter to take a business development position with Hilton Hotels. We talked about it and she wanted another challenge.   She moved into a Steve Jobs like role.   She runs our company in the evenings and works full time with Hilton during the day.

At Grass Shack our competitors have been winning awards, but they are the sort of awards you apply for,  and then pay a fee to be recognized.  Carrie on the other hand has been winning  awards internally for the Hilton globally.  The past two years she has been kicking ass at both companies and I wanted to recognize her talent and hard work here on our blog.

Here are the two most recent awards she won:

1) Best Utilization of Online Marketing- Doubletree Hotels Worldwide.
Her Online Marketing and Social Media efforts are setting the standard for Hilton Hotels and are used in training.

2) 2010 Global Leadership Award for Hilton Worldwide for Sales and Marketing.
This award was open to all Hilton brands (Hilton, Waldorf Astoria, Doubbletree etc…) and she won it!!! She build targeted revenue generation marketing campaigns that were recognized by Hilton worldwide.

Congratulations to Carrie!

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Today’s show is an interview with Patrick Payne founder of Quickmobile.com.

QuickMobile’s events platform is comprised of pre-designed, customizable, plug & play application that your attendees can simply use before, onsite and after the event to further networking, content spread  and offers up onsite communications.  The interface can significantly reduce your events carbon footprint by eliminating conference guides.

Patrick talks about the benefits and features of the Quickmobile platform.

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Meetings Podcast Going Digital 3-

EIBTM Worldwide Technology Watch Contest for Meeting Technology & Innovation

Samuel J Smith interviews the Judges of EIBTM Worldwide Technology Watch Contest Chairman Corbin Ball and Ruud Janssen. Full disclosure Sam is also a judge in this contest.

Explanation of the award, the applicants, how it is judged.

What are the Trends the judges looking for? Where are they coming from?
Mobile, tablets, social media, websites?

Will technologies blend into meetings space. Adoption from industry.

What do the winners get?

Sam describes what winning at Spotme was like.. He also talked to last years winner Jordan Schwartz

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Seriously, this video made me think about how we are delivering, capturing and sharing our content in a way people want it.

But more importantly, is it passionite?  If you are passionite about your topic or what you are speaking about people will absorb and share your information.

Obviously, this guy is a kook and very passionite about rainbows. Other people felt that passion and put a twist on it.

Be careful Double Rainbows are so intense–

Mash up—

Acoustic

Jimmy Fallon Parody

Is your content passionite and bringing you following?

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Top 5 Results From MPI World Education Congress  in Vancouver

We talked about these five top results from MPI World Education Congress and a few more on the podcast.

1) Vancouver Convention Centre- just amazing (listen to Show 130 with Jinny Wu)

2) Community- really great community of people. I met so many interesting people.

3) Technology- MPI is trying hard to stay up with the technology trends- the Quickmobile app- the handy guides — tag reader– social media gurus- (get people excited about social media)— New Website launched- Live Stream for virtually attendees- Hit or miss? Sustainable section- Carbon footprint calculator to gauge impact of meetings.

” Technology of humans does not change face-to face meetings will always be here”

4) Our interview with David Rich from George P Johnson- —the session with Cisco and George P Johnson giving us their Digital blueprints

Strategy before tactics (Using technology and live meetings)
Understand your objectives— Who is your audience– Strategy– Technology (fish where the fish are)

5) Inspiring Keynotes

Emmaunel Gobillot- Fantastic speaker  who compared meetings to Ikea-

Seth Matthison- His talk on Generations- So so interesting- the differences- and understanding who your coworkers and audience is. Take it into consideration when presenting (How generations absorb or like theire information given)

Jeremy Gutsche– Mellinum- quick fast slides- images and facts…. cool guy with some great information.

“Obsess about your story relentlessly”

Also a quick number (6) CORPORATE responsibility— Programs MPI presented attendees with.

Seth described also that the generation coming up the Millenniums are looking for these types of programs in the meetings they choose to attend. (A footnote on this: the Salmon CSR Mike attended at WEC most of the attendees were Generation Xers )  

Photo Hat Tip

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Corporate meeting production teams are explained with the use of simple animation program. The questions I am asked regularly: “What do your those people backstage really do? What does that guy with all the video screens do?”   Are not answered with this tongue and cheek video.

It is a funny look at what is going through the minds of those folks behind the screens and drape.

Or really the one persons mind who wrote this.  Funny stuff.  And sadly, true.

Different By Nature Community Service Project

What  they said we were going to do: Working stream side in one of North Vancouver’s forest parks, WEC attendees will be involved in various activities such as replacing invasive plants with native plants that provide critical shade, shelter and protection from erosion. We will be shown how to survey the area and identify species.

What we really did: Worked our asses off pulling out the Blackberry and other bad plants.  We laughed, joked and I made some great friends.  Plus, when were done, we had made a difference, and I had some new drinking buddies.

Oh yes, we also went to a fish hatchery for a bit and learned why we were going to work our asses off!  Very cool day!

WEC Puppy Cuddling with PADS!

This fricken puppy was so fricken cute. It hurts to look at the picture.  Also, real working dogs came with their owners who were in wheel chairs. It was great to see the impact these dogs can make. Even the ladies in the wheelchairs wanted to hug the crap out of the puppy.

The name of the organization is Pacific Assistance Dogs (PADS) who raises and trains assistance dogs for people who are facing the daily challenges of life with a physical disability or who are Deaf or hard of hearing. These highly skilled dogs allow our clients to experience a greater level of independence and an enhanced quality of life.   PADS is a charitable, non-profit organization located in Burnaby, B.C., with an office in Calgary. PADS services people in B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.   PADS relies entirely on fund-raising, grants and donations to finance the care and training of our amazing dogs.

Clean The World Foundation

Clean the World Foundation, Inc. is committed to reducing the waste created by discarded soap and shampoo products and preventing the millions of deaths caused by hygiene-related illnesses around the world.  What a great idea and I posted about them a couple of times in the past.  If you are in Orlando do a community service program with your attendees at the center!  Save lives!

Dress For Success

Dress for Success was there to promote the economic independence of disadvantaged women by providing professional attire, a network of support and the career development tools to help women thrive in work and in life.  MPI attendees brought all sorts of business clothing for the drive to help people get successful!

Clean The World takes used hotel soap, recycle them and sends them to developing countries to save lives. Great idea that keeps the soap from our landfills and literally into (and now clean) hands to stop the spread of disease.

Please think about taking your attendees to their facility for a community service program.

visit Clean the World

MPI WEC Recap Show 1: Meeting Podcast Tweetup, opening reception, opening general session, puppy cuddling, salmon restoration project and the beautiful Vancouver Convention Center.

Blunder of the day/podcast: Calling Charlie Spiegel, Director of Membership” John ” on the podcast.  He is a great guy and gave away 2 MPI Renewal memberships to story slam winners at the Meetingspodcast Tweetup.  You can reach him at +1 972-702-3074 cspiegel@mpiweb.org

“Sorry Charlie”

Show notes-

Today’s show we cover our trip to Vancouver for MPI WEC.

The Tweetup we are sponsoring

Audible book of the show: Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew B Crawford  (on Amazon- Shop Class as Soulcraft Affiliate link)

We discuss Jeff Hurts Blog post:  “Is MPI Buying Positive Social Media Mentions For WEC?”

MPI WEC Mobile application made by Quickmobile 

The Meeting Planners podcast source for what’s new and exciting in meetings and events industry!

Mike McAllen of Grass Shack Events & Media  http://www.grassshackroad.com/

Jon Trask of Alliant Event Services   http://www.alliantevents.com/

MeetingsPodcast Sponsors-
Grab a free audiobook from our sponsor Audible (Yes FREEE!) Free book.

Please leave us a question or comment, which we will try to address on the show ASAP!

Email us at meetings podcast@gmail.com or comment here on the MeetingsPodcast site.   www.MeetingsPodcast.com

Music by the http://www.delgadobrothers.com/

Audio mixing by www.RipTideGraphics.com

Brought to you by Grass Shack Events & Media

Copyright 2010 MeetingsPodcast

Show Notes 127

Back to our regular format Jon and Mike discuss some interesting topics and their upcoming trip (with Samuel J Smith) to MPI’s World Education Congress in Vancouver.

Join us in Vancouver for a Tweetup!  http://tweetvite.com/event/wec10

Grab a free audiobook from our sponsor Audible (Yes FREEE!)  Free book.

1) Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/AdrianAwards

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/HSMAI-Adrian-Awards/131625723537882

2) AIR passengers will soon be able to use their iPhones  instead of boarding

passes to get on a flight.

The new application from British Airways uses a

barcode on the phone’s screen which is scanned at the departure gate. The iPhone

boarding pass will be available on BA flights from Heathrow to Edinburgh from Monday.

Although other airlines, such as Air France, have

already introduced the barcode technology, BA has gone further, incorporating

the boarding pass within an app that will also contain flight information,

check-in times and, eventually, boarding gates and boarding times.

It is expected to be available for all domestic routes by the end of next

month, for short-haul within six months and for long-haul by the middle of next

year.

3) Lewis CK —  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOtEQB-9tvk

4) Jon, Mike and Sam(Going Digital) will be headed to Vancouver BC For MPI’s World Education Congress.  Also, we will be hosting a Tweetup.   http://tweetvite.com/event/wec10   Please join us.

5) MPI WEC -Pacific Assistance Dog Society – PADS- Puppy Socialization

http://www.mpiweb.org/Events/WEC2010/SCHEDULE/CommunityService

6) MPI WEC Skype calls to USA- need a wifi connection. Save some money.

7) MPI rolls out a new website.  http://www.mpiweb.org

Utilize the MPI community -  It is a Pathable product and a great way to start connecting with other attendees and find out what is going on!

The Meeting Planners podcast source for what’s new and exciting in meetings and events industry!

Mike McAllen of Grass Shack Events & Media  http://www.grassshackroad.com/

Jon Trask of Alliant Event Services   http://www.alliantevents.com/

Please leave us a question or comment, which we will try to address on the show ASAP!

Email us at meetings podcast@gmail.com

or here on the MeetingsPodcast site.

www.MeetingsPodcast.com

Music by the http://www.delgadobrothers.com/

Audio mixing by www.RipTideGraphics.com

Brought to you by Grass Shack Events & Media

Copyright 2010 MeetingsPodcast

I had dinner with a friend who went on, and on,  about how they were wronged at work. It is something we all go though and I listened to them.  Life is unfair sometimes. But how you react to life, brings you a life filled with laughter, and adventure; or you can choose one of stress and complaints.

Which have you chosen?

Have a great rest of the week.

Mike and Jon discuss their individual Summer Travel’s on Meetings Podcast Show 126.
Get the skinny on Jon and Mike’s travels this summer.

Here are a few links:
Jon’s travel blog–  http://jonctrask.wordpress.com/

Mike’s travel blog– http://mcallenusavacation.blogspot.com/

http://www.bluegrass.com/telluride/
http://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/
http://www.hopfarmfestival.com/home.aspx
http://www.waterfrontbluesfest.com/

The Meeting Planners podcast source for what’s new and exciting in meetings and events industry!

Mike McAllen of Grass Shack Events & Media  http://www.grassshackroad.com/

Jon Trask of Alliant Event Services   http://www.alliantevents.com/

MeetingsPodcast Sponsors-

Audible (Yet your free audiobook download at www.audiblepodcast.com/meetingspodcast)

Please leave us a question or comment, which we will try to address on the show ASAP!

Email us at meetings podcast@gmail.com

or here on the MeetingsPodcast site.

www.MeetingsPodcast.com

Music by the http://www.delgadobrothers.com/

Photo credit to Parksy (Peace/love!)

Audio mixing by www.RipTideGraphics.com

Brought to you by Grass Shack Events & Media

Copyright 2010 MeetingsPodcast

10 steps to creating a corporate Powerpoint template

1) Win the business.

2) Celebrate.

3) Get to work.

4) Research: Gather logos, style guides, target audience, technologies to be used.

5) Design and let client look over comps.  Usually we provide three variations or comps.

6) Design finalized after changes.

7)  Client delivers content of the slides.

Cleanup and formatting into template.

9) Final Sign-off

10) Email executive the speaker template.

Obviously, this is a perfect world, which we get to visit sometimes.    If these steps are followed you will have a successful template development.

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This show Mike McAllen  interviews  the owner of Tempo Live Events, Nancy Spooner.

Tempo Live Events is a great resource for meeting production companies and meeting planners to consider when production or creative staffing is needed for events.

Transcripts on the way!
Please leave us a question or comment, which we will try to address on the show ASAP!

Email us at meetings podcast@gmail.com

or here on the MeetingsPodcast site.

www.MeetingsPodcast.com

Music by the http://www.delgadobrothers.com/

Audio mixing by www.RipTideGraphics.com

Brought to you by Grass Shack Events & Media
Copyright 2010 MeetingsPodcast

Jon and Mike look at some web tools that event professionals can use to make travel plans.

www.SeatGuru.com Find Pick your airline seat easily by using this free service.  (TripAdvisor.com)

www.Tripit.com New features with Tripit.com.

Betterbidding.com

HotWire.com

Priceline.com

Arizona new laws, oil leak tragedy chat on how it is effecting our industry.

What we said:

Mike McAllen: Welcome back to the Meetings Podcast. This is Mike McAllen with Grass Shack Events & Media and we have Jon Trask also on the line. Hi, Jon.

Jon Trask: Hello, hello.

Mike McAllen: Jon is from Alliant Events of course. Jon, long time no talk.

Jon Trask: Yes, too long. We’ve been talking about revamping the podcast a little and we just need to keep it moving forward. It’s actually – it has been what? Two, two and a half years now we’ve been doing the podcast?

Mike McAllen: Yes, it has been a long time. This is show 124, I think, so a lot of them under our belt and so, we got some fun stuff to talk about today. Today, let’s talk about some of the travel sites.

Jon Trask: Yes, we were talking before the show a little bit about some of our favorites and just sites that we’ve talked about on the podcast before. But it’s funny when I look back, it’s like we talked about some of these in 2008.

Mike McAllen: [laughs]

Jon Trask: Which is really quite amazing that we’ve been doing this that long and some of these have really stuck at least for me. I’ve ended up using them frequent times through the years and so, it seems like it [Indiscernible] [0:01:33]. So, do you want to start out with any of your favorites or you want me to dive in?

Mike McAllen: Well, I thought it was pretty interesting, the SeatGuru because I’ve used that before and I hadn’t been back to the site in a while so it was very interesting to go back on there and I know we’ve – I remember you and I talked about this because we’re both kind of large men and it’s always a nice thing to find the seats that you can get a little bit more leg room if you can because, you know, it’s hard to sometimes fit in, squeeze into those seats but it’s fun that you could actually put in your flight number and your plane now where before, they just had the types of planes and that TripAdvisor now owns SeatGuru so it’s tied in to their whole system which is a fantastic thing.

Jon Trask: Which – and TripAdvisor is another great site that I don’t know if we’ve talked about on the podcast before but I found it to be really interesting and I’ve used it quite a bit like on my personal vacation when I was planning things up, looking around to decide. Like, did I want to stay in this hotel or that hotel? And it gave me a tremendous amount of information and SeatGuru is another part of that. All this is just really good stuff for advanced research about going to a venue, going to a restaurant, all sorts of information that we can use going into different cities.

Mike McAllen: It’s so true. There’s just so much information and you forget that sometimes, when you start – you know, you just go and book – I’m booking flights to go on some show. I’m just looking at price really but there are a lot of other things you can look into. You know, I mean, besides your seats, you know, just one of the best – you know, the best flights to take and, you know. And they have all kinds of information like on this – on SeatGuru, they have like, you know, iPhone travel apps, reviews and they have a – you know, the power guide, laptop power guides, luggage shipping services, noise canceling headphones. They have everything that you might need. I probably – now that I’m revisiting the site, I probably will spend a little bit more time on it so [laughs] …

Jon Trask: Yes, I mean I picked my seat for my upcoming trip to Europe on SeatGuru by looking here and figuring out which one had a power port and things like that so I would be able to plug my iPod in and not run out of power on a long flight.

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Jon Trask: You know, and just little subtleties that – and we’re a planning business, you know. With a little bit of planning, you can make your trip much more pleasant.

Mike McAllen: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. And plus nowadays with the internet, it would be nice to find flights that have internet on it because they can get some work done too.

Jon Trask: Right. [laughs]

Mike McAllen: You know.

Jon Trask: Yes, they’ve invaded the last [Indiscernible] [0:04:14] of being able to travel and get away from things. It used to be at least later on the plane, you couldn’t do anything.

Mike McAllen: Right. Not anymore.

Jon Trask: I can work on the laptop a little. I’ll try and work on it on the plane.

[Laughter]

Mike McAllen: Alright. So what else do we have? We have …

Jon Trask: So that was SeatGuru.

Mike McAllen: Yes, SeatGuru and wanted to talk a little bit about TripIt which is another one we talked about way back when.

Jon Trask: Yes, and I’ve become a real fan of TripIt. I’ve been using it since we talked about it on the podcast and that includes a number of trips out of town. Since I got an iPhone, they have a really nice iPhone app for it. You can’t do a lot of updates but it downloads all your information on to your iPhone. So when I’m in another city, I can send all of my confirmations with my confirmation numbers and the website and all the contact information and all the confirmation stuff that I’ve gotten by email. It holds it all in one place. I can pull it up on my phone and have all those numbers at my fingertips.

Mike McAllen: Right, instead of fumbling around with your paperwork, huh?

Jon Trask: And it does some nice things because like when you email your plans over to it, with your confirmation number. There was a change in my schedule about a month ago in my flight schedule. You know, something that I would have gotten an email about and [Indiscernible] [0:05:41] that I would have probably forgotten about it or filed the email and then had to go back and look for – oh, when was my flight taking off? It made all those adjustments for me in TripIt. So I even have the old times in here. I just have the correct timing. I’ve got a button for online check-in. I’m sitting on my next upcoming trip. I’ve got a button to check.

Flight status, it automatically downloads maps of my destinations. And then I’ve uploaded each different thing that I’m doing while I’m on vacation, where I’ve gotten a confirmation mail. So I’ve gotten all of those captured in here with the booking information and whether it’s will call or not and it has just got a huge amount of information that I can either access off the Web or carry with me and I’ve been really impressed by how it works. Plus you can kind of keep an eye on your connections. I know they have a new group function where you can see where the people at your company are traveling so you can like combine people into a group network but then I have just individual connections with different people I know in the business and different friends and family and so I get information when they’re traveling, where they’re going and what dates they’re traveling. I don’t get any of the details of their trip but I just get the window of time. Like someone is going to Las Vegas for four days or something.

Mike McAllen: Right, right, right, right. And then it’s cool too to know that there – people are there. You know, you – I’ve just looked in through those now. Seems some people are coming to San Francisco. It’s like catch it. Give them a call. Right? Hook up with them. That’s really a cool, little, you know, feature.

Jon Trask: And you can, you know, share it through your Facebook, with your friends and family there. I know one of the things that they’ve just posted into – under their news just the headline here. I thought was kind of striking and that’s more than 10,000 companies are now using TripIt groups.

Mike McAllen: It’s a really good idea. Very cool. So TripIt is something that – it’s where we should go. Go check out.

Jon Trask: Yes. Yes. We talked about it a couple of years ago and I’ve definitely tested it a bit and I’ve been quite impressed. I found it really useful.

Mike McAllen: Very cool. Yes. Now, I’m just looking through here and it’s taking me away.

[Laughter]

Jon Trask: Come back, Mike …

Mike McAllen: Yes.

[Laughter]

Mike McAllen: So – okay. So, what else do we have here? We have …

Jon Trask: Well, we were talking about BetterBidding and BiddingForTravel which our websites that I’ve gone to in reference and having used both Hotwire and Priceline for personal trips and different things. I found these to be useful within a limited range because really with something like Hotwire or Priceline, you got to go into it with your eyes open. You know that you’re buying blind and that you’re not guaranteed anything and so I’ve done a lot of research on both of these before and still [Indiscernible] [0:08:36] how it would exactly bear out but I have had it bear out a few times.

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Jon Trask: So I found it within a limited range to be somewhat useful as a reference and really what I use it for a lot is I will go down and let’s say I’m going to New York. I’ll pull up the New York hotel list on both of these and just try and get a sense of within each of the areas because on Priceline or Hotwire, the areas are sort of arbitrarily designed. It will be like Midtown Manhattan but it’s kind of their version of a map, not what people might call Midtown.

Mike McAllen: Right.

Jon Trask: So this gives me a sense of what hotels people in the past have gotten off of their bidding in these areas.

Mike McAllen: Right.

Jon Trask: And that can be useful. I mean, maybe not as much for a meeting planner who’s kind of booking things, you know, in a sort of different way but it is sort of a way to look for hotels that are maybe doing deals or getting a sense of, you know, who Priceline and Hotwire are working with right now.

Mike McAllen: Right, right, right.

Jon Trask: So that’s BetterBidding and BiddingForTravel. Both of those are kind of user-supported, very basic, straightforward. I don’t think anybody else owns them.

Mike McAllen: And so you can get in there and get a [Indiscernible] [0:09:55] on wherever you’re staying so if you do one – I’ve just had a [Indiscernible]. We did a little house swap with these people in Australia and they came out. We’re staying here at our other home up in the hills and they came into the city for one day and oh, we found this great hotel for 60 – for – it was like $60 a night. And I was oh, well, where is it? They’re like, oh, it’s down off the [Indiscernible] [0:10:16] and it was like, you know, it’s down to the [Indiscernible] which isn’t [Indiscernible]. And so I was just, oh, I don’t know if you want to stay down there but they didn’t mind at all. It was like – it was kind of a crowdy area but they – you know, they said they just wanted to – because they said the rooms were clean and nice and that it was – you know, but it is an interesting thing so you can look up and really kind of get the [Indiscernible] [0:10:34] on where you’re going or where you’re staying.

Jon Trask: Well, and that in particular is where I found TripAdvisor to be a – to be really useful. When I’m booking something personal and really trying to save money and, you know, doing something inexpensively, I lean real heavy on all of these websites.

Mike McAllen: Yes, yes, and it is nice to have and it’s also nice to have that iPhone app too because then you could really – you know, you don’t necessarily need an internet connection. You can use your phone to check them out.

Jon Trask: Right. You’re able to carry that along with you.

Mike McAllen: Alright. So, that’s all we really had for that, wasn’t it?

Jon Trask: Yes.

Mike McAllen: Yes …

Jon Trask: Just wanted to revisit a few of the nice places we found in the past related to travel and getting into different cities and I think all of those I have used multiple times and had really pretty much good experiences with. I would recommend them all.

Mike McAllen: Right, right, right, right. So, I think the next thing we should talk about a little bit, we kind of had a pre-talk about this, Tennessee, the floods and …

Jon Trask: Yes.

Mike McAllen: … the Gaylord Opryland in Nashville there had a pretty horrible flooding going on there but kind of interesting things that are happening around the country right now.

Jon Trask: Yes, it’s definitely a real blow to that area and I know I saw some photos on a Flickr site of the damage to the Opryland and it was really disheartening to see. I mean, I know they’re going to bounce back but that’s a huge number of rooms taken out of circulation for a number of months, I’m sure, to clean that up.

Mike McAllen: Yes. I was reading too about that at the conferences when Gaylord is open. It brings in like any other ones around it, the other hotels. That it brings about $50 million a month to the local economy there when the resort is open. So that’s a huge amount of money.

Jon Trask: Yes, yes.

Mike McAllen: That’s now gone so that there – and people are moving away.

Jon Trask: Well, there is a – there’s a website for the MPI Tennessee Chapter and they’ve got a kind of unite and a kind of get together and help working within the meetings industry in their local community so I think that would be a good place if anybody was interested in maybe trying to find out what was going on or contributing in some way. I would recommend maybe checking out their site for us. It’s called MPI Tennessee Members Unite and they’ve got assistance available to members and just, you know, I’m sure there will be people who are looking to relocate meetings or, you know, find alternatives and things like that and I’m sure that the local community would have the best sorts of information and one of the things to keep in mind is, you know, even when something like this happens, not everything is shut down.

Mike McAllen: Right.

Jon Trask: And so, you know, not overreacting and immediately like walking away from an area because now more than ever, areas are going to want the support.

Mike McAllen: Yes, it’s interesting how the dynamics have changed in a lot of these places. Like, you know, before, we were talking about New Orleans and getting people to go back there and meet in New Orleans and then now, of course, New Orleans, there’s this oil slick – you know, well, it’s not right off of New Orleans but the whole gulf there.

Jon Trask: Right.

Mike McAllen: It’s just horrible situations for these places that – because I was reading a lot of these Nashville places are going out to New Orleans to – they’re moving to – well, not all of them but I saw two of them were changing to go down there to – there in Orlando but interesting how the whole world is – things are changing with these meetings industry.

Jon Trask: Well, and, you know, that actually kind of dovetails into the other thing that we talked about, touching on during this discussion and that’s the situation in Arizona.

Mike McAllen: Oh, yes.

Jon Trask: And, you know, there’s kind of a big political talk going on there and this is a very non-political website and podcast and information so the thing is – what happens and just like Vegas before it, when you start boycotting an area, to make a political point, the people you end up harming are the meetings industry people like us who regardless of what our political position is on it, are trying and they’re living in that area and didn’t necessarily have control over any of these things.

Mike McAllen: Right, right. And that – and of course, here is a thing that’s not a natural disaster. It’s another one of these political things like you said, much like the whole housing stuff that happened too. That’s kind of a – not a natural disaster. And how horrible for these people too trying to [Indiscernible] [0:15:50]. The meetings are just running out of there now. I actually had a conversation with a friend of mine who works at another company and all their audio visual comes from a company in Arizona and they were talking about not using them which I thought was funny like …

Jon Trask: Yes.

Mike McAllen: You know, that’s crazy.

Jon Trask: Yes.

Mike McAllen: They have nothing to do with this, you know.

Jon Trask: Yes, and I mean all you do is hurt those people who maybe even didn’t vote [Inaudible] [0:16:18] involved in this or something, you know. It’s – it just – I think it attacks the wrong part of the world. I think it goes after the wrong people and it makes people in a tough economy who are struggling in any way really teetering on the brink. I mean, Las Vegas, I know is still struggling, you know, and New Orleans is struggling and these are for very different reasons but the fact is, all these things are happening to people. They’re not just happening to an abstract city.

Mike McAllen: Right. [Indiscernible] [0:16:52] all goes back to the money side. People know when they make a statement like who is the representative that said that, that these people should stop meeting there. You know, it’s money so that they think that they can change it by hitting you where it hurts most and that’s your wallet. So – but it does hurt our industry the worst.

Jon Trask: Yes, because we – you know, we’re the hospitality industry and the meetings industry so we deal the most directly with people who are coming into town on a temporary basis or send people in to a place on a temporary basis and that’s one of the easy targets in all these things.

Mike McAllen: Right, right, right. Now, where did I see that? Like Phoenix was saying that it’s going to lose like $50 million or something for the …

Jon Trask: Actually, there’s an article in Hotel News Now that said Phoenix stands to lose $90 million in hotel and convention business over the next five years by city officials’ estimates.

Mike McAllen: Wow! That even – that’s amazing to me. This is horrible that the Opryland Hotel is 50 million a month that this article said out at the …

Jon Trask: Right.

Mike McAllen: … Nashville Business Journal and then here, there are 90 million out of the next – but I guess this is a much bigger deal because everything is shutting down completely at the Opryland but wow, amazing that they – well the law itself is a – it’s such an interesting law. I mean, the – Arizona has been known to do that. They throw out …

Jon Trask: Yes, they’ve gone against the grain a few times and, you know, I think there are a lot of judgments being made by people who aren’t really researching one way or the other. You know, I’m all for a reason to opinion and reason [Indiscernible] [0:18:41] in talking about stuff but I’ve seen people on both sides of the issue like any volatile political issue. I’ve seen people that I think probably haven’t really qualified their position but are going off of something they’ve heard from someone else or something they’ve seen on TV or radio or something and I think what you got to do is research this for yourself, come up with something that you feel comfortable with and this is the kind of thing that it’s going to come in to a discussion with your management and such. If you’re talking about a meeting going there or a meeting not going there, it’s going to take some serious internal debate within your stakeholders and making sure that you got people on board one way or the other.

Mike McAllen: Yes, and then a lot of these companies too don’t want to have to deal with the fallout if it does, you know.

Jon Trask: Yes.

Mike McAllen: Then, you know, especially if they have, you know, Hispanic people working for them. They don’t want to have to deal with that, any of this stuff, you know.

Jon Trask: Yes, yes. Well, there’s an interesting – one of the articles you linked from a Tucson television station was about the Glass Art Society’s convention being canceled.

Mike McAllen: Yes. And it’s pretty big, huh?

Jon Trask: You know, down – one of the quotes that jumped out at me was that the artists say their goal is to promote art, not politics.

Mike McAllen: Right.

Jon Trask: You know, once again, there are people behind all this and understanding the need to make a political point and understanding, you know, very, very strong positions. You’re really definitely affecting people no matter what you decide.

Mike McAllen: Right.

Jon Trask: So that’s not groundbreaking. I’m sure everybody knows that at this point but …

[Laughter]

Jon Trask: But it’s good to be reminded.

Mike McAllen: Yes, it’s an interesting dynamic. I mean, of course, now, if you were in another city, you should be, you know, running in there [Indiscernible] [0:20:41] their – these groups that are going in there. I’m sure they’re getting hit hard by them too.

Jon Trask: Yes.

Mike McAllen: You know, it’s very competitive to get people’s business in there and, you know, the industry in Arizona does – the meetings and events industry doesn’t need this. I mean, there’s enough fighting going on to get people’s business so …

Jon Trask: Yes. Well, I stayed in California where we live, you know. We have businesses being poached all the time. There are – other cities come in and advertise, trying to attract business away from California into their area. You know, lower taxes, lower this and better workforce and those types of things and so, you know, it goes on all the time. It’s just – it’s unfortunate that in a rough economy, we’ve got all of these various things battering our industry.

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Jon Trask: To have to deal with. It’s bad enough just dealing with booking the shows and making them happen.

Mike McAllen: Yes, amazing. And that I know – got down there in Scottsdale a gazillion times for Phoenix Scottsdale area there.

Jon Trask: Yes.

Mike McAllen: First off. And wow, I haven’t run into it myself at all with any of my clients. Have you at all?

Jon Trask: No, I haven’t and in fact, Friday, I was just talking to somebody about a potential show later this year in Phoenix and to be honest, I didn’t even make the connection until we were doing the podcast here and I thought about that. It’s like, huh, I wonder if this will affect that group.

Mike McAllen: Yes, yes, and you know, one of my clients, they’re doing a small show right – you know, today in Scottsdale and I was talking to her this morning and I was thinking – made me think about it too. Wow, I wonder if they’ll keep going there, you know.

Jon Trask: Right, right.

Mike McAllen: But …

Jon Trask: Well …

[Crosstalk] [0:22:21]

Jon Trask: The AV company being affected by that even though they are not doing business there. They’re going to other cities to do that. That’s kind of scary as an AV guy.

Mike McAllen: Yes, yes, yes, yes. It was really interesting to hear that they’re – that they knew – yes. I don’t know. I don’t really think they would follow through with that but maybe. You never know. Well, at least I’m talking about it which is scary. It’s like, you know, you’re thinking like wow.

Jon Trask: [laughs] Yes, it has at least occurred to somebody in their organization that they might give up and in particular, if this group is doing a good job, if this company is doing well, why would you give that – and particularly, if you’re not even giving the money to – directly to Arizona. I mean, you’re meeting somewhere else and they’re supporting you there. You know, it’s not even like a hotel where you’re paying the taxes there.

Mike McAllen: Right, right, right. I don’t know either. Interesting dynamics. So, now that we’ve talked about TripIt, tell me what is your – do you have any travel plans coming up?

Jon Trask: Yes, it’s becoming an incredibly busy summer. I’ve mentioned before on the – here on the podcast about my – kind of a big trip coming up to England for personal reasons so I’ve got that starting in about three weeks and that’s a huge, huge thing then I believe we’re going to be taking the podcast back to WEC.

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Jon Trask: So it looks like you and I will be in Vancouver grabbing the people outside of meeting rooms and accosting them to talk on microphones and things.

Mike McAllen: And I guess, this time, since we’re not speaking, we really get our set-up going. The last time, we had a little kind of a hiccup because we’re both giving sessions so this will be kind of fun. I think maybe we can really make a fun time out of the whole thing like really get some great interviews and maybe to be a little beat up and stuff and …

Jon Trask: I think we should have a Meetings Podcast meet-up while we’re there.

Mike McAllen: Yes, for sure.

Jon Trask: And hopefully, we can interview some folks. If anybody is listening to the podcast, it is going to be at WEC. Drop us an email so we can come up with a time to connect with you and just meet you in person and talk about stuff.

Mike McAllen: Yes …

Jon Trask: [Indiscernible] [0:24:41]

Mike McAllen: Yes, we can talk about setting up a little table there and getting some interviews so it should be fun.

Jon Trask: So, very excited about that. So yes, that’s the majority of my travel then another show in Vegas, speaking of Vegas so busy times coming ahead which are good.

Mike McAllen: Yes, yes, yes. Alright. Well, I guess that’s it. Jon, thank you once again for the hundredth or so time.

Jon Trask: The 124th time.

Photo Credit Gorden Tarpley

Did you know teleprompters were created to help soap stars not politicians?  I know we have one CEO event production client that will use a teleprompter every time we do meeting production for his company.  On the last 3 meetings he has requested a teleprompter.  Yet he really doesn’t use it.  But it makes him more comfortable.  The first teleprompter was used in 1949 and it was invented by Frank Barkau who wrote the script on a long roll of paper and loaded it onto a hand cranked scroll.

A teleprompter now is basically a two way mirror. The modern teleprompters use a dielectrically coated like electroplating with a molecule thin  layer of aluminum or iron.  The speaker can see their script on the mirror, which reflects it from underneath. The audience only sees a transparent pane.  Little better than Franks hand cranked scroll

If you are high definition shooting your executives at a teleprompter be-careful of picking up the teleprompter.  Standard definition doesn’t seem to have a problem.  New low iron silica glass hopefully will take care of this problem.

Make sure you get the content as early as possible to the teleprompter tech. Doing a rehearsal is always a great way to head off any unanticipated problems when show time runs around fr the tech or the speaker.

Ronald Reagan was called “The Great Communicator” and always used a teleprompter.  So encourage your executives to use them if it makes them more comfortable.

From Wikipedia– A teleprompter (also known as an autocue) is a display device that prompts the person speaking with an electronic visual text of a speech or script. Using a teleprompter is similar to the practice of using cue cards. The screen is in front of and usually below the lens of the camera, and the words on the screen are reflected to the eyes of the performer using a sheet of clear glass or specially prepared beam splitter. Light from the performer passes through the front side of the glass into the lens, while a shroud surrounding the lens and the back side of the glass prevents unwanted light from reflecting into the lens.

As the speaker does not need to look down to consult written notes, he or she appears to have memorized the speech or be speaking spontaneously, and will look directly into the camera lens. Cue cards, on the other hand, will always be placed away from the lens axis, making the speaker look at a point beside the camera, which leaves a “distracted” impression.

Image Credit for Clever Kindle Teleprompter- PrimeImageMedia.com

We travel all over the country, but this month we are working in the San Francisco Bay Area doing meeting production and video production with some tech clients. This week we are producing some videos for Yahoo Inc.  Pretty fun project with lots of very cool areas and elements in the training area.

Here are some corporate video tips that might help you prepare for your next video project.

Why? Why are you making the video(s)?

Who is the audience(s)?

What are the goals of the video(s)?

Where is this video(s) going to be seen? Which brings up format issues  and the best shooting styles for the chosen medium.

What is the budget?  Keep in mind and investigate how these videos may be used for other current campaigns, events or meetings. How many days will it take? Are all executives or talent available?

Who is going to make the final call/decision on the script, and ultimately the finished product.

Site selection for shoot. Is it in a controlled studio space or office? Or is it outside or venue? Each will bring its own set of questions and equipment.

Scheduling is very important. (see budget) Keep this in mind at all times.

Is the talent internal or actors? Meeting with these folks in advance is always a good idea if possible.  Make the talent aware of what to wear, how long they should expect to be there, and what is expected of them. Also make sure they get the script in advance of the shoot day(s) Rehearsal time should always be factored in.

Check power issues, lighting/sound in shoot areas with a site survey if it is not in a studio setting.

Rule of thumb 2 edit days for each day of shooting video.  Of course this can change with complexity of project.

Think about makeup, extra clothes in case of wardrobe malfunctions. (Do soft colors, blues, browns, pastels stay away from solids like reds, whites or blacks. Pin stripes or plaid is not a good idea. Plaid really is never a good idea unless you are a Lumberjack or in a grunge band.

Video can be a great way to engage and express ideas.  It also can be a cost effective way to get your audience to your desired action.

This show talks about the latest event technology, talk digital event strategy, and try and interview smart people that are using digital technology to shake up events.

Welcome to Going Digital with Samuel J. Smith and Mike McAllen

Sam is an event technology consultant or “Digital Strategist” he helps event owners identify interactive meeting technologies that are the best fit for their event objectives and budgets. Also, Sam writes a great blog called Interactive Meeting Technology and can be found all over the twitters and social media sites.

Mike McAllen is the co founder of Grass Shack Events & Media. He helps companies save time, energy, and money for meeting production. His focus is on educating, motivating and getting his clients audiences networking.

This show is all about IML

Robin Hood Benefit Uses New Design Team, Sets Another Fund-Raising Record

Robin Hood  Raises Record $88 Million to Help New York’s Poor

Launch of the New IML Connector

Mail bag question from the audience. From Michael: What are our thoughts on the iPad for events?

Question for the audience?
What smart phone Applications do you like? For iPhones, Blackberrys, Android phones. Useful? Not useful. Next show we are going to talk about all of them!   Full credit of course for your input!

Please leave us a question or comment, which we will try to address on the show ASAP!
What we said:

Mike McAllen: Welcome back to Going Digital with Samuel J. Smith. My name is Mike McAllen. I am with Grass Shack Events & Media and today, Sam, first of all, hello.

Samuel Smith: Hi, Mike. How are you doing?

Mike McAllen: Good. Very good. Thank you again for joining me for Going Digital Show Number Two. We’re just tearing through them.

Samuel Smith: Yes, well, we have to. We have so much – there are so many topics and we have so much to say.

Mike McAllen: Yes, we talk around about an hour and a half just about what topics to talk about. [laughs]

Samuel Smith: That’s right. We should just start recording it and just going.

Mike McAllen: Maybe the making of each show and then the show. [laughs]

Samuel Smith: That would be good.

Mike McAllen: So, what are we talking about today?

Samuel Smith: Well, we decided on three different topics. So, the first question, I think, that people need to think about is, “Can event technology help your organization raise $88 million?” And the answer is you bet it can and so, you should probably stick around and listen to the story of IML and what they did for the Robin Hood Foundation, help them raise an enormous amount of cash. I think that’s a good story to be talking about.

The second one that we want to talk about also comes from IML. Just two weeks ago, they launched this new handheld device called IML Connect. It has got a lot of interesting new types of features so we want to talk about that some more and the third topic that we have comes right out of the mail bag. We were asked about the iPad. What do we think of the iPad? So we’re going to talk about that a little bit.

Mike McAllen: Very cool.

Samuel Smith: So three big topics.

Mike McAllen: Very cool. Yes, this whole money raising opportunity they had, pretty crazy amount of money they raised.

Samuel Smith: Yes, it’s – you know, last year they raised about 70 million or 72 million. Well, first of all, we should take a step back. So, there’s an organization in New York City called the Robin Hood Foundation and they provide a bunch of services to people in the city of New York that don’t have the capabilities and they can’t get them from the government or any other means. And so, the Robin Hood Foundation provides these services and what they do each year is they have a gala dinner where they – oh, basically, they have a gala dinner where they raise the money and have a big fundraiser and last year, they asked IML to bring their keypads and their fundraising technology to their event and they used – last year, they used Jon Stewart and they had a full game, had an interactive game where people would make a pledge and the pledge, the total pledges would show up on the screen. People would see the amount and then they created a little competition where one side of the room was competing against the other side of the room.

Now, Mike, for me, this kind of thing is really interesting because typically when you do these fundraisers, they ask people to fill out a card and kind of submit it in secret. They don’t really know what the totals are. There’s not like any peer pressure to say hey, you didn’t participate over there, Mike. I didn’t see you punch in a number. Why don’t you help out the team and punch in a number. It’s for the – it’s for a good cause, right? And so, by using the technology, not only were the people in the room able to see how much they were raising but then they were able to kind of recruit the other people at the table around them. So I thought that was this really awesome and amazing story around for how you can use technology to raise money.

You know, the other thing that came out of this, they said – that they said last time or in the very first event they did, is that usually in these types of events, you get about 10 percent of the people to participate, you know, and be silent. I will make my pledge and contribute. And here, what they were able to get is about 60 percent of the people to contribute and I think that’s just …

Mike McAllen: That’s amazing.

Samuel Smith: It’s very impressive. And then of course, the – that’s called the sequel if you will. That took place just a week ago maybe in New York City again and this time in a better economy, you know. So the 72 million they raised last year was in 2009 which we all know is a terrible year for doing anything with money.

Mike McAllen: Right.

Samuel Smith: There was [Indiscernible] [0:04:48] million dollars which is about 50 percent more than they had raised the year before. Then this year, they raised 88 million which is – it’s just impressive so I think the message for me and for the people that are listening is that you can use technology inside of your fundraising events and inside of your galas to raise money because it will help you get more people to participate, get more people to be included in it and it seems like there’s probably several different ways that you could actually execute it with the technology tools.

Mike McAllen: Yes, it’s completely crazy but they – in this thing too for this [Indiscernible] [0:05:28], I mean, it’s like Oprah Winfrey kind of people sitting around. Right? That’s who they get to come to the …

Samuel Smith: Yes, yes, yes. So let’s – we should also be clear.

Mike McAllen: [laughs]

Samuel Smith: Right. I’ve seen …

Mike McAllen: You know you say your next event, yes, you should look into this but this is amazing. The star power there – or in there. And was it Jon Stewart was the host of the …

Samuel Smith: Yes, so Jon Stewart was the host and then I think Brian Williams was the host this year but yes, I mean, the people that are there are like Tom Hanks and Oprah Winfrey and those kind of caliber people. For some of the people that are listening, you know, they might not have that type of star power but they might be getting pledges that are much more – let’s call them much more closer to like say the $2500 or the $300 or maybe even the $80 …

Mike McAllen: Right.

Samuel Smith: … type size and for me, the – what I thought was cool was just the way to get all the people to work together towards this cause and get them all to kind of chip in and there’s this indirect peer pressure as you sit at a roundtable and you see that like, you know, that guy over there, he didn’t – he didn’t contribute. So let’s tease him a little bit, you know. Let’s give him a hard time. And maybe he puts in 50 bucks and it was 50 more bucks than he would have given …

Mike McAllen: Right.

Samuel Smith: [Inaudible] [0:06:43] it said anything or if they had given him a card and so, I think that those kinds of things are important if you’re going to do this, use this format.

Mike McAllen: And so, was there a gaming kind of thing behind it? I mean, I kind of read a little bit about just the ILM – the IML. Sorry, I keep saying ILM. But IML company is how they – you can pick one side of the room against another side of the room kind of a thing and they have all kinds of different ways of getting people involved in it too.

Samuel Smith: Yes. You know, their technology, it does two things. First of all, it knows who – the person at the seat has a little card that has their information registered into it so they put that into the device and it says, oh, hi, it’s Mike McAllen. Your – I have your contact information. I know about you. Okay. Mike McAllen. Mike McAllen, what would you like to pledge? I’m here like to pledge 50 bucks or – in your case, Mike, I know you’re rich so you’re going to contribute 1.5 million. So you put in 1.5 million and hit submit or whatever the button is then that gets recorded in the database which then is summarized with all of the other pledges that come in and they’ll know which side of the room you’re on. They have the ability to kind of figure that out so then they put on the screen. The left side of the room had 600,000 before but now, we’re at – they’re up to 2.1 million. Right? Because they got your $1.5 million pledge.

So then that helps to ratchet the numbers up and then it allows people to get real time feedback about how they’re performing. Right? So it makes it a game and I think that’s really cool. I think, you know …

Mike McAllen: I do.

Samuel Smith: It makes it very collaborative and a very team-based way to go out and raise money so …

Mike McAllen: Yes. And even using them in different ways of, you know, for any sort of a meeting that you could split the room up and do questions and have the room going against each other. I mean, that’s an audience response kind of a thing but it’s very cool, very cool technology.

Samuel Smith: Yes, yes, I think so. And, you know, Mike, your point is right on. There are other types of audience response tools and including this one, where you can create games and divide the room either into half or divide them into say, one division versus another or whatever you want and get those people to work together so I think that’s pretty cool.

Mike McAllen: Yes, and the event itself was beautifully done, everything they did. I was looking at the pictures of the event and we’ll have a link on the – in the show notes so you people can go take a look but even the middle little center pieces they had, these little skylines and they had the places for the controllers which was kind of a cool – they incorporated everything in everything.

Samuel Smith: Yes, yes. So the – and the – by putting those controllers on the tables then the people didn’t have to collect them and carry them around and have this thing they had in their pocket. They would just use them on the table during the voting. In the first year, I think it – I don’t know the exact details of what happened this year but I know there was much more information on the internet about what happened last year and I understand that it took them only 20 minutes to raise the $72 million in 2009 in 20 minutes.

Mike McAllen: Wow!

Samuel Smith: Right? So it’s not even like it took forever. It was 20 minutes so if you think about the amount of time that these attendees needed to use these handheld devices, it wasn’t that long. It was only for maybe 5 minutes or 10 minutes. So you used it and then put it back in the middle of the table and they didn’t need to use it, carry it with them or anything like that.

Mike McAllen: And then last year was supposed to be the strip down year. I was reading about that too when they did that too. They kind of stripped down this thing but they still made that much money which was great. So this year, I think they pumped it up a little bit more obviously.

Samuel Smith: Yes. No, I think so and Mike, we should post the link probably to BizBash and also to the Wall Street Journal because those two, as I was preparing for our show today and I was looking at both of those sites, and they had some excellent pictures of the overall events so even if people are just looking for an example of what could a rocking gala fundraising event look like, you know, this would definitely be a good …

Mike McAllen: Right. Oh, I agree. I really agree.

Samuel Smith: Should we move on?

Mike McAllen: Yes, I think we should. First of all, I would like to thank our sponsor which is Audible.com and you and I talked a little bit about before about some books that we wanted to recommend for our listeners. I also wanted to tell a little bit about what our listeners can get. They can get a – it’s called the AudibleListener Gold Free Trial Membership and it’s a 14-day risk free trial and then it’s 14.95 a month afterwards but you can use it for those 14 days and just cancel it and with that, you get one free audio book so that’s kind of a cool little thing to go on there and do. And just as you were talking about the Wall Street Journal, with this, you get a complimentary subscription to the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal so it’s kind of a cool little, trial that they’ve given us to give to our listeners.

Samuel Smith: Oh, that’s awesome.

Mike McAllen: It is.

Samuel Smith: And if I could make – you know, it’s hard to – I try to read a lot. I’m not that good at it but I try. If I could recommend one book to read with your free subscription, I would recommend that you read the book Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk because to me, this book is kind of like the adult’s version of that Dr. Seuss book, Oh, the Places You’ll Go! And if you think about that book, they often give it to high school graduates or college graduates but I think Crush It is a much more of an adult’s version of that and is a very – Gary is a very emotional guy and does a real good job of making you – I’m out of words of what to say but he does an excellent job of inspiring you and getting you to give it your best at anything that you’re doing but it’s a – but it’s definitely a good analogy to the Dr. Seuss book.

Mike McAllen: No, I agree and he reads it too which is cool and he is a very passionate guy so it’s fun when you get the authors that read it, somebody like him. And I met him a couple of times at these podcasts in conventions. He’s a really nice guy.

Samuel Smith: Is he exactly – I’ve never met Gary. Is he exactly as he is in the book and on his Wine Library TV?

Mike McAllen: Yes, he is – he spoke at one of them but I met him before like when he first started doing this and it was, you know, the phenomenon of his wine podcast but he’s a real little guy but he has got a lot of energy and very passionate about what he feels so I read that book too also and I really, really liked it and I don’t – I didn’t listen to it. I actually read it but listening to books is a really great way to go.

For me, I do – I listen to them all the time when I’m doing yard work or, you know, riding my bike or running. You know, going to the gym and the book that I wanted to pass on is a similar book actually. It’s by Seth Godin and it’s Linchpin and it’s Are You Indispensable? And it’s the same kind of a vibe as the Crush It book. It gives you a lot of stuff about – you know, you got to make your own way in this world these days, you know. So, that’s my pick. I’m not going to go on and on about it because we should get on to our topic.

Samuel Smith: Okay, okay. Well, and – alright. Alright.

Mike McAllen: But thank you to Audible.com so …

Samuel Smith: Well, I’m going to – actually, I’m going to download that book because I’m driving to Chicago this weekend so I’m going to take the new – I’ll take Linchpin and add it – download it from Audible.com and include it on my ride.

Alright. Next topic. So still on IML, it’s kind of an IML day here.

Mike McAllen: It is.

Samuel Smith: Because they have two big news items that the next news item that they have is that they launched a new handheld device for events just a few weeks ago. They made the announcement in February but they actually made the – kind of let’s call it the formal launch in February or actually, to me in May in just a couple of weeks ago and what I think is interesting about this device and why our listeners would be interested in it is they’ve taken a standard voting keypad.

They’ve now – where they – and their voting keypad used to also have Q and A and it had a microphone in it. So that was the IML one and that was already ahead of most of the rest of the market outside of the Spotme device which did a whole bunch of other things in this kind of in a class on its own but the IML device now, this new one, they’ve upgraded the microphone. They added a full QWERTY keyboard. So, for the people at home that are wondering what is that, just think about like the 2007 BlackBerry keyboard. That’s essentially what they’ve put on it.

They’ve made the screen multidimensional so that it’s active. So you can put different – you could have different types of animated graphics on it and other kinds of interactive things on the screen. They also have included a speaker and what’s cool about the speaker is that you can put headphones on and you could have different channels. So Mike, in Europe and in Asia, this is what – you know, there’s a lot of simultaneous translation devices out there and then they also use audience response keypads.

Well, now they only need to use this IML device so to save the events a few bucks. Here in the United States, that kind of thing won’t be of too much value but for sure, in the European markets and in Asia, at those events, or at events in those markets, they will be using the speaker system, simultaneous translation. So I think that those kinds of things are a – those are part of this new device. I think it’s really cool. It will be interesting to see where this device goes.

Mike McAllen: Yes, it looks like a BlackBerry which is interesting. It looks just like a BlackBerry.

Samuel Smith: Yes, it does. I mean, that’s – not the new one, not the brand new one but …

Mike McAllen: No, but like an older one. Yes. And they – and it is interesting that to have other languages hooked right into it. We’ve done a lot of that with having the booth in the back of the room where people are doing the, you know, interpretation of the languages and I think it will work here too because a lot of the tech companies and stuff would really dig that because they’re pushing their stuff out all over the place. So – and, you know, the multicultural events.

Samuel Smith: Yes.

Mike McAllen: A very cool idea.

Samuel Smith: One I think that, you know, you and I also talked – were talking before the show, one of the challenges with whether you have a simultaneous interpretation equipment or handheld devices is how do you get them returned and they get lost and who had it and where was that guy that had it. And so, instead of having to pass up two devices here, they are just passing out one. And so, it will be interesting to see how it comes together. The microphone thing, I’ve never seen it in action so I don’t know how well it works. Mike …

Mike McAllen: Yes …

Samuel Smith: … you deal with this kind of stuff all the time. What do you …

Mike McAllen: Well, I see – I don’t understand how it works exactly. But when you say high quality microphone is that where you don’t have to walk up to the microphone? You can actually just speak into that and talk to the presenters. That’s basically what I’m thinking. No?

Samuel Smith: Well, there’s a microphone in each device.

Mike McAllen: Yes …

[Crosstalk] [0:18:42]

Mike McAllen: … so I was thinking are they able to turn that on? Then how do you – for production-wise, you know, usually you have a – you know, you know who’s at the mic so you can raise their microphone up whereas, you know, how many people are talking in the set one at a time.

Samuel Smith: That’s …

[Crosstalk] [0:18:58]

Samuel Smith: … and I think – and it’s my understanding, Mike, that I do have a little bit  more insight on that, that you can kind of say hey, I would like to ask a question and you …

Mike McAllen: You get in the queue.

Samuel Smith: How to punch a button. You get on a queue then they know who you are and turn you on and say, oh, it’s Sam Smith. He would like to ask a question. Sam, why don’t you [Indiscernible] [0:19:19] your question? So that seems reasonable to me. You know, for me, Mike and you would have more insight on it than I would but I thought this would be good for small events quite honestly like down at the 50-person level or even smaller and it may – and I might be wrong on this but I – I thought it was – it would be useful because it cuts down on your total AV need, right? You could use the voting. You could use the questioning and you could use the microphone in a small event. Maybe you don’t need to have a whole bunch of tech support on there because you just have the one device and the one interface. I don’t know. What’s your take on that?

Mike McAllen: Well, owning a production company, I don’t think it’s a good idea.

[Laughter]

Mike McAllen: No, I’m just kidding. I think it’s great too that we don’t know how we can use these things and that’s the fun thing about it is that we can – it might be perfect for a small event that they’re probably thinking larger events are the way to go with this to get more people interacting. But you’re right. Maybe a smaller event would be good and I’m not sure how the interface – how does it work then for projection? Is it one person – does IML send somebody out there that runs the board? Is it another person you’re adding back there or not adding or maybe that’s the only person you have there? I’m not sure how it works which I probably should look into more of it and then get back.

Samuel Smith: Yes. So, well, you know, maybe what we need to do is go get them and bring them on the show and have them …

Mike McAllen: Right.

Samuel Smith: … tell us about it. So, anyway, in which we should so let’s make that as an action at them. We’ll see if in a few shows if we can get them to come on and talk more about what they’re doing.

Mike McAllen: I think that’s a great idea. So …

Samuel Smith: And maybe it’s – and maybe this is an idea that just for our listeners so we don’t bore them with this but let’s say if we were to do that in the fall after these guys have more experience, they’ve just launched this today. Maybe we should wait until they get some experience, have some customer references and do it then.

Mike McAllen: Right. So in case that isn’t how it worked.

Samuel Smith: Yes. And good and bad so …

Mike McAllen: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. It does look very interesting though so people should take a look at it again. We’ll have the link in the show notes so they can look at this and …

Samuel Smith: Alright.

Mike McAllen: … see a little bit about it.

Samuel Smith: So big news, last week, we had – our last show we had InXpo. This time, we have IML.

Mike McAllen: Right.

Samuel Smith: A lot of going on in event technology right now.

Mike McAllen: I see us getting a lot of sponsors coming up from these people.

Samuel Smith: Is that right?

Mike McAllen: [laughs]

Samuel Smith: Alright.

Mike McAllen: No, I don’t know that. But [Indiscernible] [0:21:49] have them actually so we can talk about them.

Samuel Smith: Yes, exactly.

Mike McAllen: With an open mind.

Samuel Smith: What do we – so what’s our next item? Question from the audience.

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Samuel Smith: So, you know, we got to ask the question that – about the iPad. What are our thoughts on the iPad? And I assume – and for events, what are our thoughts on the iPad for events? This comes from Michael and, you know, this is – Mike, for me, this is a really interesting thing because the iPad is basically just out. Sure, two million people or a million and a half or however many it is, people have this but it’s still very, very new. And so, there’s a lot of speculation around the device and what it can do for events and I’m not sure if you had any – I mean, have you tried it yet? Have you checked it out?

Mike McAllen: Yes, and I spent quite a lot of time because I was thinking about getting one but – and I have a few friends that have them and I’ve played a lot with them and I’ve had some talk with – a lot of the meetings that my company produces are sales meetings like national sales meetings and internal biotech [Phonetic] [0:23:07] meetings and they’re all sales people and I’ve had a lot of talks with the different – a couple of different companies saying, you know, these are – this is a good – you know, it’s a great – when you’re selling something, you of course want to talk to someone and you don’t want to just come right out and start talking about it, whatever your product is but if you have ways of starting conversations, these things are amazing, you know, which you can show the rich media on there, you know, right away.

For example, one of the last meetings I had, we did some – shot some quick video of one of the presenters on stage and then he went off and then I said, well, I’ll find you later. You can come back and take a look at what we’ve edited up and then he said, oh, great, you know. So I went back and I was talking with my editor and he was editing up the little shot to see if he liked it and then he said [Indiscernible] [0:23:54]. He says, “Can you go get him?” And I said, “Well, why don’t you just save it for my iPhone and then I’ll find him and I’ll show it to him on my iPhone.” And so he just did it, saved it from my iPhone. We put it on my iPhone. I found the guy and I was, hey, look at this. And he was so amazed that you could do that on the iPhone but imagine if he could really see something big on there. I guess I’m kind of getting off topic but …

Samuel Smith: No, I – no, Mike. I think you’re right. I mean …

Mike McAllen: So, and that company – what was that company? They were talking about giving them all out to their salespeople, to go out because [Inaudible] iPads. So, they go out on the road and they have them and have built-specific apps that they could plug in things on to their iPads. So that to me means that opens up a whole thing for that – you know, solutions for events, things you could put on there

Samuel Smith: Yes. Well, you know, that for me, the – the very first – I’m an iPhone user. I also use a MacBook and the iPad is kind of a device that fits in between the MacBook laptop and the iPhone and the very first thing I thought about when I saw the iPad come out is the larger fonts and the larger screen size. So, I was thinking about people that don’t have young eyes, right? And allowing them to have better readability. Alright? Not only can the words be bigger, they can have more words on a screen or on a page and that’s just easier on the eyes where sometimes, the content that comes through on my iPhone is so small that it’s really hard to see but [Inaudible] [0:25:44]. But if you brought that same content through and scaled it appropriately for the iPad screen, it would be perfect or, you know, close but you also mentioned the multimedia capability and I don’t know if you’ve seen the Wired Magazine demo but what they did with the content is they took this content and they showed different ways to interact with it. And I think that that’s important for people that are going to be using that or for the people at home because you need to think about not just saying, okay, I have a website and I’m going to put it on an iPhone. I have a website. I’m going to put it on the iPad.

Well, people don’t use the iPhone and they won’t use the iPad the same way as they do their desktop PC. Right? Where they’re using the tool, how they’re using it will be much different and so I think that this new iPad, as we get more experienced with where people are using the devices, how they would use them and where they use them, I think we’re going to see much – some very interesting applications built around that on – I think that will be pretty cool.

The other thing that I thought would be perfect is, you know, kind of living or going right off this Wired Magazine demo is if you could take the guide, the show guide and then convert it into an iPad application that includes lots of photos, lots of video and other types of interactive elements where you could ask questions, rate things, make comments, whatever. I thought that would be really cool and those are things you could do with an iPad. You could do with them in a booth. You could do with them at a lounge. You could do it at a kiosk. You could do it – I sound like Dr. Seuss.

Mike McAllen: [laughs]

Samuel Smith: You could do it here or there. You can do it anywhere. Anyway, I think …

Mike McAllen: [Inaudible] [0:27:42] Dr. Seuss reference. That’s perfect.

Samuel Smith: I know, I know, [Indiscernible]. So …

Mike McAllen: [laughs]

Samuel Smith: … I’m on a roll. So anyway, I think that we still have to wait and see with this but we’re going to see a lot of people experimenting and trying out things with the iPad. Anyway …

Mike McAllen: I agree.

Samuel Smith: … so to answer Michael’s question and summarize it, I think we were talking about more multimedia, more demos, a lot of experimentation to find out how it will work or where it will work or will it work. And then we’re going to see some custom applications being built for it.

Mike McAllen: Oh, yes. And then comes into fact too even for when you see the event – you know, any one of these events, I’ve been on there. Some meeting planner walking down the road with  her binder which is like, you know -  you know, it’s like two feet in diameter thick of paperwork. You know, she could carry instead that iPad.

Samuel Smith: Yes, I know that would – I mean, that’s an excellent example from a – whether that’s for a meeting planner of for a technology partner or for any other vendor that’s associated with an event. Right?

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Samuel Smith: I think that kind of thing, we could easily see that happening especially if they’re using a tool like base camp or one of these online project management suites.

Mike McAllen: Right.

Samuel Smith: You know, you could just put the files in there, move it around or there’s a tool called MeetingMatrix. I might have the name a little bit wrong but basically, what they do is you can download the floor plans for a venue, configure it the way you want it to. They give you the inventory of the tables and chairs and everything so you can design a room however you want and then shoot it over to them and get them to quote you a price.

Mike McAllen: Oh, that’s awesome.

Samuel Smith: But you could just – maybe they can make that for the iPad. That would be kind of cool so you can make the changes right there on the fly. Maybe you do it mostly on your computer but then later on, you do it on it but I don’t know. Just thinking out loud.

Mike McAllen: And I know that we’re running out of time here but it also kind of goes into that factor of that we were just talking about. Like would you hand out these at an event? Could you go and have them? You know, you could have a whole application for your event [Indiscernible] [0:30:00] handing them out at the door as they come in, you know, and then they – you would have all this rich media about all the speakers, about all the people as you were just talking about instead of an event guide that here’s your iPad, you know, and then you could send stuff to your own, you know.

Samuel Smith: Right.

Mike McAllen: So there’s just all kinds of things you can do. It’s very cool. It’s very exciting to see how it goes.

Samuel Smith: Yes, and some events, I think we’re – some events are going to hand those out. They’re going to say, hey, this is also our give-away or hey, this is your new sales force tool so we’ll have an event app but then also you have this – your new [Indiscernible] [0:30:31] sales force on a road where your kind of applications. So, I think we’ll see a lot of them.

Mike McAllen: Yes, and one other thing. So I was talking to Steve Miller, not the singer but he’s an editor buddy of mine that I work with all the time. Great guy and he was talking about that. He’s working with a company right now and they want to have – they’re giving those out to their sales team but they want one. They enter the room for the opening video that they’ll have them all propped up on all the tables and then the big screen which [Indiscernible] [0:31:00] widescreen technology. They’ll have the same video going on at the same time with all of the iPads …

Samuel Smith: Small screens.

Mike McAllen: Yes …

Samuel Smith: Well, that’s awesome.

Mike McAllen: On all the tables. I have no idea how they’re going to do that. It’s interesting to – it will see how it all works out. Maybe I can have him come on and talk about it if they accomplish it but …

Samuel Smith: You know, that – I can just tell you that that kind of thing is possible to make that happen and there are technologies out there that do it. I’ve seen it done on Windows netbook kind of devices but I haven’t seen it done on the iPads but I’m sure it could happen. So …

Mike McAllen: Yes, somehow having them network together somehow to …

Samuel Smith: Yes, there’s a lot of – there’s going to be a lot of the black box stuff that happens behind the scenes but that effect can be created, I’m pretty sure. Alright, sir. So what do we – what’s our call to action today?

Mike McAllen: Our call to action today is …

Samuel Smith: Oh, that’s me. I’m sorry. I’ve got it …

Mike McAllen: No, I was just looking at my notes. I’m sorry. But yes, that is you.

Samuel Smith: Alright. So the call – I’m sorry. I did it wrong.

Mike McAllen: [laughs] There is no wrong.

Samuel Smith: We like to have fun here on Going Digital. So here’s what we need your help with. We want to know what smartphone apps whether that’s for the iPhone, for the iPad, for the – for your DROID, for whatever – what other smart – your BlackBerry, whatever smartphone you’ve got. What apps do you think are useful for event professionals? Now, this could be for attendees, for creating an attendee experience. It could be for, as Mike said, help the planner onsite or even before or any of those kinds of things. So any iPhone apps that you have – would like to share with us that you think are useful for event professionals. We want to know about it because in our next show which will come out in June sometime, we are going to talk – we’re going to go through the list of iPhone apps for event professionals and we’re going to kind of have a jam session on these events. So if you send us one, we will be sure to give you full credit for it and tell us why you – and be sure to tell us why you like it.

[Crosstalk] [0:33:24]

Mike McAllen: Or they could even tell us ones that they don’t like too which …

Samuel Smith: Oh, yes, tell us that too. We like that too.

Mike McAllen: Yes, because the bad ones are good. It’s good to know the bad ones so you don’t …

Samuel Smith: Right, especially if they cost money so people can just …

Mike McAllen: Right.

Samuel Smith: … forget about it.

Mike McAllen: Right. Alright.

Samuel Smith: Why spend money? Alright. Go ahead.

Mike McAllen: So that’s it. We’re all done, huh?

Samuel Smith: Well, thanks to everyone for listening and we look forward to your comments on the smartphone applications.

Mike McAllen: Yes, and that’s at MeetingsPodcast@Gmail.com so please go ahead and you can even leave a comment on our – on the site too if you want to leave it there or email it, whatever is easiest for you. And then you could Twitter it to us because you can find us on Twitter and – let’s see. And where else can they find you, Sam? You’re at SamuelJSmith.

Samuel Smith: Yes, at SamuelJSmith on Twitter. Sam@SamuelJSmith.com or at InteractiveMeetingTechnology.com or I live in Minnesota so you can come by and see me anytime.

Mike McAllen: [laughs] You’re all over Minnesota?

Samuel Smith: If we can go fishing, then no problem.

Mike McAllen: [laughs] That’s great. And you can find me at GrassShackRoad.com or here at the Meetings Podcast site and I am on the Twitters as MikeMcAllen or MMcAllen and also Sam, we also have Meetings Podcast out there too which I started using …

Samuel Smith: Okay. So Meetings Podcast on Twitter. Good.

Mike McAllen: Yes, yes.

Samuel Smith: But can I – before we cut off, why do you have two Twitter IDs? Are you that big?

[Crosstalk] [0:35:03]

Mike McAllen: The problem I had was this that I started Twitter about four years ago and so I had this MMcAllen and I had all these people that were not – just random people and then I started talking to more of the event professionals type people and so, I started another one so I could keep track of those people and that was kind of in between the time of where you got these neat things like TweetDeck for your desktop or you could divide people.

Samuel Smith: Oh, okay. Okay. So you have like a social version of you and then there’s like a work version.

Mike McAllen: Sort of, yes, yes. But actually, I use the TweetDeck and I use both of them all the time because I can – I never – anyway …

[Crosstalk] [0:35:41]

Mike McAllen: I’m not in control with the Twitter so …

Samuel Smith: Alright. So …

Mike McAllen: Cool. [laughs]

Samuel Smith: Well, hey, Mike …

Mike McAllen: Alright.

Samuel Smith: … it’s great talking to you again today.

Mike McAllen: Yes, yes. And again, thank you to our sponsor Audible.com and Sam, I will see you next time.

Samuel Smith: Alright. Sounds good, Mike.

Email us at meetings podcast@gmail.com or below here on the MeetingsPodcast site.

Meeting Production Services

Music by the http://www.delgadobrothers.com/

Audio mixing by www.RipTideGraphics.com

Brought to you by Grass Shack Events & Media

Copyright 2010 MeetingsPodcast

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• Going Digital Show 1 InXpo Social Add Ons Meetings Podcast Show 122 (grassshackroad.com)

When we were still hunting and gathering for food our evenings were spent around the glow of a campfire. Stories were swapped and shared for generations.  The same thing is basically happening today but instead of a gathering around a campfire we fly our tribe into a city and put them in a nice hotel.   The leaders share their stories that hopefully will pass on history, paint the picture of the culture, values, enemies (competitors)  and talk about the heroes. (awards evenings) So if we can weave the meeting production around the companies story we find that the audience becomes more engaged and the community aspect is deeper. Being a part of something. Move that audience to action.

We need stories to help us communicate and understand why we are here.

Here is a really helpful book to learn how to tell stories.

(affiliate link)

And listen to Ira Glass on “Story”

Emotions are also one of the keys to storytelling for meeting production. Think about the “American Dream” story which still drives the rest of the world to want to live in America to find success and happiness. When we sing the national anthem we sing about the ” the land of the free and home of the brave” we are singing a story which brings us together. A story about hope and and courage to fight what you believe in. We can find many examples of how storytelling can make a message resonate with your audience. Just make sure its a big part of your next meeting or event.
Have you recently used storytelling as part of your meetings production? If so, please share your story.

In my career in the meeting  and event production business I have seen the fat years of budgets or should I say the PHat years.  The crazy themed environments, stages, lighting, opening videos and corporate theater the crazy fun entertainment and travel options during the DotCom years.  Then I watched the bubble burst and sadly some of my co-workers get laid off.  The events of 9/11.  Then slowly  our industry felt the pick up and slight recovery.  My partners and I started our own company and we were rolling again.  Then the AIG uproar and the events and meetings wasteland that followed. Makes me exhausted just thinking about it.

But through out all of this was the pricing of meeting production and events.  As I watched the budgets fly by in the dot com years the margins were insane, almost robbery.  But it didn’t matter then.  Venture Capital money needed to be spent and we gladly took it for our services and creative.

So how do you price your meeting production now?  On a recent podcast we discussed pricing and how companies are doing it.  Some are just pricing to cover costs and keep employees working.   Industry suppliers have to bring pricing down to be competitive?  But will they ever go back up?  Once you have set those low prices are you then setting the new standard for pricing? Slowly killing your business? You ability to push new ideas and be creative for your clients audiences?

One thing I have tried to do since starting Grass Shack Events & Media is figure out the pricing model for the economy at hand. But keeping it around the same.    Meeting production and video production are a niche business that adds huge value and service to engage, educate and get attendees networking.  I keep this in mind when I do budgets.  I also know I will loose clients this way.  The issue here is companies that buy for price alone.   If so, they know they will have less effective meetings and problems onsite. which will ultimately loose the company money.   I have already debated using the in-house audio visual for your equipment and labor,  and that is fine if that is the level of service you need.   But what if you need a partner to work with you on audience engagement, telling your company stories, sets or environmental design, speaking coaches, training and education options, video, event technology, web integration?   These types of options are all in the meeting production companies tool belt.  Also,  do you then use a large meeting production company or a boutique production company?  Will you be one of 25 clients or one of 5 clients? What kind of customer service and creative do you expect?  Lots of questions for the buyer and the price setting to be aware of.

Test for you:

Here are three models ideas of pricing including competing production and audio visual companies, in house vendors, independent producers.

Which would you trust with your meeting production realistically at this time?

#1: All the correct credentials, services offered, and fast price quote which is very low.

#2:  all the correct credentials, demonstrated a certificate of insurance, capital to put on event. Been in business for a long time Fast price quote which is a little higher than the above quote.  No matter what other price quoted by competitors, they said they will match or beat it.

#3: Production company  asked what  wanted, what we were trying to achieve. Asked whether we were looking for more engagement, education, networking,  etc. Then gave options/ideas for client. Noticed and pointed out through research of past events and meetings show how some changes that might help. Offered some event technologies to implement, staging options.  Talked a little about the venues and the options that might be provided from other events hed there, surrounding venues and theme based ideas for the area.   Up sold the pricing, speech coaching by the show caller, explained how the presenters could improve the engagement by presentation design tactics and strategies.  Look ahead to later meetings and pushing the content along the path for the rest of the year.  Then credentials, case studies, services offered, demonstrated that they have insurance, capital to put on the event and a price which is much higher than the other two bids.

Photo Credit: dominik99

Idea Credit: Cspenn

Going Digital Show 1

Welcome to the first installment of Going Digital with Samuel J. Smith and Mike McAllen

Sam is an event technology consultant or “Digital Strategist” he helps event owners identify interactive meeting technologies that are the best fit for their event objectives and budgets.   Also, Sam writes a great blog called Interactive Meeting Technology and can be found all over the twitters and socila media sites.

Mike McAllen is the co founder of Grass Shack Events & Media. He helps companies save time, energy, and money for meeting production. His focus is on educating, motivating and  getting his clients audiences networking.

Segment #1: Discuss new show:

Latest Technology, talk digital event strategy, and try and interview smart people that are using digital technology to shake up events.  When do you use event technology? Taking questions from the audience.  We are shooting for two a month.

Commercial:  Thank you our sponsor Audible.com

1st topic—– What’s New in Event Technology: Inxpo Social Add-ons.

Sam brings some news from the virtual conference company InXpo, which has now added games and social media inside its virtual experiences to improve the virtual experience.

Inxpo conference attendees can create an avatar, attend talks and network with people in an online format. To make it even more interesting, the company is launching its InXpo Social Suite.

Integrating games and social media such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.  Normally the virtual conference has online sections such as an auditorium with streaming video, exhibit booth, lounge or classroom. Now the social media experience can be shared.

Mail Bag–Question from the audience that has been sent in to us about going digital. Send your questions to meetingspodcast@gmail.com-

Question 1 –Cherrelle asks via email:
I am interested in holding a webcast with synchronised video and ppt, however, I also want to provided breakout rooms for the viewers.    Am I dreaming too far ahead of the game or do you know of a service which can do this. I have seen teleconferences which offer breakout rooms but no video ones.    Please help!

Some thoughts on her question:
Goto Meeting.com—- slides and audio….
Livestream– switcher (tricaster)
icv conference media (Our event camp buddy Paul Salinger has a case study on the front page)

Lastly a cost saving solution—- skype call…… Flip back and forth-

Show Call to Action: Talk to us about something new you have tried? Positive or negative experience from a Hybrid event you put on. Send them into Meetingspodcast (@) gmail.com

Wrap up: What is coming up next time, (IML new technology for non-profits) Thanks for listening— you can find mike @mikemcallen and Sam at @samueljsmith and he blogs at www.interactivemeetingtechnology.com/ or email Sam at Sam (@) samueljsmith.com

Photo Credit to michaelriedel

I just finished editing the new podcast I am producing with Samuel J Smith called Going Digital! One of the big topics we want to cover is mobile and events & meetings. Yesterday I signed up for a Linkedin group called Mobile Meetings Management and found this video. Where do you see Mobile going for events and meetings? Also location based mobile offerings?

Photo credit Mike Licht

The Meeting Planners podcast source for what’s new and exciting in meetings and events industry!

Topic of the day is corporate video production for meetings vs. the Internet.  Mike and Johnny discuss video production for meetings vs. producing video for the internet. Storytelling, call to actions, viral videos, engagement, informative videos.

Please leave us a question or comment, which we will try to address on the show ASAP!

Email us at meetings podcast@gmail.com or leave your question of comment here on the MeetingsPodcast site.

www.MeetingsPodcast.com

Music by the http://www.delgadobrothers.com/

Audio mixing by www.RipTideGraphics.com

Brought to you by Grass Shack Events & Media

Copyright 2010 MeetingsPodcast

As a production nerd I was very happy to have read the book The Futurist about James Cameron. I had the same impression of the Titanic/Avatar director that most do. That he is a pompous, mean spirited wildly successful movie director. And the book did not disappoint. He is all of those things, yet he also is an artist, scientist, diver, writer and a loyal friend. He is razor focused and he knows what he wants. I admire this man and he is very inspirational to anyone who has put everything into a project. Thank you to good friend and media wizard Franklin McMahon for the recommendation of the book.

Franklin also pointed me to a TED talk that James gave. Take a look at it. Cameron said he made a movie about a big ship that sinks—   But the real reason he did the movie was his passion for the ocean and his dream of diving down to the Titanic wreckage.

Basically he tricked the movie studio to fund his expedition to dive down and take some real footage of the Titanic.   Favorite quote of mine:  Imagination creates a reality

The book highlights the whole conception and production of this movie.Basically the love these brothers had for their Dad. The movie was not an easy process at all. But really hard for a couple of guys who had never made a movie before. Amazing story. You really sweat it out with them as they go through the whole process.
I have been putting together events, meeting and media for years now and I felt the pain they went through. In our own company Grass Shack Events & Media we had to fudge around with money and the business hurtles. And the dreaded time lines. It is an inspiring book.
If you are in production you should read this book. I cannot wait to see the movie. Go see it and give me some feedback.

I am insanely lame because they agreed to do an interview for the podcast but I didn’t get it done. Maybe after the Oscars this year?

Dan Meyer is a teacher who can hold the most difficult audiences attention captive. Yes High School kids. Think about what you can do for your corporate events and meetings audiences if he can do it with a room full of hormone filled, flea attention spanned kids?  Presentation design is more than PowerPoint slides jammed with data. Its about interactively facilitating your audiences.

Dan got rid of the old rules of teaching by punishment and intimidation. Shackled to the overhead projecter (think podium)….He got rid of the long text driven slides and flashy computerized transitions.   How many times you have heard some executive say, “I know you cant read this but this is what it says.”  So the data becomes the ugly image he or she is showing the audience to explain his/her points.  Why not use the main point or points instead as an image that describes the feeling or emotion you are trying to get across to your audience.   We all have seen the iceberg photo int he last few years. The tip of the iceberg is showing and under the water it is massive.(see below)  This is a start. (Well, 9 million presentations have used this image so its not really a start ) But it gives you an idea how an image can describe your point without showing gobs of data that lulls your audience to eye glaze.

Dan uses the new rules like a Digital Projector/video camera and Macs Keynote program which frees him to move- interact with students.

Dan puts in carefully selected images that project meaning, spark conversationand engage his audience.

He uses videos to make points- bring in enthusiasm.

Push your executives to use these types of tools to engage and teach your audience!

Have you used Iceberg type imaging in your last presentation? Why not pull it out and spend ten minutes replacing those ugly data driven slides with an image that you like looking at?

Today’s show on Meetings Podcast:  Mike McAllen talks about some shows coming up on the show.  Some additional shows. The first  is about video and media with Stephen Miller who  is an video producer and editor.  Also we will continue the web/website, SEO shows with Brett Bumeter.  The third new show will be with Samuel J Smith to include some shows about event technologies and  interactive meeting ideas. Of course we will still have our roundtable shows with Jon Trask and Tom Hilmer

EventCamp National Conference will be held in Chicago in 2011 — EventCamp Headquarters will officially hold one annual conference per year, preferably in February.  We will rotate this event around the country, from year to year, with a focus on major markets. Also, we have added a section so you can run your own regional EventCamp

Clean the World (Events & Hotel idea)

Great idea….for unused soap and shampoo to be recycled for developing countries and homeless shelters. Check out the post for more info. Great idea for giving back at your next event or conference.  Organize with your conference hotels to have a partnership with Clean the World who will set up drop boxes for your attendees to drop off unsuded soaps and shampoos.

Here are 5 Ways To Better Meetings With Social Media

Some quick tips on get rolling in social media. Basically a step by step way event professionals can get involved with social media to grow their personal network to improve meetings and conferences.

Check out http://merlehaggard.com/ to buy working man blues

Please leave us a question or comment, which we will try to address on the show ASAP!

Email us at meetings podcast@gmail.com or comment here on the MeetingsPodcast site.

www.MeetingsPodcast.com  Music by the http://www.delgadobrothers.com/

Audio mixing by www.RipTideGraphics.com

Brought to you by Grass Shack Events & Media

Copyright 2010 MeetingsPodcast

Everyday in America, thousands of hotels discard millions of pounds of soap and shampoo. These products often end up in already overflowing landfills and contaminate fragile groundwater systems.

Impoverished people around the world die every day from acute respiratory infection and diarrhea disease because they have no soap. The death toll is staggering. Each year more than five million lives are lost to these diseases with the majority of deaths being among children less than five years old. Studies have shown that simple hand washing substantially reduces the spread of these diseases. Unfortunately, the essential items for proper hand washing are unobtainable for millions of people worldwide.

Clean the World gets soap to people who really need it.

In an effort to prevent these needless deaths from occurring, Clean the World distributes recycled soap products, along with appropriate educational materials, to impoverished countries worldwide, and to domestic homeless shelters.

What is Clean the World?

Clean the World is a non-profit charity organization that collects the partially used soap from hotels to donate to organizations that provide aid to impoverished people around the world. By providing soap to those that need it most, Clean the World helps prevent the spread of disease and saves lives. Clean the World Foundation, Inc is a non-profit, charitable organization as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt entity.

How did Clean the World get started?

CTW was started by Shawn Seipler and Paul Till in February of 2009. Shawn is the co-Founder and Executive Director of the organization. Paul Till is the co-Founder and Managing Director of the organization. The organization started when Shawn and Paul attempted to answer the following question: “What happens to the reduced bar of soap and unused portion of shampoo at a hotel when a guest is done using it?”

Where do you get the soap?

We collect the partially used soap from hotels and resorts that is normally thrown away.

How many hotels are participating?

We’ve had a great response from the hospitality industry and we are signing up new hotels every week. As of March 1, 2010 we have over 170 hotels participating in our program.

How do you recycle soap?

Our proprietary and patent pending sterilization process is applied to 90% of the slightly used bars. The soap soaks in a sterilization solution and is then treated with a steam/pressure combination. Clean the World then tests the soap’s pH level and cools it for packaging.

How about tagging this program on your next event?

1) Go where the Fish are

Spend some time finding resources online to peruse each day. Social Media is a great way to find what you are looking for.  This will make life easier when the boss asks for team building ideas, audience engagement ideas, creative staging ideas, networking ideas, promotional ideas, speaker ideas etc  Find folks who have the answers you need.  Not to mention you might be able to help others with your own experience when you join in the conversation.

2) Build a List (Your personal database)

Once you have found where the fish are start building your lists.  Building a networking/ resource list and keep it handy.  When the time comes to put together your meeting you can easily refer to your list of friends, followers, fellow group members to get answers.   It sounds daunting but is quite simple.  If you spend a little time everyday building this list.   You can really hone in on the right resources for engaging your audiences, finding that right promotion, team building activities, staging companies, entertainment.

3) Size Matters

I write this because obviously if your resources and networks get larger the opportunities you have open up exponentially. You then have more time to create a fantastic meeting because you have more choices and options. Go build your network via social media and face to face meet ups regularly.

4) So how do I get started?

I presented a session on taking a dip in social media at last years MPI Work Education conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. What I was trying to do was give some simple steps for the audience to get started in Social Media.  http://www.slideshare.net/mikemcallen/wec-ppt
-  (slideshare)
Here are couple of steps to get started:
—– Join Twitter-  If you are looking to make your meetings better then try the organized tweetchats with event professionals on #eventprofs: Tuesdays, 8:00pm to 9:00pm CST and Thursdays, 11:00am to 12:00pm CST.  Just  log into www.tweetchat.com and type in the hashtag (link internally) and introduce yourself.  Make a few friends and follow a few of these people on your own twitter stream. Its a great way to learn about new resources and industry topics.
Here are a few folks to start you on your way to a fantastic twitter list –

Event Professionals: @mikemcallen (me) @GreenA_V @psalinger @jessicalevin @mizcity @gregruby @iconpresentsav @jeffhurt @michaelmccurry @ready2spark @susanlynncope @samueljsmith @asegar @tracibrowne @emiliebarta @kristicasey

Creative resources- @songdivision @andy_lawson @dwheeler11 @klrichardson @thetimhayden @sprkrlinteractive @asegar @matthewebel @rayhansen

A/V–@mmcallen (me again) @greenA_V @iconpresentations @jontrask @klrichardson @corestaging

Social Media- @jessicalevin @chrisbrogan @jasonfalls @mitchjoel  @cc_chapman

Tech- @cspenn @brettbum @croncast
They also have organized twitter chats for whatever you might be interested in like for business or hobbies etc…
Here is a another Meetings type twitter event:  #assnchat: Tuesdays, 1:00pm-2:00pm CST.

Also, once you get the hang of Twitter use Tweetdeck.com to organize your twitter friends and hashtags in nice easy to read rows.

—-Get a Google Gmail account and sign up for Google reader-
With google tools that come free with a gmail account you will quickly see how efficient you can be going where the fish are and building your list to a nice size. Google reader is a great place to start organizing your blogs in one place for daily reading.  This will also connect with your mobile device for even easier reading! (check back to the meetings podcast Blog soon I am putting together some blogrolls you can use to get started)

—Join Facebook- 400 million folks use facebook – 95 million in the us alone
Some groups you might consider joining—
Meeting Architecture
Travel Directors Club
Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA) – Official Group
Hotel Management – Hospitality Industry
Event Planners Forum
EventCamp 2010
EventProfs
Production Freelancers – Producers, Coordinators, PA’s etc…..
Wedding and Event Planner and Any Related Industry
Event and Meeting Planners Forum

— Join Linkedin- It is a great way to connect with your network.  Join groups and utilize the Q&A feature.  This is a place where you can ask your network and others for a resource and idea etc.  And you can also help others with your experience.

Here are a few groups to get you started:
Meetings Podcast
Event Peeps: For Live Event Industry Professionals
Event Planning & Management – the 1st Group for Event Professionals
Networking & Networking Events for Event Planners & Managers
SPIN: Senior Planners Industry Network

Also connect with me if you haven’t already.  http://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemcallen

5) Remember good old face to face meetings are what it is all about.

Get off your computer and go meet new resources in person!
Check out your local industry associations-PCMA, MPI etc…

Also check Upcoming.org and meetup.com for local meetings to attend.  Twitter patrons also but on informal Tweetups which are twitter get togethers.

So once you have built your network it is much easier to focus on your meeting flow and attendee experience.  Think about engagement, education and giving them opportunities to network.   So in closing this post out I think Social Media is a great place where you can build a foundation to better meetings through online resources!

Please contact me with any questions or comments.

Experiential Marketing Events are an interesting way to get people involved in your product or company.  As I watched this video of these young adults playing the “game” of war to get them interested in the real thing it was a little scary.  I understand we need armies to protect our countries but somehow I felt this was a tad slight of hand to get young recruits.  The marching video game portion is the same dancing game I see in the movie theater arcade area isnt it?

Regardless this was a really well done experiential marketing event by Jack Morton Worldwide in the UK. Experiential events do cause people to move to action.   Just scary in the actionable outcome for these young people if it works and they go to war and its no longer a video game.

What is an experimental marketing event anyway?

It is basically a different angle on how to market companies and services Experiential marketing is a concept that integrates elements of emotions to connect with the consumer in the event. Experiential marketing tries to establish the connection in such a way that the consumer responds on both an emotional and rational response level.

Experimental marketers try to tap into a variety of senses and gets into that special place within attendees that inspires. The marketer needs to have a firm grasp on the mind of the target audience they wish to attract. By understanding what the buyer or client are likely to think and feel, it is then possible to get an idea of how to steer that person in a direction that will resonate with the product, and bring individuals to act on that impulse to purchase.

Have you ever used Experimental marketing for your company or produced one? I would love to see/hear your examples.

Hybrid Meetings are one of the main topics of most meeting and event conferences.   My friend and frequent podcast guest Maarten Vanneste and his company Abbitt Meeting Support team are putting on a seminar and webinar to learn more about Virtual or Hybrid meetings. The remote participants and speakers will add value, effectiveness, generate more revenue or save costs. Come to the seminar or log in for the webcast to discover some of the great tools and talk to the professionals on how you can go hybrid.

Maarteen has offered 10 MeetingsPodcast listeners/readers a 50% discount for the 3 hour Webinar on Hybrid meetings. ( I think it is basically $100 US dollars off the normal price)  Live in Belgium and Webcasted globally on Wednesday April 21 in the afternoon (GMT-1).

Another friend of Meeting Podcast is Midori Connolly who will be speaking virtually at the Webinar about keeping Hybrid Meetings simple and fun.

Also Sam Smith will be presenting from his new home in Minneapolis, Mn. about What interactivity makes live participation valuable?  

So contact me by email and I will respond with a code!

Should be a great day (or middle of the night if you are here in San Francisco ) of learning and fun about Virtual and Hybrid meetings.

What is a Hybrid Meeting?

It is not the picture above of a group of Toyota Prius cars.  Hybrid Meetings are a combination of a live event and a virtual event online and combine them to produce a hybrid meeting. The attendees sitting in the “real life” meeting room and the participants at their computers are at the same event. They may both participate together and with the live presenters. We have a free ebook that talks a little about the live stream we produced in New York City this year for Event Camp.

Photo Credit Julien_e

I attended a New Marketing one day conference yesterday in San Francisco at the Fort Mason conference center.  It was held across the street from the famous Marina Safeway.  When I lived in the Marina years ago, that world famous Safeway was pickup central for young singles.  Only young singles I picked there was made by Kraft- (I can hear your groan from here   I was quite surprised how great the  Fort Mason Conference center ended up being.  Great location, view of the Marinas boats and the Golden Gate Bridge also the food was delicious. Even the wireless worked ok for a techie centric conference. (Everyone was tweeting, facebooking, orkuting constantly.)

The conference is put on by Chris Brogan and his team from New Marketing Labs in Boston. They had a good mix of new media, marketing, email, research folks as speakers, panelists.  A small trade show type thing was in the back of the room which most of the speaker panelist stood when not speaking.

Photo Credit @ChrisBrogan

Since I am not a marketing guy but play one here on the internet I found the day fascinating.  I found Chris Brogan to add so much color to a day which could have easily been insanely salesy and annoying.  Chris asked the softball questions, then followed up with questions that you really want to ask, he also attacked his friends on stage with thought provoking tough questions.  His jokes are sometimes horrendous but he makes me laugh every time.  “A three year old came into my house and spilled shampoo everywhere- not sure why I said that”  He is a great MC and his final keynote topic really sent me home inspired and ready to tackle the next day. Actually today (the next day) was spent trying to get our company email system working — but tomorrow by golly, I will be on fire!   His partners in crime Colin and Justin also did a great job moderating.

Basically the conference was about using and listening to social media. How email marketing and community can help your sales grow.

Here are 6 random notes of my New Marketing Experience-

1) Humanize your business- Every business is a media company (blogs, video, audio etc) So think like a media company. Figure out and talk your audiences language (web, c level etc…)

2) Do Webinars: Tweet before, during and after Webinars- collect leads in the process.

3) Linkedin Tips on Sales:  Put a slideshare powerpoint of what you or your company do in your profile.  Check out who viewed your profile and contact them. Check out the recruiter addition of Linkedin. Get involved with the Q& A portion of Linkedin. Use your status updates to your advantage- Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin.

4) Tom Webster from Edison Research.  I have seen Tom speak a couple of times.  Always a interesting speaker who breaks down all the research, the surveys, data and makes sense of it. Check out Edison Research online they have tons of great info to download.  Take a look at the Social Media usage study they did. Amazing stuff to think about. 48%  of the country has a profile on some sort of social media. 30% of those people check it several times a day.    Social Media is the new Phone.  He also announced Edisons new research on “Twitter User in America” which will be released April 29

5) Email tips/ideas from MeetingsPodcast Sponsor and Event Camp NYC Sponsor Blue Sky Factory’s DJ Waldow and the other panelists: Would you read your own emails?  Look at them, are they compelling? brief? Are they in the fold of a mobile phone? Do they ask a question?

6) Big highlight for me was my smart friend and old podcast co-host on USPtalk – Kalani Iwiula was in attendance!

So many great tips and ideas were shared.  If you can catch another one of these New Marketing Experience conferences I would recommend going in a heartbeat. Great information, speakers and attendees to network with.

Next couple are in Dallas: 5/26/2010 & Chicago 9/21/2010

Todays show we recognize the return of Frank Poncherello to events and to our cohost Tom Hilmer.

Please leave us a question or comment, which we will try to address on the show ASAP!

Email us at meetings podcast@gmail.com  or here on the MeetingsPodcast site.

www.MeetingsPodcast.com

Music by the http://www.delgadobrothers.com/

Audio mixing by www.RipTideGraphics.com

Brought to you by Grass Shack Events & Media

Copyright 2010 MeetingsPodcast

Transcripts:

Mike McAllen: Welcome back to the Meetings Podcast. This is Mike McAllen with Grass Shack Events and Media and today, we have Tom Hillmer from Creative Group back again. Hi, Tom.

Tom Hillmer: Hi, guys. How are you?

Mike McAllen: And we have Jon Trask from Alliant Events. Hi, Jon.

Jon Trask: Hello, hello.

Mike McAllen: And we’ve just been chatting about what we’re going to talk about and there’s quite a few kind of a potpourri, if you will, of stuff.

Jon Trask: But first, we have to welcome Tom back don’t we officially?

Mike McAllen: That’s true. That’s true.

Jon Trask: Fanfare or something.

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Tom Hillmer: No fanfare necessary but it’s good to be back with you guys. It has been a while.

Mike McAllen: Maybe I’ll edit in a drum roll before I …

Tom Hillmer: Yes.

[Laughter]

Tom Hillmer: Brass bands, you know, the …

Mike McAllen: [laughs] So, how is everything going, Tom? How is business? How is life?

Tom Hillmer: Life is good. Business is, you know, crazy as ever but we’re getting through it. A different world than it was a year ago but, you know, it was different than a year before that too and it will be a different year from now. So, you know, just kind of keep rolling with it.

Jon Trask: But, did you guys have a pretty good first quarter

Tom Hillmer: What’s that?

Jon Trask: Did you have a pretty good first quarter though? I mean, generally the tone I’ve been getting from everybody is that first quarter wasn’t too bad.

Tom Hillmer: Yes, yes, it was – you know, it was okay. I mean, it has been good. I mean, it – we’re not – you know, we’re certainly not – you know, we’re not dying on the vine by any means so it has been a healthy first quarter. You know, we’re not breaking any records so either and everybody is certainly out there. I think the biggest thing we’re hearing right now is just, you know, everything is short term. People just aren’t making a lot of decisions too far out which, you know, more than maybe three to six months in advance and – because people just aren’t sure what – you know, they might be confident in the decision today for tomorrow but they’re not so much confident in the decision today for a year from now yet. So …

Jon Trask: Yes, yes. No, I hear you. I had a huge project come in last week. I mean, 7000 people in a room to quote and it came in. It was less than two months.

Tom Hillmer: Yes.

Jon Trask: It’s just insane when you think about it.

Tom Hillmer: Yes, we just finalized the program. We just finalized program for 350 people for the second week of June. So what is that – not even six weeks away?

Jon Trask: Yes.

Mike McAllen: Oh.

Jon Trask: So that does seem to be holding true across all segments is everything is a bit later and budgets are still a little down but there is activity going. That would be my assessment from the AV world.

Tom Hillmer: And yet you also – all you ever hear also is, you know, it’s becoming much more a seller’s market, the hotel industry going in 2011 and 2012. So, you know,  I don’t know if that’s the case, if people are not booking it or somebody else is booking it. I don’t know but …

Mike McAllen: Yes, it’s interesting.

Jon Trask: Well, and actually that kind of ties in to one of the first stories that I had brought along to the table today that I wanted to mention. Something from a little bit different publication that I usually have brought on but it’s Pro Lights Staging News which is, you know, more of an AV-related publication. But the editor in the latest one just had an interesting article on selling on price. And to me, it was kind of a reminder.

This is from the March issue by the way, March of 2010, just talking about price buyers and he referenced a fellow named Lawrence Steinmetz with a website called PricingExpert.com who did a seminar called How to Sell the Prices Higher than Your Competitors. And part of the idea that I thought was interesting about this is it says, you know, of course your prices are too high and when somebody tells you they’re too high, your reaction should be, well, of course, we’re better than anybody else. And we’re proud of being higher than that and let me tell you why.

And, you know, the key to that is having the facts to back up the value that you bring beyond the price. And selling on price alone is kind of a no win proposition and that’s something that I really believe after a length of time too. It’s like you can always find somebody who will do it cheaper, always find somebody who will do it cheaper but you can’t always find somebody who will do it better and if you’re only selling off of price, that’s your only leverage. And so, it just – it’s a spiral that I think a lot of companies in the AV side of things have gotten into. It’s like we’ll do anything to get the business including doing shows that we don’t make any money on. And you can’t have a sustainable business model not making any money.

Tom Hillmer: Right.

Mike McAllen: Right.

Jon Trask: So, that just still resonates with me especially if things start to improve. I’m still seeing a lot of people out there who are kind of just chasing any dollar as opposed to chasing kind of the good dollars and it just seems like we need to be better presenting our value within our organizations and to the companies we work for and all the way across the board as to why a meeting shouldn’t just be a dollar symbol and why it needs to be related to something tangible.

Tom Hillmer: Absolutely.

Mike McAllen: That’s great. You’re right though. You’re really right. And I think it’s across the board for all industries right now.

Jon Trask: Yes.

Mike McAllen: Everything is – everybody is running into this. You know, bidding on things. If you’re in a bidding situation, you know, price isn’t.

Jon Trask: Well, and you can understand that because everybody is coming out of this previous tough year where, you know, nobody hit targets and nobody hit the numbers they were supposed to hit and all of these things happened. So it’s like you get this nagging feeling that you have to grab any business that’s there regardless of the price. And if you’re not going to make any money on it, why be in business? I mean, you know, that might sound mercenary but the fact is, if I don’t return some profit to the company I work for, they won’t be here in two years.

And so, you know, I have to stand firm sometimes on having a little bit of a margin left in things. You know, and what we try and do is we try and bring extra value. It’s like hey, okay, here I have to do this at this price but, you know what? I can give you this thing or I can find a creative way to do something cool for you. I can make your meeting look better but I’m adding value to it, not just chasing the bottom dollar.

Mike McAllen: And I agree. And I think though that in the way the economy has been, people are just grasping obviously and are doing whatever they can take, hoping that the economy will flip, you know, especially people who have a lot of employees. That’s – you got to pay those people somehow.

Jon Trask: Well, and I mean this is – I’m speaking of, you know, kind of a limited area here with the AV side of things that I deal with on a daily basis. And, would you say it’s the same in hotels, Tom? I mean, you know, what are you seeing related to the pricing issues?

Tom Hillmer: You know, it is strictly a supply and demand thing, I’ll tell you because if they’ve got the hole to fill, then they’re all over negotiating it. There’s all kinds of deals to be had but if they – you know, if there are a lot of people vying still for prime spots and prime, you know, dates and they can drive the price, they do and they will. So, I think this is all – it’s a matter of, you know, need times and it’s just not consistent, I guess, is the short answer to that.

Jon Trask: Right.

Tom Hillmer: I can be talking to one hotel for dates in February and they very much hold the cards. I mean, they don’t have to be flexible because if I don’t want it, they’ve got people stacked up for those – for the – you know, for that space but if it’s, you know, three weeks from now and, you know, May or June and they would love to have the business short term, then it’s amazing the difference on that discussion so …

Jon Trask: Yes. And I guess maybe that’s where some of the short term activity is coming from too is everybody is sensing that and waiting later and later because they think they might get a better deal.

Tom Hillmer: but then the risk of that is having to be available.

Jon Trask: Right.

Tom Hillmer: That’s always the risk of that, you know.

Jon Trask: Well, like you said at the beginning, it’s definitely a different place than it was a year ago and probably different than it will be a year from now. It has been a very interesting ride the past couple of years.

Tom Hillmer: Hasn’t it?

Mike McAllen: Has it ever? So, yes, we are. So you had another thing about kind of a nicer conversation about doing some team building and …

Jon Trask: Something not about the economy? Yes.

Mike McAllen: Yes, yes.

Jon Trask: Well, the March April BizBash Magazine just had something that kind of caught my eye because it’s a time that I hadn’t really thought about using as on the planning side and when I read this article, it was like, you know, that makes perfect sense and it was the idea of using like shuttle time or transit time to present messages or do things related to the meeting and they had a couple of really neat examples.

One of them was producing some venue-specific or city-specific or meeting-specific videos that you can play like in the shuttle bus as you’re shuttling people in from the airport so that you can kind of set up the event they’re coming to or give them additional information or things like that. They talked about doing some team building on the buses. So you could maybe have like sort of an icebreaker thing where you’re playing a bingo game or something like that with the people on the bus. And it could be very interactive. It could kind of break the ice and get people talking to each other.

Mike McAllen: Right.

Jon Trask: They talked about bringing entertainers on the bus. They’ve – one person said they’ve hired fortune tellers and mentalists and contortionists, just things to sort of utilize that time, that bus time where everybody is just kind of sitting there, staring straight ahead and we’ve all done it coming into a meeting from the airport.

I just thought it was a clever place and one group for their brand awareness, instead of getting a booth, actually wrapped the bus with their message and put their marketing materials on the bus and they hired a celebrity to walk through and autograph the marketing materials and they presented cold beverages to people and a video about their product for really about the same cost as having a booth at the show. But they got a bigger presence and a bigger brand awareness because it was so unique.

And so, that jumped out at me. It’s kind of a clever way to use some time that’s normally not used in a meeting and that’s the transit time going from place to place.

Mike McAllen: Who was the celebrity?

Jon Trask: Eric Estrada.

[Laughter]

Mike McAllen: That’s funny.

Jon Trask: I wonder if he still has the same agent after doing that but …

Mike McAllen: And did he have the – did he like pull over the bus and then get on with his CHiPs uniform?

Jon Trask: Well, the quote here was to create a conversation piece, we hired Eric Estrada to ride along in the bus, autograph marketing materials, offered passengers cold beverages and presented a video about our company.

Mike McAllen: That’s funny.

Jon Trask: So he was sort of like the bus host.

[Laughter]

Jon Trask: And, you know.

Mike McAllen: Yes, that’s great. I think he should have had the whole CHiPs thing and pulled over the bus. That would have been good.

Jon Trask: [laughs]

Mike McAllen: Then he handed out drinks.

Jon Trask: Yes. [laughs] But …

Mike McAllen: Yes, that’s an interesting – that it’s interesting how you can get people in those situations that will really kind of pass on your message and [Indiscernible] [0:12:01] I have done that before. I’ve done videos for – produced videos for shuttle buses and it’s fun. It’s really fun.

Jon Trask: Well, and you know, speaking of videos, I did want to mention the video that you put up this week about the Avon Walk.

Mike McAllen: Oh, yes.

Jon Trask: I just definitely wanted to give an extra plug to on the show because it’s there on the podcast website and it just – it’s a really good cause and it’s a really important thing and so, I figured we might just reference to that and not just have a – be a posting that we don’t talk about.

Mike McAllen: Yes, I don’t always like to put stuff up there like just, you know, drop stuff but that was really fun. It’s fun to work with them. They were really – it’s fun to do. It’s such a great cause. We did a bunch of videos for them, Avon Foundation for Women and they have a bunch of walks and  had hoped people would get out there and walk if it’s …

Mike McAllen: Yes, they’re really great and so it was fun. They were a fun group of people too. They were all just wacky people. We had a really fun day and you think it’s like such a – you know, it’s a day. You know, you’re talking about cancer and it’s kind of a downer but everybody was so upbeat. You know, the video shoot was up whole day and it was just really fun. There are a lot of laughing, a lot of hugging and a lot of – it was just really a kind of a different experience. I hadn’t been in something like that in a while. You know, the normal corporate thing usually get, so silly and fun. We had a really great time but it was a very serious subject. So – and I think they did come out good. So …

Jon Trask: Yes, just I definitely wanted to reference it because I think it is a great cause and a very important thing so glad to – glad we’re publicizing it through the podcast a little bit.

Mike McAllen: Yes. Yes. Well, thanks for bringing it up. I should have thought of that myself.

[Laughter]

Jon Trask: Well, that’s why there are three of us so we can …

Mike McAllen: Yes, yes.

Jon Trask: … back each other up here, right?

Mike McAllen: I’m always a good salesman too so …

Jon Trask: So Tom, what’s up next for you? Where are you heading next on your travels?

Tom Hillmer: Where am I heading next on our travels? I will be heading to – actually, up to Maui, Hawaii in a couple of weeks, around that couple of weeks. Yes. But it’s my next program that I’ll be operating.

Mike McAllen: So fun.

Tom Hillmer: So, looking forward to that, getting to travel in between but mostly sales calls and client visits and that kind of thing but my next program will be on Hawaii. So just looking forward to that.

Jon Trask: Beautiful.

Tom Hillmer: And the Carlton Kapalua, love that hotel.

Jon Trask: Very cool. Very cool.

Mike McAllen: It’s beautiful.

Tom Hillmer: Yes.

Jon Trask: I’m heading past you and going clear to the east coast next week myself. I’ll be in DC in New York doing the kind of sales call thing too.

Tom Hillmer: Wow.

Mike McAllen: That’s great, getting out there.

Jon Trask: So, you heading anywhere, Mike?

Mike McAllen: I have a trip to Vegas for a small little project we’re doing but pretty much here for a little while which is nice.

Tom Hillmer: Yes, I’m kind of grounded too which I have to say is nice. I mean, you always want more business and yet, it’s just kind of nice to be home.

Mike McAllen: Yes, it really is. It really is. So, I also wanted to ask you guys a little bit about those Southwest commercials and the baggage. Do you guys like those commercials? I think they’re so kind of wacky in the whole push for the – I just saw one this morning actually with the guys out on the tarmac lifting up their shirt and I was wondering if that’s really the way to sell your company. [laughs]

Tom Hillmer: Yes. Say, I’m not sure I’ve seen that commercial. What are the guys doing? They’re lifting up their shirts?

Mike McAllen: Yes, it’s all painted, you know. It’s painted on the – you know, free baggage or something painted on there like – you know, like at a football game, the guys would paint their letters on, I guess.

Jon Trask: Oh, you know, it’s just – it’s an interesting thing. I kind of prefer not having to pay separate for my luggage so I’m cool with that. But I think you have to compare the overall costs when you sit down and look at it all. And Southwest usually has very good fares. So that being said, I was mentioning before we started the podcast that I’m planning a trip in Europe in a couple of months and I was looking at the airfares there and they’re phenomenally low but everything is unbundled. And so – and I mean, I know we did an even joking piece about Ryanair a while back where they were talking about charging the use of the bathroom on the planes but it’s literally almost to that level. It’s like they just – they have everything unbundled.

So, travel insurance and this and that and you’re getting hit with it the whole time you’re going through their booking site even just to shop for a price. And – but the prices themselves are incredibly low. It was – you know, a roundtrip from London to Dublin when I looked last night in June was like 14 – under 15 pounds. So, that’s like, you know, what? A $22 flight?

Tom Hillmer: Wow.

Mike McAllen: Wow.

Jon Trask: And so, you know, there are some incredibly cheap airfares and just everything is unbundled and everything you pay extra for that you want. You pay extra to get to a better spot on the line, to get your seat even.

Mike McAllen: So, it’s not really your price. There’s a lot more stuff to it.

Jon Trask: Yes, but again, I mean, it wasn’t horribly – let’s say you went with no luggage for example. Some of these flights, you might be spending under $50 to fly roundtrip.

Tom Hillmer: [Indiscernible] [0:17:35] because those European airlines aren’t all in bankruptcy either.

Jon Trask: [laughs] Yes, I wonder what model they’ve got going. Maybe this unbundling thing is the model that works.

Tom Hillmer: Right, exactly.

Mike McAllen: It’s true, huh? But you were saying you were having the same problem flying – where were you flying to, Tom? You were saying the …

Tom Hillmer: Oh, it’s just crazy, the pricing. You never can predict the pricing. So I mean, I’m traveling from Chicago down to Tennessee next week. And, you know, I had to go there and back and one day, it was 940 bucks and so we’re going to go in the night before to reduce the expenses. So dramatically reduced it by less than half and then from there, I’m going to go on for some personal travel so I checked it to – you know, to see what my personal expense would be to go on from there for a long weekend further south and it came back to tie it all together to go down to Tennessee and then down to Florida and back, it was only going to cost $36 more by the time I was said and done. But to go there and back was $940. I mean, it’s just – you know, it’s just crazy.

Mike McAllen: So crazy.

Tom Hillmer: Yes, there’s just no rhyme or reason to any of it. [Indiscernible] [0:18:37] you never can – you just never know until you check it, you know. It could work or it could not work so …

Jon Trask: Well, and then there are others that stay incredibly consistent. I know when I was booking my overall flight to Europe, the roundtrip to get me there, not the internal stuff, the price didn’t fluctuate one bit. I kept waiting for it to drop and waiting for it to drop or do something and it really has stayed consistent like three months for the time frame I’m going.

And so, you know, I ended up going ahead and buying about a month ago and putting the – putting the trip on the books but it was just – it was interesting. I kept thinking it would drop by $100 or two or so to get under kind of my bench level or my bottom level that I thought I could try and get it under. And it just never moved. And oddly, I’m taking one of the first international flights out of this particular airport because they just started service like this month out of John Wayne which is my local airport here in Orange County.

They have no other international fights. There’s no like customs but if you go through Toronto now, you can fly straight to Canada. You can clear customs in Toronto coming back from Europe and fly straight into Orange County without having to go through another customs.

Tom Hillmer: That’s great.

Jon Trask: So, I’ll be one of the first test subjects, I guess.

Mike McAllen: Wow, pretty cool.

Tom Hillmer: Yes.

Jon Trask: So, obviously, I’m looking forward to that trip. [laughs]

Mike McAllen: Yes, yes, sounds like fun.

Jon Trask: It will be nice. I told you about it before, I think on the podcast here, Mike, I’m going to Glastonbury, the big music festival.

Mike McAllen: Right, right. Yes, sounds like fun.

Jon Trask: Five days of music in a field.

Mike McAllen: [laughs]

Tom Hillmer: Nice.

[Laughter]

Mike McAllen: It’s going to be great for you.

Jon Trask: It’s great for me and probably not a lot of other people I know.

[Laughter]

Jon Trask: Most people I’ve told about it who I know look at me like, “What are you? Insane?” [laughs]

Mike McAllen: Yes. Well, it sounds like fun. The whole thing sounds like it’s a [Inaudible] [0:20:50] it will be a fun trip. So, did either one of you purchase one of the iPads or seen one of them.

Jon Trask: No. I saw one. I went into Best Buy. I looked at one but I haven’t made a good business case for it. To me, it’s like when Twitter started out. I just couldn’t see a purpose for it yet. I’ve got an iPhone that kind of does the same thing. I’ve got a computer – laptop that kind of does the same thing and this one does neither of the exact functions that those do so I could replace either of them.

Mike McAllen: Yes, I don’t know. I think it’s – I think it will be a different kind of a game changer for some of us, for some people because a lot of people don’t need all the stuff, that it’s a big screen and, you know, you could put books on there and watch movies and …

Jon Trask: Yes.

Mike McAllen: … I mean, it’s – I don’t – the business application, I don’t know. I think it would be cool if you’re a salesperson and walking into selling something. You could show something on it, you know.

Jon Trask: Well, when I say a business case, I kind of mean a purpose for it, not necessarily that it has to be a business purpose but it just –

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Jon Trask: Right now to me, it just – I can’t make a case for it. I was talking to my wife about it and, you know, I said, “Well, would you be interested in one?” Because she has gone back to school at night and is working on her masters and was talking about doing a Kindle or something for some of her textbooks and she made the exact same statement that I just made which it doesn’t exactly replace the iPhone and it doesn’t exactly replace – she has a netbook which is even smaller than my laptop and it can’t do either of those functions well enough for her to get rid of one of those things.

Mike McAllen: Yes. Well, it’s also that it too that you could use it for – you know, if you get – if you – besides the compactness of it because it’s so small, I think that down the line, it’s probably something that would be neat to have but these guys – like the iPhone when it first came out, how much was it? It was like $700 and it really didn’t do anything and then like three years later now, it’s $100 and it works like really well, you know.

Jon Trask: Right.

Mike McAllen: So it’s like I think that all these guys that have to have it right away, I think they’re kind of like [Indiscernible] [0:23:05] that – you know, they’re – whenever Apple releases something new, they all run off and buy it and then they – you know, then they find out what’s wrong with it and then Apple fixes it and then the next one, they’re cheaper and they’re better so …

Jon Trask: Yes, there are effectively really expensive costs to be a beta tester.

Mike McAllen: Right, right, right. To be cool to have one, you know. It’s a – I know a lot of people that went and bought them and …

Jon Trask: And I mean …

Mike McAllen: I don’t really – I don’t have a – I don’t want one either really.

Jon Trask: I love the App Store and I love the stuff you can do on the iPhone and the iPhone is a phenomenal thing for me. It has done a really good job but I waited a couple of years into it before I got one as well. I’m on like a third generation one.

Tom Hillmer: How do you like the keyboard on the iPhone?

Jon Trask: You know, I’ve gotten okay with it. I can – I like it better than some of the dimpled keyboards that I have. I had a Palm Treo for a while and I can actually do better on the Apple keyboard than I could on the Palm.

Mike McAllen: Yes, it kind of [Indiscernible] [0:24:03] to you though that, you know, it learned how you type.

Jon Trask: Yes. Yes, it seems to – or you learn how to type on it better.

Mike McAllen: Probably both, yes.

Jon Trask: It definitely seems like I have an easier time typing on it than I used to.

[Crosstalk] [0:24:20]

Tom Hillmer: I got an – you guys have the iPhone. I got the iTouch or what is it …

Mike McAllen: Oh, yes, yes.

Jon Trask: The little …

Tom Hillmer: It does – it’s like the phone – only everything [Phonetic] [0:24:28] but the phone.

Jon Trask: Right.

Tom Hillmer: And I got one for Christmas and, you know. And it’s great for basically for loading music on to it and all of that but my challenge with it is I can’t do anything on it if I’m not anywhere where there’s an internet – you know, internet connection. So when you’re on the phone, when you have the phone with the cell service, you always have internet connectivity so you can do all that stuff on the iPhone. You can’t do it on the iTouch unless you have an internet connection and, you know, you’ve always got to be like looking for an internet connection somewhere to be able to tag into it to do the stuff on it so it’s kind of a hassle. I almost wish – it would have been my opportunity to maybe take that and upgrade it to an iPhone but I got it as a …

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Tom Hillmer: … Christmas gift and engraved the back of it so I’m the proud owner of it.

[Laughter]

Jon Trask: Well, you know, I still – I carry an iPod around just for my music and then I carry the iPhone for everything else. So, you’ll just have to carry two things, Tom.

Tom Hillmer: Well, it’s what I do but …

Jon Trask: [laughs]

[Crosstalk] [0:25:24]

Tom Hillmer: I’m surprised you don’t just put your music on your phone.

Mike McAllen: Yes, that’s what I do.

Jon Trask: Well, the problem is, my iPod is up to about 22,000 songs.

Mike McAllen: Yes …

Jon Trask: Which is …

Mike McAllen: [Inaudible] [0:25:35]

Jon Trask: … like 120 gigs worth of just music.

Tom Hillmer: Yes.

Mike McAllen: And you listen to it all all the time?

Jon Trask: I put it on shuffle everyday.

Mike McAllen: Oh, do you?

Jon Trask: Yes, I had to turn it off here to do the podcast but normally, I have it playing in the background of my office all day. I’ll go through a couple of hundred songs a day. It’s like my own private radio station.

Mike McAllen: That’s plenty. Yes, the Touch is just like the iPad basically. It’s just the iPad is just a giant Touch.

Jon Trask: Right.

Mike McAllen: [Inaudible] [0:26:05] or whatever you have, so …

Jon Trask: You know, Tom, if you don’t have it for – even for your Touch and we talked about this on the show back a long time ago but there’s a website called TripIt and there’s a little app for TripIt that’s a free app. And it’s really cool because like I’ve already downloaded my trip to Europe on to the iPhone, right? And so if I hit TripIt here on my iPhone, I’ve got all of my confirmation numbers. I’ve got maps, locations. Everything that’s on the TripIt website has downloaded to the phone. So – and like even – because I’m connecting through Toronto, I even have a map of Toronto that it downloaded.

Tom Hillmer: Wow, cool.

Mike McAllen: So you can also do – with the Touch though, you could also – Tom, you can download – of course, you need an internet access. But you can download all the apps too, can’t you?

Jon Trask: Uh-huh.

Tom Hillmer: I can, yes, as long as I’ve got an internet – you know, I’ve got internet access. But like for instance, I mean, I used to have internet in my house and I – but I – then I bought an internet card, a wireless card so I’ve got it everywhere I go but it inserts into my computer, into my laptop so I don’t have a Wi-Fi signal in my house anymore. I’ve got the wireless card that goes into my laptop.

Mike McAllen: Right.

Tom Hillmer: You know what I mean? So, now the way around that is I’ve been wanting to get back into the cellular store to see if I can take that and change the – my wireless card out for one of those wireless frequency cards so that you can like have five – up to five different units.

Mike McAllen: Right.

[Crosstalk] [0:27:43]

Tom Hillmer: … off of it no matter where you’re at. So, that’s really probably the next direction I need to go and so that I’ve always got the wireless, you know, the wireless signal. So, I didn’t need it until I got the iTouch.

Mike McAllen: [laughs]

Tom Hillmer: I know.

Mike McAllen: So many things to get. It’s crazy, yes.

Jon Trask: Crazy.

Mike McAllen: I like my iPhone just because my phone, my camera and I have all my music on there. So I just carry it where I used to carry, you know, my camera and my iPod and my phone so it’s …

Jon Trask: Right. Well, and I still carry a camera around too so I just – I have all these junk that I haul with me everywhere.

Mike McAllen: I do to. Actually, I have my other – I have in the bag [Indiscernible] [0:28:23] yes. There’s just too much crap to carry around. [laughs]

Jon Trask: Occasionally, I’ll take an iPhone picture and post it or something but for the most part, I’ve got to have the real camera.

Mike McAllen: Right. Alright, guys. Well, we should probably cut out here. Thank you again for coming on, guys. It’s great to talk to you again, Tom.

Tom Hillmer: Yes, [Indiscernible] [0:28:43]

Mike McAllen: And let’s make sure people write in their questions and comments to MeetingsPodcast@Gmail.com. And I guess I will talk to you guys very soon, huh?

Jon Trask: Alright. Looking forward to the next one. Great to have you back, Tom.

Tom Hillmer: Thanks much. Appreciate you guys too. Talk to you soon.

Mike McAllen:             Bye-bye.

Transcripts:

Mike McAllen: Welcome back to the Meetings Podcast. This is Mike McAllen with Grass Shack Events and Media and today, we have Brett Bumeter, a Bu to a kill meter.

[Laughter]

Mike McAllen: I always screw up Brett’s name because I just read it for the last – what? How long have we known each other now? A long time and it has always been – I always called you Bum-meter. So – but it is Bumeter. So, anyway, hi Brett.

Brett Bumeter: Hi, Mike. How are you doing?

Mike McAllen: Great. Thank you for talking with me again. And you have some pretty fantastic stuff to talk about today. It has really helped me selfishly and my business. I’m already seeing – already seeing it. So, why don’t you tell us a little bit about Scribe or is it – it’s SEO Scribe, I guess, is the name.

Brett Bumeter: Yes, it’s the – it’s a WordPress or a Web tool and it’s called the Scribe SEO WordPress plugin or you can also use a Web version of it. But, basically, it’s this tool that helps you perform SEO analysis and copywriting on your individual pages or articles in a very guided, slightly automated type of fashion and it’s just cool. It’s built by two fairly well-known gentlemen, Sean Jackson who’s from Texas and is a bit of a programming SEO specialist and Brian Clark who is well-known on the Web as a copyblogger.

And essentially, on your site, we have installed the WordPress plugin version of this tool, Scribe SEO and it allows you to go through and take a look at your articles and fine-tune them from a copy perspective and from an SEO perspective and as you kind of go through the process, it guides you through. You can literally start to increase the rankings on your individual pages and also kind of – oh, here comes the bike.

Mike McAllen: Oh, nice. I like that. A little Harley interlude.

Brett Bumeter: Yes, he’s just getting ready to take off. So …

[Laughter]

Mike McAllen: Nice. That’s great.

Brett Bumeter: Yes, some sort of custom bike. [Inaudible] [0:02:31].

Mike McAllen: [laughs] That’s great. Never really had that happen on the podcast before where the Harley comes racing through. That’s awesome because I was saying how nice it sounds there because I get the birds in the background and chimes. It’s very relaxing and then this motorcycle guy came. So, it’s just – you’re just yanking me around with my feelings here – not my feelings, my – what do you call that? Anyway …

Brett Bumeter: There it goes in the distance too.

[Laughter]

Brett Bumeter: Just to fade away in the sunset.

Mike McAllen: That’s great. Okay. So, keep going. So, actually, I had a quick question then. So you said – I know, we used – since our site is a WordPress site.

Brett Bumeter: Yes.

Mike McAllen: You said it’s also Web-based too. Can it be used for any type of site?

Brett Bumeter: It can be used for – it can. They’ve got a – they just came out with the Web version about a week or so ago. And essentially, what you can do is you can copy and paste content from let’s say, a Web page that you have and paste it on to their site and they’ll perform the analysis through their Web tool. And then once you’ve kind of fine-tune the copy or the text or what have you, you can copy that back to whatever setting you want to publish that in.

Mike McAllen: Very cool. Very cool. Okay. Sorry, I just – it just struck me. I was wondering. So that anyone could really use this tool now, not just WordPress people. That’s …

Brett Bumeter: Anyone can use it and they’re starting to – they’re adding different ways to connect to it and use it. They’re – it has got the WordPress and the generic Web connection which kind of cover the big two and they’ll probably – expanded out to cover some other systems in the future as well. But, for people that are familiar with WordPress, there’s kind of a front-end way to do some of the SEO work on the WordPress. WordPress in general is excellent for SEO results. Typically, most of that is on the front-end when you can figure the site and program the theme and then sell some plugins to help boost – or Googlebot’s ability to find your pages.

Well, this is kind of like the back-end portion that allows you to not only optimize the general, generic site but also each of those pages on that site and their unique content.

So, you basically – as you have a post or an article or what have you, you hit the analyze button and it performs a check on a number of different key SEO points, which comes down to boring and mundane but the end result is it tells you where you’ve done well or done poorly and it kind of guides you in what you can do to improve the structure of the content on that site.

And as you follow those steps, you can see some dramatic results as your pages start to work their way up in Google search listings, sometimes known as SERPs, an acronym for search engine ranking placement and the goal is typically to be on the number one page of a search. So that when you type in a keyword, somebody finds you that first time, preferably without having to scroll down even.

Mike McAllen: It’s pretty amazing to me just in the time that we’ve been doing this, how far or how the blog post pages have moved up just by tweaking a few little things which is in your post. And obviously, everybody – not obviously but these days, people are getting away from regular static websites and doing more blogs. So this is really a blogging kind of software plus being able to post all the time. It’s a really great tool because that’s what we’re all trying, to get our organic search to be found instead of paying Google to put, you know, at the top. We’re trying to get our sites higher and this is just a really cool tool, just – I just – I’m trying to …

Brett Bumeter: It is …

[Crosstalk] [0:06:25]

Mike McAllen: Yes, it’s just – it’s really cool. Anyway, sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt you.

Brett Bumeter: No, no. No, it’s – and it caught me that way too. I had heard about it. They’ve got like a free trial where you get to kind of run an analysis 10 different times and that could be 10 times on one page or you could do 10 different pages with one analysis each. And as I was working through that trial, I was really impressed at the results I was getting. In fact, I tried it on my own personal site and I saw about a 25 percent increase in traffic after I had just touched four different articles. And that was, you know, a really big boost from moving those articles up higher in the search engine rankings. More people were seeing the articles listed there.

The plugin not only helps you get listed higher but it helps you write the copy to help convince people to click that link knowing that they’re going to find what they’re looking for on the other side. And that’s kind of where the copywriting balance or aspect of this comes into play as well. So I was getting a lot more traffic, a lot more good results. And, you know, that was just off of the free trial and I quickly upgraded to the paid version. It is a service. The plugin is free to install but there is a service package related to this, kind of like – it’s kind of like a cell phone plan, I guess, is the best way I could describe it.

The plugin, kind of like the phone, is free and if you want to use the service, then you can purchase X number of what they call evaluations. I kind of think of them as like a cell phone minute and you can perform each evaluation or analysis on a page however many times you like to perfect or improve that article just enough to get the results that you’re looking for.

So, it’s a pretty cool little tool and I’m super happy with it so far. I’ve been using it like crazy the last couple of weeks.

Mike McAllen: Yes, it’s pretty amazing and it isn’t basically changing what you’re writing. I mean, it is kind of changing what you write in your post but it really has to do with your SEO to pull your posts up higher on Google and it – god, if you spend any time doing this kind of stuff, this is totally worth it, you know.

Brett Bumeter: Yes, it helps you when – it’s oftentimes easy for people to write a blog article. It’s kind of like writing an email or answering a question and you can do it kind of free form and you don’t have to think about it a whole lot because you’re just kind of talking to people through your blog. But it’s not always easy to take a step back and then, you know, learn SEO and learn copywriting and perform all these different mundane tasks of how to format the text in just the right way.

But this kind of guides you through it in an easy to understand kind of way. And helps you kind of see the before and after effect of what you do. So you know that if you change, you know, the ordering of the words and your title of your article and you make that change and you reanalyze it, you can see if that actually helped or made things worse.

And that’s something that definitely helps you improve that particular article but eventually, it starts to help you improve in general as you draft the articles the first time. So, it kind of teaches you SEO on the side as well just through experience.

And it’s – it’s good for – I see it – this is something where your average business can essentially do their own SEO work without having to go out and hire a specialist and pay them, you know. I’ve seen specialists get $10, $20, $50 a page to improve a – you know, just a single page or post and most businesses don’t have that kind of money to pay for a given page or post to have it optimized by an SEO specialist. Tends to be more often businesses that have shopping carts and they’re trying to up product pages but your average person doesn’t have, you know, that kind of budget. This kind of brings that to – way down to your – to – you know, to a blog or to a small business person because the cost works out to be around 40 to – 40 cents to a dollar per post that you might evaluate depending on how many times you hit the button.

Mike McAllen: It’s so amazing. So, also – so how would someone who’s brand new at this and plugs it, how would they find, you know, how it’s changing? Would they – they’re just looking at their Google Analytics then that they plugged in? Is that how you’re gauging the actual posts after you’ve worked with the Scribe plugin or the Web tool?

Brett Bumeter: Well, there’s a couple of different ways. One, I definitely noticed – I was watching Google Analytics and I did notice an increase in traffic following some work on four articles and these are blog articles, not business pages on my own site. And that– so there was definitely a traffic increase and that was coming from a search. I also – I tend to monitor where my links – when somebody performs that Google Search, I monitor where my own links are positioned. So, I keep track of – you know, if my link is number one in a Google search, the top of the first page or if it’s number two or three or if it’s number 42 or 83 or wherever it may be which could be many pages deep in a Google search. And if it’s important to me, I’ll work to try and increase it so that it’s on the front page or a lot closer.

So, I was watching these articles and I did see them move up in the rankings. I was working with some keywords that were kind of competitive. Meaning there’s other companies out there that have been covering those topics for a lot longer than I have and in some cases, not doing it as well as I was. But they’ve been covering it – you know, they just had more in quantity and – but it was a little disorganized and – but they’ve been there longer.

And I was able to catch up with quite a few of them even though my article was relatively new, just a – you know, few days old to a couple of weeks old. So that was something that I was tracking. So, I – anybody can do it themselves, track where the results are. If there’s a keyword and you think your article should be able to rank in Google for that keyword, just type it in and see if you can find your self through that search engine result.

If you can’t, then you can work on trying to improve it. So, that’s kind of what I mean by it. It – there’s a tool that I use from a different company. The tool is called SEO Book and it’s a Firefox plugin and it has got quite a few different SEO tools with it but one of them is a search engine ranking checker and it essentially allows me to put in a bunch of different keywords and then it goes out and it checks to see what my position is in Google for each of those keywords for the domain name that I’m looking at.

Mike McAllen: Very cool. So, basically, you’re looking at the traffic and then where you stack up in Google and that’s the things you kind of watched to move your post or your pages up. Is there a way, do you know, that if someone is new at this to find their keywords? Like, you know, what are some like – you know, are there a couple of ways that if I have a flower shop business, is there something that I should be – is there a way – what’s the best way to find keywords? I guess I should – that’s the question.

Brett Bumeter: Sure. Well, there’s a few different ways that you can do it. One is – and this is – there’s ways to do it actually with this tool but outside of the tool, a couple of things that I use, one, I use Google Analytics and I take a look at the search terms that people have used to find my site and that’s a pretty good way. Sometimes, if you’ve got a blog however, it’s not always easy to see keywords for each individual article, especially if it’s an article that might, you know – not get a lot of traffic. It’s a long tail type of thing where maybe you get three or four or five, maybe 20 visitors a year on that one particular article that has been out there for two years.

So, that’s – but that’s one area. I also tend to install a real basic, no frills, little plugin on most WordPress sites I work with and it’s called ShortStat and it essentially allows me to take a look at keywords that have been used on my site in the last 24 hours. And this isn’t always the most accurate indicator of where someone came from Google but it does allow me to see the weird and strange keyword combinations that people put together and kind of get a build-up, a bit of a reality check, aside from the cold analytics on how people are doing their own search because, you know, not everybody is a search expert or thinks of the best keywords the first time around. And I like to see, you know, how that evolves or what they’re thinking or, you know, if they’re phrasing it as a question or if they’re being very scientific and breaking the keywords down or if they have misspellings and all that good stuff.

And that helps me then to say, okay, well, there’s a keyword I – you know, there’s a variation that I just never expected to see and then I go out and I just do a quick Google search with that keyword and see if I show up. And sometimes, I’ll see that activity in my site but, you know, I’ll be very, very deep in Google and, you know, not terribly visible. They might have come in from a different search engine or something but I’ll start paying attention to that keyword and see if I can do a – you know, a few simple little things to boost it up because if one person searches that way, there might be more and …

Mike McAllen: Right.

Brett Bumeter: … there are some other tools, more on the advertising side that relate to using the AdWords and other programs that will also help show you where the majority of people are doing some of their search on which keywords are more popular and that’s a whole extra segment of internet marketing to kind of delve into and a good place to start too but the basics that I kind of look at are just the things that are – you know, what’s happening on my side on any given day, how are people searching it and we kind of grow it from there.

Mike McAllen: Very interesting. So, you also gave me a couple of links to put on with the podcast page. So if someone is listening to this, they can come back to the site. If they’re just – you know, they just downloaded this podcast from iTunes, they can go to the Meetings Podcast site and we have a couple of YouTube posts on how this all works too. Right?

Brett Bumeter: Yes. No, I did a quick screen cast …

[Crosstalk]

Mike McAllen: Oh, you did them. You did them. Well, that’s great.

Brett Bumeter: Yes, this is amazing and actually, it was – I think it was late March or something like that. It was still pretty cold here. I was – it’s one of the early days, I was trying to get out on the dock. I work on a fishing dock on the lake outside of Charlotte and it wasn’t quite warm enough that day so I went out when the sun was there and I got all set up and I had a jacket on and by the time I actually started working, it was getting colder and colder and colder. So, you can almost see me shivering through the screen cast a bit. [Indiscernible] [0:17:49] there was – the tool really had me jazzed at the time and still does. But …

Mike McAllen: That’s great.

Brett Bumeter: But I’m kind of going through the screen cast and trying to keep the mouse from jiggling all over the place because my hands are cold.

Mike McAllen: [laughs]

Brett Bumeter: But [Indiscernible] kind of goes through this set-up or how it’s configured but part two is really – the second video is really the – I don’t know, called the Money Shot [Phonetic] [0:18:12]. It’s the video that really shows you where the important, useful stuff are – stuff is in this particular little tool and really why it’s valuable. You can see it pretty clearly if you’re watching the video, just how it can help a site and …

Mike McAllen: Very cool.

Brett Bumeter: Finding new stuff  with it all the time, different ways to prioritize what articles that you might want to work on and you kind of grow out from there.

Mike McAllen: Well, that was my thought as I – you know, as I – you know, I just – I kind of just started using this obviously because we just loaded it up. But the – but to come with a little kind of – I don’t know, like a list of things to go through, you know, because it is so – there’s so much you could do with it kind of – you know, so to kind of make a – prioritize as you said, you know, things to look at each time for your – ones you’ve posted and also, you know, learning to copywrite and some of the little steps that you’ve already showed me on – you know, how we’re posting the podcast, you know, to put them to the show at the end, the number of the show at the end which instead of the beginning and just little tricks are – I just want to get a good list going for my self.

Brett Bumeter: Yes. Well, I kind of – one of the things that I’ve done, I kind of initially came up with a prioritization for my self and I’ve kind of been – we’re finding overtime but the first area that I’m focusing on myself and for a couple of clients as well, I’m looking at the top 10 or 20 blog articles that a company might have on their site or a person might have on their blog site that are actually doing well. So, what are your heavy hitters that are already pulling people to your site? And that’s something that I go into Google Analytics and I look at the top content for the site and then I go through and optimize those. I kind of look at it like a – you know, you use a baseball analogy, it’s like, you know, find out which of your articles are Barry Bonds and go give them an extra steroid shot. So that’s …

Mike McAllen: [laughs] Yes. No, you’re right. That’s great. That’s a good analogy. It’s the way to go.

Brett Bumeter: So – and that’s mostly just a – you know, just to give your self – give your site that extra boost on the stuff that’s working well. If those articles are already working for some of your visitors, you know, do some things to increase the audience so that works for even more visitors because those are the things that you’ve done some things right with already but, you know, do some things to get some more out of it.

And then, after that, I take a look at – and I’m a former accountant so I always like to kind of follow the money. I take a look at my top pages that are going to earn me money. Now, if it’s a business site, this could be a services page, the thing that you want to emphasize that’s going to be help convert your clients. If you’re selling products, it could be a products page. It could be an individual product or it could be a category. If you’re a blogger or a journalist or something like that, it could be pages that happen to be, you know, running some advertising campaigns that are converting well.

Whatever it is, go optimize the pages that make you some money so that you can do better and continue to grow and improve your site, you know. We’re on a recession. You got to keep paying the bills and so, focus on the money a little bit especially because this is a – it’s a premium service that comes with this plugin so you at least want to – this plugin to pay for itself.

Mike McAllen: Right.

Brett Bumeter: And I have found – for me, it has definitely already paid for itself several times over. It’s definitely doing that for me but focus on the ones that bring you – you know, more traffic marketing. Focus on the ones that bring you more money, kind of your revenue or sales and then after that, I’ve been going through and focusing on the next level of articles. The ones that I think are articles that are really good but they’re underperforming. So, too often as a writer, as a Web designer, I’ll create a page and I’ll think, oh, this is – you know, this is going to be the next Barry Bonds and then, you know, before I know it, it’s – you know, it strikes out every single time.

And so, I jump into those and I start to take a look at, you know, reviewing those. What did I do wrong? Or what could be, you know, altered a little bit? A lot of times, you know, when you write an article or you make something creative, it’s difficult to realize that your baby is ugly and this kind of helps explain not only why your baby is ugly but where your baby is ugly and gives you a chance to do a little, I don’t know, plastic surgery on your blog article that …

Mike McAllen: Right, right. No, another great analogy, ugly babies and baseball. I think that – for me, it’s fantastic because I can’t write at all. That’s why I do an audio podcast and I’m ugly, speaking of the babies, so I can’t do a video podcast. But this really helps me so far because …

Brett Bumeter: Yes. No, we …

Mike McAllen: I can do the – it helps me just move the articles up the ladder is what – my whole plan is just to get, you know, organic search for my business.

Brett Bumeter: Yes. No, we saw some very cool results on – we looked at one of your articles earlier. It was an interview with a person and the – when we – you know, when it – the first analysis was done on that article. It scored like a 32 percent or 39 percent, I think it was. And we changed, I think, 8 or 10 words in a couple key strategic places and that bumped it up to a score of 82 percent but it  moved you a page closer to the top in the Google search engine rankings from 45 to – what was that? 36, I think.

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Brett Bumeter: Something like that.

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Brett Bumeter: And that’s just – and that was a move that happened within about 25 minutes so we made that change. Your site got indexed again and you got moved up, you know, a half hour later.

Mike McAllen: Yes. And that’s what it’s involved about, being found on the Google. So …

Brett Bumeter: Yes.

Mike McAllen: So, alright. Well, awesome. I think this is a cool, little podcast for people to listen to and of course – well, the last thing I was going to ask you too about it, do you think now if it gets to be easier and easier to kind of game the system here. I mean, I know there’s people that do this but now, you know, some schmoe like me can start doing it. Will Google now then change their whole thing and will this thing kind of – you know, they change their algorithm all the time and …

Brett Bumeter: I don’t see this as so much a game in as – well, search engine optimization has a heavy emphasis on optimization. So, it’s not optimizing it to gain Google. It’s optimizing it so that Google can understand better what it is your site, your page, your category, whatever it is, is about. Index it and get it into the right position. And so it’s not so much – this isn’t a gamey thing. It doesn’t do anything that Google perceives as bad. It’s actually following all the Google Webmaster rules. And, you know, coming from some people that have a very good history of helping others do just that.

Mike McAllen: Right.

Brett Bumeter: It’s from a – to pull in another analogy, it’s kind of – it’s probably very similar to the time period probably back in the 30s, 40s when people were moving away from their Model Ts and moving into a faster car. And, you know, you get out on the road and if you’re still in the Model T, you might only be doing 10, 15 miles an hour and another car might come by and blow your doors off, you know, 35 or 45 miles an hour.

Mike McAllen: Right.

Brett Bumeter: So …

Mike McAllen: Or a Harley.

Brett Bumeter: Or a Harley, yes.

[Laughter]

Brett Bumeter: So this is more about getting a – more people kind of benchmark up to the same speed on the Web and I see that quite a bit more these days as people are – you know, it’s real easy to put a website up. It’s not always – it’s a whole – it’s a next step to optimize that site so that Google can find you and then, you know, you had another step for them to be able to find you and place you in the right position.

Mike McAllen: Right.

Brett Bumeter: And if each of your competitors are already doing that, then you’re kind of on a level playing field. If you’re the only one and your competitors aren’t doing it yet, then you have a competitive advantage. If they’ve been doing it for two years and you haven’t, you know, you’re probably hurting a little bit and finally getting up to speed. So, this is – everybody kind of get in up to that same maximum speed that Google allows.

Mike McAllen: Very cool. Alright. Well, let’s – I think we should cut this off right now. And I wanted to say if anybody has any questions about any of this, the Scribe or doing any kind of WordPress, you could email us at MeetingsPodcast@Gmail.com or you can find – Brett, what’s your – I can’t remember what your Twitter handle is. What is your Twitter handle?

Brett Bumeter: It’s @BrettBum.

Mike McAllen: Brett Bum. Yes. And – of course, and I’m Mike McAllen on the Twitter and MMcAllen. I have two of them. I should probably condense them back again. But, that’s another story for another podcast. So, until next time, Brett, thank you again. And I’ll talk to you soon.

Brett Bumeter: Thanks, Mike. I appreciate it.

Mike McAllen: Okay. Bye-bye.

Brett Bumeter:

Streaming video for events has been hot on the #EventProfs chats and on several of the blogs of our colleagues. Hybrid events are the new darling of  2010.   As I read through my newest issue of Fast Company in the Next Tech section I found a short article about how Ustream is trying to build a business model out of charging for this type of streaming content.  As we have talked about before on this blog and our eBook keeping your virtual audience engaged is Priority #2.  Priority #1 is the actual production elements.  The audience needs to see and hear without distraction.  Once you have this Priority #2 takes hold and it is equally important. Engagement.

At Event camp we used Twitter, Twebevent and the smart and beautiful Emilie Barta (Learn more about Event Camp) to keep our audience engaged but this fast company article takes it another step further.

Monitization of the live stream!

So what  they did is experiment with Comic Dane Cook’s 67 city-Isolated Incident Tour. Besides the main event they also have behind the scenes elements like Emilie Barta did for us. The Dane Cook pay-per-view event represents a stab at the history of streaming video.  A camera follows Cook offstage, where he goofs off with warm-up act Al Del Bene before his encores. Meanwhile, viewers excitedly chat about their icon over Twitter, Facebook and Aim. The five-hour experience, they say, was worth the $5 surcharge.

“We’re letting people buy premium content that is realtime, social, and mobile,” says Ustream CEO John Ham. “That’s the future of live media.” The company, which has amassed almost $90 million in venture capital and more than 70 million unique viewers monthly, is trying to create a business model for a promising technology that has been plagued by amateurish content and quality-control issues.

What do you think about charging a small fee for your virtual audience to attend?  I have seen some associations and events trying this but the fees are usually too high for me to really afford.  Maybe hybrid events like this will be engaging to watch visually but also be a marketing opportunity for the virtual audience to want to be at the next one in person.

Love to get your thoughts.

I used a case study about Will It Blend videos in my session at MPI’s World Education Conference last year in Salt Lake City. These videos have increased sales and moved the high performance blenders which were really used for commercial only sales to the home market. The story behind Blendtec is the new Marketing Director George Wright came across company owner Tom Dickson trying to jam a 2×4 into a blender. He and the others at Blendtec had been jamming things in their blenders for years for testing. George then came up with the idea above which changed the company forever.
The videos have been viewed 80 million times and growing. Since starting the campaign sales have increased 700 percent.

It is amazing how a simple video that is compelling can move so many people to an action.

How are you moving your attendees, your clients, your sales teams to action?

Have you tried video? Looking at Blendtec you might want to give it a try.
Do you think Bill Gates has tried this?

Click here to buy the book

Photo Credit Stevendepolo

Show notes- transcripts
Mike McAllen: Welcome back. This is Mike. This is show 117 of Meetings Podcast. I wanted to do a quick hello and say thank you for tuning in again. Today, we are going to interview Adrian Segar. Adrian has a new book out called – what is his new book? It is called Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love. And so, there are some links to that in the show notes. I just wanted to say hello and let’s get right into it. So, thank you for tuning in again.

Female Speaker: Welcome to the Meetings Podcast, the meeting planner’s podcast source for what’s new in the meetings and events industry. Meetings Podcast is a conversation with a variety of voices that looks at events, meetings and media and the changing world around them.

Mike McAllen: Welcome back to the Meetings Podcast. This is Mike McAllen and today, we have Adrian Segar. Adrian, thank you for joining me.

Adrian Segar: I’m pleased to be invited. Thanks, Mike.

Mike McAllen: It is great to talk to you. We kind of were two ships passing in the night at the event camp in New York earlier this year. We were in the same place but we didn’t really chat.

Adrian Segar: That’s because you were so busy.

Mike McAllen: Yes, I was running around a little bit and I heard your session went really well, actually. That was the thing I – on our pre-call here, I didn’t chat with you. I heard it really went well.

Adrian Segar: Well, I don’t know that I – I didn’t have a session per se but I was fairly active in talking at various sessions. I like to talk and so, you know, event camp was just an amazing experience for me because I met all these people who I had relatively recently met, you know, online on Twitter, and it was a relatively late decision for me to go there. Maybe three weeks before the event, I thought, I should go to this and it’s one of the best decisions I ever made.

Mike McAllen: Yes, it was a lot of fun. I did see you circled by a bunch of people in the little – at the littlest room there. You were circled by a bunch of people and then I did talk to somebody who had your book and they were saying what a good time they had talking to you.

Adrian Segar: Well, I – maybe it’s just a blur. I don’t remember but …

[Laughter]

Adrian Segar: Seriously, things happen at events and people say – remind me of conversations later and I don’t always remember them but …

Mike McAllen: [laughs]

Adrian Segar: … I have such a great time. It was just continual. It’s one of those with flow [Phonetic] [0:02:26] experiences and suddenly, you know, a day and a half have gone by but it was – I realized afterwards how many amazing people, you know, who actually have some – have a real presence in the events world I met in that day and a half who, you know, I had never known before and they had certainly never known me. I didn’t know anybody at event camp when I went there and that changed. So it’s – it was just an amazing example of how virtual community online decides to come together and how powerful that is when that happens.

Mike McAllen: Yes, it is pretty amazing. And I really didn’t know anyone either and I had met, you know, the people who were on the event camp planning group there, the five of us, just the five of us. I had met two of the people and it was interesting the week before that – a couple of weeks before that. I don’t know whenever PCMA was. I had gone to that in Dallas and I actually went out to dinner with Jeff Hurt and Greg Ruby and Mike McCurry and it was just such an interesting thing to have met all these guys after I had been, you know, talking with them on the – over the virtual – over the internet for, you know, a year and following them. It was just wild because you already – you know these people. It’s like almost like a reunion.

Adrian Segar: Well, the thing – I mean I had an even more compressed experience because I – my book was published in November of last year and I was searching on Twitter for ways that I could find out about people who might be interested and I fell into – I discovered the event profs’ hash tag on Twitter and that whole group and that’s – and that happened only two or three months before event camp so …

Mike McAllen: Perfect.

Adrian Segar: … a really – a relative event camp, event profs newbie. I – so it has all gone really very quickly and I would just never have dreamed I’m actually doing a talk on this and then next month, locally, I would just never have dreamed that Twitter would have turned out to be the most powerful way for me to actually make connections with people who are interested in what I’m doing.

Mike McAllen: Yes, yes, and that event profs for me has been very interesting because I was involved in it a long time ago when Laura started it and then I kind of fell off because it gets to be where, you know, life goes. And then now, back in there and I’ve been going and reading the transcripts of the two – of the actual chats and it has been interesting that it’s neat to see new people coming in and getting excited about it. It keeps it going.

Adrian Segar: It’s so much like the face to face events that I do except that those are – you know, you have those and if you have repeating events like those. You have this community that they meet online during the year but when they come together face to face, you know, you have a lot of the people who have been coming for a while but there are always new people who come in and it’s wonderful to keep seeing them. I’ll get excited at the peer conferences I run and – you know, and then become part of the community over time.

Mike McAllen: Right, right. So, backing up, of course, we didn’t follow any of the flow we talked about.

[Laughter]

Mike McAllen: You – tell us a little bit about your self. Because people probably are like, who the heck is this guy? [laughs]

Adrian Segar: I don’t know. I don’t know where to start. I have done a lot of different things in my life. I started off getting a PhD in elementary particle physics of all things. I used to work – I did my graduate work on the old accelerator at CERN and in Switzerland. And actually, just discovered last week that I and about 70 other physicists won the 2009 European Physical Society Prize for High Energy Physics for this experiment we worked on 37 years ago.

Mike McAllen: Wow! [laughs]

Adrian Segar: So, I started off doing that. I was born in England, came to the United States on a sort of intuitive whim with my wife to be. Now, my wife in the 70s left academia, moved to Vermont which is where I wanted to move to and started a solar energy business, a solar manufacturing business in the sort of oil crisis days, Reagan oil crisis days. And that did very well, left that, went back into teaching and I taught computer science part time at a small liberal arts college in the town I live in and got into IT consulting.

And while all this was going on when the solar – in fact, when I came to the United States, I had always – and I guess when starting an academia, when – I went to a lot of academic conferences when I was in academic and really did not enjoy them. They just – they were very much about hierarchy and status and the idea of asking a question at the end of a session was more kind of career move than, you know, just finding – asking a question. It was really – they were very, very loaded events and I didn’t like that at all.

And I thought, you know, I want to get together with people and learn from them in an environment where we can learn from each other and share information because I knew and this is one of my beliefs is that you have a group of people – group of adults who are working in an area these days. The collective knowledge of that group is far greater normally than any few experts who can call in and come and talk to those people.

So, I just really got interested. When I went at the solar business, I ran several national – and ran several national conferences on solar and then when I got into teaching computer science and IT and eventually IT consulting which I did for over 20 years, I – whatever area I was interested in, I always wanted to run event conferences that – about those topics and get to meet people who are interested in those areas and this mode of – this desire I had to create events that people really enjoyed and they could learn from their peers led me to slowly design a way of doing, what I call peer conferences or conferences that work over the last 18 years.

The first one I ran, I didn’t even know I was doing it at the time. It was in 1992 and it was for an IT directress at a small – at small schools in the United States and at the time, small schools are just – that was the time the PC had come in. You know, it was the first time that small schools could actually afford to buy their own computers and use them to do administrative tasks at schools and it wasn’t – there weren’t any experts in the area.

So there wasn’t anybody around who could say this is how you do this but there were a lot of people like my self at the time all over the country who were sort of thrust into this role and we didn’t know – we wanted to figure out how the best to do something. You knew something that no one had ever done before. So we had this conference. We organized this conference and I didn’t know what people wanted to talk about. I didn’t know what experiences people had there. So we generated this. We created this format where we basically ask people at the start and I can describe a little later on the sort of format of what I do.

But, that turned into – that has turned into an annual conference. The 19th one is this June and has been very, very successful and has been my kind of main test bed for this approach. But whatever I was interested in, I ran conferences. Until probably about five or six years ago, I realized that the process I developed worked with anything, with any group of people. And I thought, you know, thousands of people have been to these conferences now. They’ve really enjoyed it. People love these events and I think what I want to do is get this way of doing things out into the world.

And so, about four years ago, I was still doing IT consulting and so, I sat down part-time and wrote this book and it came out last November as I said and it’s called Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love. And so my sort of mission in life now is to get this out into the world, see what people’s response is to it because I’m pretty – I’m certain that if we can get it out there, that a lot of people will really appreciate it and the potential for it is huge. I mean, there are so many – there are hundreds of thousands of events every year with say, less than 100 people or so attending and they’re still – most people still use really ancient process for conferences that hasn’t really changed for hundreds of years.

And in my book I write about why that is. We can talk about that a little more but I should probably let you get a word in [Inaudible] [0:11:42].

Mike McAllen: [laughs] No, it’s great. It’s great. That’s why you’re here, to talk about your self. I wanted to hear what you do and it’s great. So it is interesting – for everyone that I’ve talked to, I always ask kind of how you got into this business and you’ve really – you’re at the top now. I mean, just of all the things you’ve done. [laughs] That’s – you’re so varied. It’s nice. I like the – a very experienced man of the world.

Adrian Segar: I’ve done a lot of different things and it’s actually very interesting. A number of years ago, I did what’s probably the world’s best known personality test, the Myers-Briggs and the Myers-Briggs personality indicator – type indicator is a – talks about one’s personality in terms of four pairs of sort of opposite preferences. It’s not about what you’re good at. It’s what your preferences are. And I turn out to be a flaming [Phonetic] [0:12:40] intuitive feeler type which is very – and when I discovered that which makes a lot of sense, I – it made a lot of sense of the sort of career trajectory of my life.

I realized that because what I was taught to do and what I’m very good at doing is thinking. You know, I have a PhD in particle physics and all this kind of stuff. I’m a very good thinker and I was trained and rewarded to be a good thinker in school and that was – you know, it got me – I went to Oxford and got the PhD and all that stuff.

But it turns out that what my preference in terms of how I am with people and my personality is this intuitive feeling type of personality and I sort of see my life, my career trajectory as a move towards – away from what I’m good at – what society told me I was good at towards what I really love to do. This is definitely a …

Mike McAllen: That’s fantastic. That’s good you found out. [laughs]

Adrian Segar: It is. I – it took me nearly 60 years but that’s okay. I’m still working on it, you know.

Mike McAllen: So, with you – when you talked about the hierarchical kind of loaded events, that really kind of hit home to me because I mostly do – we produce – my company Grass Shack Events and Media produces mostly, you know, internal like sales events or product launches, that kind of a thing. I guess product launch is an internal event but we end up doing a lot of internal events and that’s so funny. It’s the first time I’ve really heard that said about – you know, asking a question is really kind of a career move and it’s so true, you know. And here, I’ve sat in hundreds of these meetings, you know, and it’s really true. And I like the idea of your – I love the idea of the peer conference organization, that whole – actually you should probably tell me a little bit more about that.

But – because I have read up on your website about your book and you and it is interesting to me that the people with the most knowledge in the room are – especially in these sales meetings. There are all the sales people that are actually doing the selling, you know, and you have these guys up there talking about numbers and, you know. I think it’s interesting. I really think it’s interesting. Anyway …

Adrian Segar: Yes. Isn’t it sad? That …

Mike McAllen: It is.

Adrian Segar: That we have these expensive face to face meetings and someone who wants to ask a question really needs to think of – there’s this whole – the full process that goes on inside is like, “Will I look stupid if I ask this question?” you know.

Mike McAllen: Right, right.

Adrian Segar: Will this damage, you know, my standing with my boss or even my peers maybe if I do this? And it’s like you have a – let’s create environments where we can ask questions.

Mike McAllen: Where it’s going to help people instead of feeling that …

Adrian Segar: Exactly.

Mike McAllen: … you know, somebody else – you know, maybe everybody in the room has that same question, you know. So, it’s the same thing with school.

Adrian Segar: Yes, exactly. I talk about that in my book. I talk about how we were taught in school and the whole environment of school where you’re kind of led to believe that – and this is true of course when you’re 5 to 10 years old that there is a teacher in the room who actually knows a hell of a lot of stuff that you don’t know. And so, it puts us in this mode where we think, well, there are people who know more than me and when they’re around, I should, you know, listen to them. I should shut up and they should speak to me and that’s how I should be educated.

And in fact, you know, that’s not the reality at all. In fact, you only need to look at how kids are. You know, my grandkids I was telling you about, you know, my four-year-old or the five –month old who are downstairs at the moment and they’re learning. You know, they learn by interacting. They learn by doing. They experiment all the time. They try stuff, you know.

You know, my four-year-old granddaughter is riding down around the block on her bike with me about half an hour ago and she suddenly said, “I’m going to try riding this without my hands on.” And before I could stop her, she took her hands off. The thing, you know, nearly toppled off her and I said …

Mike McAllen: [laughs]

Adrian Segar: Yes, it’s not a good idea on this bike, you know, but that’s how she learned, you know.

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Adrian Segar: You know, she didn’t – you know, I haven’t taught her how to ride the bike. You know, you don’t – I mean, you know, you help kids learn but they learn themselves.

Mike McAllen: Right. Yes.

Adrian Segar: You should be – you need to learn that way. And if we’re going to have face to face events where people are really going to learn, that’s the kind of learning, that environment that I want to create, a place where certainly it’s safe for people to ask questions. And, you know, I have a set of ground rules that I use at the start of every event that I lay out at the start of every event and ask people to agree with. And those ground rules, it’s just amazing when you give people that freedom. You say there are no stupid questions essentially and you say this is a safe place. You can say things. You can talk about feelings that are coming up, something that never happens at conferences and sometimes does and sometimes doesn’t at mine. But it’s okay to do that.

You can talk about – you have the freedom to talk about if – even if people – if you feel that the environment is not conducive to the kind of environment. You have the – that’s a specific freedom, one of my ground rules. Besides, you know, common things about staying on time and, you know, other things that are important.

Mike McAllen: So you – tell me about – so, you’re a consultant though too so I could hire you as a producer. I could hire you to come in to my meeting.

Adrian Segar: Yes, you could.

Mike McAllen: That’s another – that’s what you do – is that your – I know you wrote the book.

Adrian Segar: Well, it’s interesting. Put the book out. I’m in – you know, my mission is to get this way of doing events into the world. So – and I don’t care – I love doing them myself but – and I would love it if I did, you know, a dozen or so a year. That would be about right for me.

But on the other hand, I wrote the book. The book is very, very complete. It’s a, you know, big, fat [Indiscernible] [0:18:57] 350-page book and it has a complete – the second and third parts are how you organize one of these things and the third part is how you run one. So, I – and this is starting to happen. People can buy the book and do it themselves. I don’t need – and that would be wonderful for me too and that is just starting to occur now. So I’m happy either way. People can buy the book and go and do it themselves and I love doing them myself. You’re right. I’ll make most money actually if I run one but though – luckily, I don’t really need to, you know …

Mike McAllen: Right.

Adrian Segar: … make a living doing this anymore. So, that’s how …

Mike McAllen: That’s great. That’s great. That is really great. I – so tell me about peer conference organization and facilitation. Why don’t you tell me a little bit about maybe the format of it?

Adrian Segar: I will. Okay. I’ll try and give you a really brief version.

Mike McAllen: Okay.

Adrian Segar: This is – and I should say that this is one of the hardest things to do and the reason I wrote this book and the reason I’m sort of going around talking about it is because this is not something that you can explain in a 30-second elevator speech, elevator pitch. You just can’t – I’m working on it but you can’t do it.

So let me give you the four or five-minute version of what happens at a peer conference and I’ll describe what happens and we can talk about why if necessary. There’s a lot of why behind it and a lot of reasons behind it but let me give the format.

For some people, I’ll give them a format and they’ll say, oh, I can see how that will work. So, peer conferences have a beginning, a middle and an end. They’re much more structured in some ways than traditional conferences and the primary goal of them is to create an event that’s maximally meaningful and useful for each individual person. That’s the kind of – that’s what’s behind this format.

And they start with an opening roundtable. I should also – I need to explain that these are small events. I know how to do this for up to about 100 people. I don’t know how to do this for 1000 people. I’m thinking about it and I think a lot of what I do can be applied that way but I am not claiming I know how to do very large events.

Mike McAllen: Well, you could do breakouts for – oh, I – sorry, that …

Adrian Segar: Exactly. You can always split a large event into – but – and I write about this in my book. There is some very interesting stuff that happens with events. Events do not scale in terms of the kinds of interactions that happen. I mean, you know, you double the number of people, that means – at an event, that means the number of potential connection goes up by a factor – a square, goes up by a factor of four. So, you know, you have a thousand people around for three days. You – there’s no way you can meet all those [Inaudible] [0:21:43].

Mike McAllen: Right, right, right.

Adrian Segar: But if you have 60 people around for three days, then you can – by using good process, you can definitely find out in fact within a few hours at a peer conference of who the people there who you really, really want to talk to and what people are interested in and what people have experience and expertise that you want to hear about – and also they’ll hear the same about you so they’ll know about what you have to share.

Anyway, back to the roundtable. So the roundtable, we – and sometimes, there are two at a – with more than 60 people in the event, you would have two simultaneous ones of these. But assuming we’ve got say 50 people at one of these events. It’s in the circle and there are three – you give people a set of six ground rules which I can, you know, go through if you like.

And those ground rules essentially provide – lead people into the fact that this is a safe environment, the [Indiscernible] [0:22:41] is privacy. In other words, if someone says something, and they don’t – in a session and they don’t want it repeated outside, they get to – that the notes of that session or a recording of that session basically doesn’t get shared outside that session or the conference group and the – and so people can – so it’s not a completely open process where anything anybody says is available because that – you have to balance – you know, when you have privacy, people will share a lot more than if you – if everything he says – anyone says maybe shared. You know, could get back to your boss, you know, next week.

Mike McAllen: Right, right.

Adrian Segar: So, ground rules, and then each person is asked to write down – is given a card with three questions on it and they are given a few minutes to figure out what their answers to those questions are and then we go around the circle and each person answers to the entire group these three questions in turn. And there are no wrong answers to these questions. And the three questions are, how did I get here? And people can, you know, say I came by car or they can talk about they came [Inaudible] [0:23:56] or they can say my friend so and so said this is the greatest conference and you need to come or I just read the – you know, there’s no wrong answer to that. How did I get here? So that’s – people introduce who they are, how they got there. That gives you some kind of connection to the event. The second question is, what do I want to have happened? And this is a sort of – if you can have anything you want that would happen at this event, what would it be?

So you can say, you know, I really have this problem about such and such in my work and I’m really looking for people who can help me with it or, you know, I know that so and so is going to be really important. I want to hear more about that or I’m really excited about something I just did and I want to know if anyone else is interested in hearing about it. You can ask for anything you want in that – for that second question.

And the third question is, what experience or expertise do I have that I think other people here might be interested in? So, that question, you can talk about what you’ve been doing recently and the most amazing thing with that question is that you get people who mentioned something casually that they don’t think is any big deal and they discover that, you know, there’s 20 people there that say, “You just did that? I really want to hear about that.” That happens at every conference I’ve ever done.

So you actually uncover in the roundtable, themes and experience that the organizers never knew about. You know, that’s the amazing thing about this process is that instead of the traditional process where you have a program committee sitting down and saying, well, you know, “What do you think people are going to want to hear about?” Okay. Well, what do we – who do we have who can talk about that? And creating a program and, you know, and that’s an important and difficult thing to do. And in my experience, the program committees at traditional conferences do – unfortunately do a pretty bad job at it. I’m not blaming them. I’m just saying that the reality is that when you do this roundtable process at a peer conference, you discover that every time I’ve done it, stuff has come up that no one on the organizing committee had any idea of or conversely the organizing committee thinks well, such and such people really don’t want to hear about that and it turns out that no one really does.

You know, and so at a traditional conference, you would have a session about it. No one will really be interested in it. And secondly, you have all the – you uncover all this great experience that people have from people who otherwise may never open their mouths at a traditional conference and they just – and people – and they get discovered and people say we want to hear from you and those people get to talk about informally at a session about whatever it is that people are excited about. And I hate – you know, the word empowering is …

[Crosstalk] [0:26:54]

Adrian Segar: But it is. It’s so empowering for those people and I’ve had people at events who have come up to me and said, you know, I’ve had something to say and I’ve been to, you know, all these conferences over the years and no one has ever asked me what I had to say. And at your event, you know, this is the first time I ever got to talk about it and it was wonderful. Thank you. And …

Mike McAllen: Well, it’s such a kick start to networking.

Adrian Segar: It is, exactly. You also have a Facebook. I provide people with a Facebook. This is such a simple thing. I can’t understand why they don’t do this in traditional conferences which has pictures of people and, you know, their bio and contact information, a draft version of that at the first roundtable. So as you’re going around, you can say – you know, you can say, you know, Michael over there just said this so I really want to talk to him about that. You can write a note on the Facebook so that to remind you.

So, at the end of that session, sure, you have – you’ve heard from everybody in the room, you know – and you know a lot about each – you knew something about each person in the room. You know what the themes are the people are interested in and you have an amazing start for the event. If you just did that and nothing else, people would be pretty happy for the next few days.

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Adrian Segar: The second session, the second thing that happens, the second opening session is what I call a peer session sign-up and it’s a two-parter. It’s relatively quick. It happens – I usually hold it – or I nearly always hold it during some kind of social event like dinner in the evening. And in the first part, there are sheets – there are basically sheets of paper, sending around blank sheets of paper with a place for a topic at the top. And in the first part, its topic is called topic suggestion and anyone can suggest any topic they like that they want to have a session on. This is kind of like open – some people who have done open space.

Mike McAllen: Right.

Adrian Segar: This is similar to open space but it’s more structured as you’ll see. So you suggest topics. You write down the topic name on a piece of paper. On the top of a piece of paper, if you want something slightly different from somebody – something else that you see that someone has already written, you write that down. That’s okay.

And in the second part, you – is the sign-up process and you can sign up with no obligation and the sign up is really about interest. You say, oh, I would really like to go to a session on this. And you stick your name and you would sign your name underneath the topic but also, you indicate next to your name whether you might be willing to facilitate that session or maybe you’re an expert on that session. Maybe you’re the person who suggested it in the first place and you would say, oh, if anyone wants it, I’ll give a presentation or maybe there are two or three people and you’ll have a panel.

So you can indicate next to your name your level of involvement in the session. And so you end up after that with a lot of sheets of paper and it’s – and then you have a small group of people, usually conference organizers but I also invite anybody at the conference to come and help with us. So it’s a transparent process.

So look at the sheets of paper and figure out what sessions we should have. So it’s a little more structured than open space where people just say, I’m going to give a session on this and then, you know, people may turn up or they may not turn up. This is a process which where you determine the level of interest in topics. You pick the ones that are obviously the most interesting and have people who will facilitate or lead them. And you turn it into a conference program.

So those first two sessions take a few hours and at the end of those few hours, you’ve got a conference program that is optimized for the people who are there. And you also – the attendees basically know a lot about each other. They have all the information they need to actually go up to someone, you know, at dinner and say, wow, I really – you know, I heard you did this and I really want to talk to you.

So, you – so, all that is jumpstarted instead of having to kind of, you know, meet someone at a social event and say, “What do you do?” and, you know, stuff. That’s the start. I probably took more than five minutes for that but …

Mike McAllen: No, no, it’s fine. It’s great. It’s very interesting. It’s everything that kind of we push to do. I mean, you want to push the people to – you’re all getting together to network.

Adrian Segar: Exactly.

Mike McAllen: I mean that’s why you’re there.

Adrian Segar: Exactly. So, the middle of a conference, the heart of it is the sessions themselves and I don’t actually have to say a lot about those. But I will just say that because the whole – because the sessions are impromptu, no one is expecting some polished presentation. You know, so it’s not going to be a kind of – I mean, if someone – if I have done something that I think is cool and I gave a presentation of it three months ago and I’m going to this conference, when you’re preparing for a peer conference, you know, you send out a note and say, look if you got anything that you think is interesting, might be interesting to the people here or you did a presentation, then bring it along with you. Bring, you know, resource materials or bring your PowerPoint or whatever it is if you’ve got something. No guarantees that it’s going to happen but bring it along.

So, sometimes that happens and people are interested and – but most of the sessions are relatively informal. A lot of them discussion sessions and I provide support for the people who are facilitating those and I found that actually most people with a little encouragement can be pretty good facilitators of short, you know, one-hour sessions. And I give them some – I have some support materials that the facilitators get and we also have – you know, the conference committee is sitting around, is prepared to jump in and help facilitate the session. It looks like it should happen and there isn’t someone who necessarily has volunteered to facilitate it.

So the – anyway, the sessions are relatively informal. So, low key but surprisingly effective and people love them because they are what people wanted.

Mike McAllen: So, if you are putting on a conference, you – I just – you know, I’m looking at it as a broadly – you want people to come to your conference so a lot of ways we do it is to have a speaker there. So, is this when the sessions would happen where a speaker would come in and talk or – I mean is that …

Adrian Segar: I do – yes. The shortest amount of time I do a peer conference for is a day and a half. A day is really a stretch. You can do it in a day but I hate to do it …

Mike McAllen: Oh, okay, okay. So, if you – if you were going to – you wanted to bring it. You wanted to have some name people at this thing. I mean, that’s – I’m not …

Adrian Segar: Let me talk about those.

Mike McAllen: I’m looking at it broadly.

Adrian Segar: No, no, no, you’re right. I mean, the hardest thing is marketing this because until you’ve actually experienced how great it is, it’s very hard to convince people to attend an event where you say there is no program scheduled in advance but I promise you within a few hours, you will have a really fantastic program schedule sitting there waiting for you. People – the few thousand people I’ve experienced that that’s possible so far but most people in this world have not.

Something similar happens in open space and there are certainly a growing number of people who enjoy that but I do have some, you know, criticisms of open space format events.

Mike McAllen: Right.

Adrian Segar: Because they can be – they are a little, I think, too unstructured and really appeal to extroverts rather than introverts who have just as much useful to say and contribute. So, how do you market these things? Sure. With the two or three-day or four-day event, I’ll usually have some traditional sessions in there so you’ll have some names. And that provides cover for people who are kind of attracted by the format and their boss says, “Well, you know, what’s going to happen?” They’ll say, well, you know, we’re going to hear this talk by so and so and so and so and the boss says, oh, okay, that sounds good. And doesn’t. And you don’t really emphasize the fact that maybe half or more of the sessions are going to be created by the attendees on the spot when they get there.

Mike McAllen: Right.

Adrian Segar: And so it – but in some ways it’s rather – it’s a marketing thing and it’s actually really very freeing as far as traditional conference organizing is concerned. This event that I’ve been running for 18 years now, we always have – you know, we will have a keynote speaker if we can find one.

So, two years ago, we had – actually last year, we had David Weinberger come and talk to us, you know, and he’s an amazing speaker and has some really great ideas when we got him to come and that was wonderful. But this year, you know, I had a conference – phone conference with the organizing committee a few months ago. We said, no, I don’t really know anyone this year. We want to come. So it’s fine. Okay. We’ll just have less formal sessions and we’ll have more of our peer sessions and it’s very freeing. You don’t feel the constraint to need to have, you know, the big names or the fixed sessions if you …

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Adrian Segar: … don’t actually have a real need for them.

Mike McAllen: And here, I go right back to the old way too. I mean, I’m – you know, I’m pretty much brainwashed on how they’re supposed to go. So I’m trying to break the mold myself of – you know, for my clients to say, hey, you could do something else here instead of the same old thing but I – you know, I fall right back into it like how are we going to get sponsors? How are we going to get, you know, [laughs] all the things that you think about for a conference, not necessarily – it’s all kind of self-serving maybe …

Adrian Segar: I have a very – I’m – I have to say and this probably won’t get me or lose me some friends, maybe lose me some friends in the events world. I have – I really – I think unfortunately that – and from what I’ve seen that the role of sponsors for events is in some ways pernicious. I’m not saying sponsors are bad in any way at all but they provide – they sometimes provide a – have – the desire to have to have them. It’s like a somewhat addictive drug. You know, provide such good things in terms of money so that it can free you up to do other kinds of things that the constraints of what they supply, you know, aren’t really talked about as much as they should be.

My mark actually for peer conferences is that the attendees pay enough money to cover the cost of the event and the sponsors provide some gravy, you know. In other words, the event is not – you could, in principle, break even if there was not a single sponsor there, if everything went well – went according …

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Adrian Segar: And the sponsors kind of provide, you know, the safety and the profit if you want to think of them in that way so that the event will keep running, you know, in the future and so on. And that has worked pretty well for me.

Mike McAllen: Yes, it is interesting. I – you know, talking about event camp as I was just kind of – I saw Chris Brogan and his New Marketing Labs conferences coming through here, San Francisco and I was going to go and I noticed that everyone of their sessions has – you know, it’s a sponsor session basically and that’s their whole thing. And I was thinking for event camp, like, well, why don’t we do whatever we want to do and then we’ll have a whole track of our sponsor track? You know, if you want to go see [Phonetic] [0:38:29] them, you can.

[Crosstalk] [0:38:31]

Mike McAllen: I think that’s probably the way to get around the whole thing but, you know, again …

Adrian Segar: I don’t have – yes.

Mike McAllen: I don’t know.

Adrian Segar: I don’t have a lot of experience with exhibitors. Just at this 18-year annual conference, we have a small exhibit there and we have an exhibitor’s day and we have a period of time during exhibitor’s day where exhibitors can give presentations if they want. They’re relatively short and – but they have that opportunity. We ask them to make presentations that are not just pitches for their product but – that are educational around the role of the conference because we’ve discovered that that’s what attendees really like and …

Mike McAllen: Yes.

Adrian Segar: And I think most of the years, most of our exhibitors have learned that. They’ve learned that and the ones who keep coming back and keep exhibiting love our conference. It’s very – they – you know, it’s very – they really like the connections they get with the attendees. It’s small. They know that they’re going to have, you know, people who are really qualified for their products there. But it’s very friendly and low key and they don’t – and I think they, just like the attendees, really appreciate the kind of low key atmosphere and they have really learned that – you know, that low key education works much better than a high level pitching.

Mike McAllen: Right. I agree. I agree.

Adrian Segar: I want to tell you the end of the conference – end of peer conferences because there’s …

Mike McAllen: Of course. Sorry, I keep interrupting you.

Adrian Segar: No, no, no. I keep wandering off. There are two closing sessions and these – this is something that I think is – I added this relative – well, I’ve always had the last one but the one I’m about to describe called the personal introspective, I added about, I don’t know, six or seven years ago and it’s very powerful. It’s – you know you go to a conference and you go to sessions and you have some ideas and you write down notes and then, you know, you fly back on the plane and you’re back on work on the Monday and things kind of vanish. You know, those ideas you had, you know, you’ve just got – you know. That’s normal stuff.

What I have at the end, the personal introspective is a session that all attendees take part in that gives people an opportunity to think about – it gives them some time. It’s sort of – it says this is important. You need to spend some time and we’re going to give you the time during the event because it’s important enough. This is important enough that you should do this to – I take people through the restructured exercise where they talk – where they think about what they’ve learned, what they might want to do differently in their life, you know, professional or personal, whatever the conference is about. And how they’re going to go about doing that.

And so series of questions that they answer for themselves and that part is completely private. It’s – they – and so, it’s a normal kind of exercise that one might do as a sort of retrospective recap at a well-organized training session.

The second part that was very powerful, people have the option of sharing in the group, to the whole group anything they want to share about what they’ve learned and what they may want to do differently in their lives.

And that is really very, very amazing when you hear, you know, a manager – and remember this a confidential session. Those are the ground rules. You hear a manager say, I realize that, you know, I have been treating my reports really, really badly in this way and I want to do something different about that or something very pragmatic. You know, I realized I really, really need to learn about this new technology, whatever it is.

That kind of sharing from the group is very powerful and people realize how much they’ve learned as a group together through the process and there are often a lot of commonalities that come out which people – which are really interesting for me. Well, people realize, oh, wow, I’m not the only person who needed to learn about this. Somebody – you know, these six other people did as well. And that’s, you know, comforting sometimes and a good thing to know.

So that’s the personal introspective and the last session is a group – what I call a group spective, looking backwards and forwards and it’s an opportunity for the group as a whole to think about what they’ve done, what has happened for them together, what worked, what didn’t work, if they want to meet again. If they do, what they like to do differently and also – and this is one of the coolest things.

Sometimes, not always. It’s something – not a prerequisite but sometimes, initiatives come out of that last session. People say we really want to do this. Someone had this great idea that we should do this. You know, our industry needs to do this. No one is doing it. We should do it, you know. And those things which kind of spontaneously come out of the session are very powerful because they weren’t on anyone’s political agenda. You know, it wasn’t like – you know, they just kind of came from a group of people coming together and saying we want to do this and every time that has happened at one of these events – those things have always happened. I mean there has been terrific energy for them to happen and that’s very exciting to happen.

So, although these – my peer conferences aren’t kind of issue-oriented, they don’t have an agenda and, you know, at the end of this event, we’re all going to go and, you know, run this political campaign or launch this product or whatever. Often, this kind of stuff happens and when it does, it’s very powerful because it didn’t – it wasn’t, you know, one person forcing something through.

So, that’s the group – so those two sessions – those two closing sessions really provide a kind of – a natural close to the event, which I think is often missing, you know, compared to a sort of, you know, the event banquet, the award banquet at the end or …

Mike McAllen: Right, right.

Adrian Segar: … the big speaker that you have at the end because you – otherwise, people are just going to leave because traditional conferences are typically pretty much a mishmash of sessions which are often just scheduled according to, you know, when the speakers were available and they don’t necessarily have much coherence. And so, why should anyone stay at the end if they’ve got a plane to catch, you know. And …

Mike McAllen: It’s true.

Adrian Segar: … the last session, isn’t that interesting? So, this is more organic. There’s much more of a reason for people to stay at the end. I mean, people do have to leave early sometimes. But as much more of a reason because there are these group processes that close the thing and people enjoy them.

Mike McAllen: I think it’s a great way of changing everything – not changing everything but making it more conducive to why you’re doing this. I mean, it is – you know, and I go to – as I started going to these big conferences to other conferences and for, you know, industry conferences which I never have gone to in the past, that I’m finding that are a lot of the things that your peer conferencing organization kind of tackles.

It’s like, you know – and I don’t – just like you said, they’re just a mishmash of, you know, hey, green meetings is popular right now so, you know, all these people are quickly putting together these presentations for green [Indiscernible] [0:45:59] and there, it’s kind of like, okay, well – and I used to have that – like you said earlier, kind of clicked in my head that that person in front of the room is the teacher still. I’m still in the fifth grade always and that person should know a lot more and when I sit there and they don’t know, I – or, you know, it’s – it would be great if you could get the whole group talking about it instead of that one person. Maybe that one person is facilitating and has some ideas. But …

Adrian Segar: Right.

Mike McAllen: You know …

[Crosstalk] [0:46:28]

Adrian Segar: I mean, you know, they’re amazing people. You know, who …

Mike McAllen: Sure, sure, sure. And that’s another reason why I hate presenting which I have done it, you know, lots of times and I don’t even like pitching for business but, you know, I don’t think anyone does really but – [laughs] well, maybe they do but it’s – I hate doing that because I always feel like I’m – you know, I’m – you know, I’ve been a C student my whole life in school. I have never been good at school and here, I’m supposed to be the teacher, you know. I always am totally self-conscious about that even though I have a successful business and, you know.

Adrian Segar: Right. Exactly. Isn’t that sad?

Mike McAllen: It is very sad because it is – I always think it’s so silly because – but this is kind of a way actually that, you know, someone like my self can get around it and get people talking, you know.

Adrian Segar: Well, that’s exactly it. That’s exactly it because yes, I – this whole – the whole process does not make any pre – any assumptions about who has something valuable to share, you know. I mean, if Jeff Hurt, who you mentioned, you know, who I met at event camp and respect a lot and, you know, and he’s a brilliant presenter and great facilitator of events. You know, if he comes – if he’s at a conference, he’s going to do a great job. Okay?

If he comes to event camp, he’s going to do a great job. If he comes to one of my conferences, it’s not like he’s going to be, you know, lost in the crowd. You know, his ability is – and so on are going to come out and people – and he’s going to say, well, I could talk about this or I could talk about this and people are going to be interested though the crowd will actually be able to say, well, Jeff, actually we like to hear most about this rather than, you know, Jeff having already decided what he’s going to talk about at a traditional event.

But, also, for every Jeff, there’s a lot of people who have really important things like your self. You know, who have – you know, you know a tremendous amount about producing events. You know, do you – and do you ever get to talk, to speak, to share that experience and wisdom that you have about producing events at a conventional conference? Probably not as much as really people, if they knew about it and knew and had – and you had the opportunity to tap into what you have to share, would want to know.

But, if you have this conventional model where, you know, people who have – like me, who have PhDs and stuff like that, you know, the people who speak and people who have those letters after their name rather than not making assumptions about what people have to offer but letting the attendees themselves say, oh.

Mike McAllen: Right.

Adrian Segar: You know, I want to do this. I want to hear about this, you know. And I’ve seen that happen so many times. Someone – it’s – and it’s just amazing. Someone says they did something. I’ve seen people who’ve come to a conference for the first time that has been running for a number of years and think they have absolutely nothing to offer and it turns out, you know, that they were in an industry and they have a huge amount of experience in something that the other people at this event are really interested in and they end up running a session and they get [Indiscernible] [0:49:36] and they had no idea. They had no idea that they had any experience of value. And at a traditional conference, they would never – no one would have ever known about them.

Mike McAllen: Yes. And it’s right. You talk about Jeff Hurt with his – that he did when you were talking about, you know, kind of how you do your roundtable. I thought of his session there where he kind of had – grouped people’s topics and then he talked about it and then he just [Indiscernible] [0:50:03] stuff that he knew because he is a smart [Inaudible] and in fact I have to get on a phone call with him in about five minutes. [laughs]

Adrian Segar: Mike, [Inaudible]. There you go. Your sound is breaking out.

Mike McAllen: Oh, is it? I’m sorry. But anyway, Adrian, I think we should probably make it a close and I would love to talk to you again. This doesn’t have to be the [Indiscernible].

Adrian Segar: Yes, you’re really – I’m having a hard time hearing you but – so maybe it’s a good time to say goodbye.

Mike McAllen: It probably is. And so, why don’t you …

Adrian Segar: If you can hear me okay, maybe I should just tell people where they can get in – find out more about my work.

Mike McAllen: Sure, sure. Go ahead.

Adrian Segar: Probably the simplest is for people to go to my website which is www.ConferencesThatWork.com. And again, that’s the title of my book Conferences That Work: Creating Events That People Love. It’s available everywhere. You can buy it from my website. Appreciate it if you do but you can get it from Amazon or, you know, Barnes and Noble, anywhere on line. You can get it in bookstores and there’s an e-book version of it too if you prefer which is only available from my website.

So, if you want the least expensive way of getting the book, the e-book is there and you can get it from the website. The website has a lot of free resources. I have put down all the dialogues and the ground rules and sheets that I use in – the supporting materials that I use at peer conferences. Those are all downloadable for free from the site and there’s a blog there too. I should mention that and I try and post a couple of times a week.

Mike McAllen: Great.

Adrian Segar: Still there, Mike?

Mike McAllen: Yes. Can you hear me?

Adrian Segar: Okay. Good. Oh, you sound better now.

Mike McAllen: Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Yes, and I just wanted to say thank you very much and I would love to talk to you again. Maybe we can get together again in a couple of months and have another chat.

Adrian Segar: Love to do that. I really appreciate the opportunity of talking to you today.

Mike McAllen: Yes, and I appreciate your time. And so, I look forward to talking to you again and I will put of course all the links on our site to your book, your website, your blog, your phone number, your address.

Adrian Segar: Excellent.

Mike McAllen: Your schedule.

Adrian Segar: I love to talk …

Mike McAllen: [laughs]

Adrian Segar: If you haven’t figured that out by now, you never will.

Mike McAllen: No, it was great. It was great talking to you. And until next time, thank you again.

Adrian Segar: Thank you, Mike. Good-bye.

Mike McAllen: Bye-bye.

Female Speaker: We appreciate and thank you for listening to the Meetings Podcast. Please email with any questions or comments to MeetingsPodcast@Gmail.com. The Meetings Podcast theme music comes from the Delgado brothers which can be found at DelgadoBrothers.com. Special thanks to Riptide Graphics for graphics and audio editing of this podcast.

Mike McAllen of Grass Shack Events & Media

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Copyright 2010 MeetingsPodcast

I know this title makes light of a very serious situation but the video shoot we did with the Avon Foundation for Woman recently was filled with laughing, storytelling and hugs.  Thanks to our video producer Johnny Koeller and editor Steve Miller for a fantastic job putting this together.  We produced this video for the Avon Foundation for Women. We are really proud of it and we hope to see you at the next walk. http://www.avonwalk.org/

Quick intro to the Avon Walk:

Over two days you will journey 39 miles helping to forever alter the lives of thousands affected by breast cancer worldwide. Together, we will unite with one purpose and one goal – to end this deadly disease.

The money we raise will provide women and men the breast cancer screening, support and treatment they need regardless of their ability to pay, and so that leading-edge research teams across the country can be powered by the funds they need to fuel their quest for a cure – all because of you!

Take the first step!
- http://www.avonwalk.org/

But the production elements of this show are not the standard. The stage is simple, it is littered with creative elements, backline elements for the musical numbers, and art. Jamie Oliver is dressed in jeans with white tennis shoes, his signature flannel shirt and his hair is messy cool.  The Powerpoint deck is 5 slides. One tiny graph which I cant read on my computer but you could probably read sitting in the audience and 4 images of different people.

Why does this presentation work so well?

1) Passion

Jamie Olivers passion is infectious.  I really have no idea who this guy was when I started watching but I was compelled by his passionite message.

2) Real

Jamie Oliver is a real person. He makes eye contact , he gestures, he calls out audience members. I felt like he was talking to me.

3) Movement

He is constantly moving.  Do you think his presentation would be as good if he stood at the podium?

4) Storytelling

He tells stories using history, his experience in West Virgina and cooking. All through the ages we have used storytelling to move our ideas as a species. Jamie does this really well.

5) Powerpoint/Graphics

Each slide helps tell a story and all are heart stories that evoke emotions in us.

6) Onstage Visuals

Wheel barrow and sugar cubes. This was really effective to drive home his idea and point.

What am I missing in Jamie Oliver’s TED talks presentation that works?

And does it work for you?
Watch:

Photo credit Bloggyboulga

Forty years ago, Richard Branson, found his flight was canceled, the only flight of the day.  Instead of freaking out about how essential the flight was, how his day was ruined, business lost the young Branson walked over to the charter desk and and inquired about the cost of a chartering a plane to his destination the Virgin Islands.

Then he borrowed a portable blackboard and wrote “Seats to the Virgin Islands, $39″ He went back to his gate, sold enough seats to cover the cost of the charter and made it home at the same time. Not to mention planting the seeds of an airline he would start decades later.

Is this how you would handle the situation?

Photo Credit BARK