Content distribution ideas! Mike gives the session he did at PCMA last month in San Diego. Some easy ways you can get more out of your meeting and conference content.  1) Grass Shack Events & Media - Creative & Technical Production
- Founder of Event Camp- all about social media and event technologies
-Meetings Podcast.
Started to  talk about three different areas of meetings– Production, AV and Third party planning
200+ shows
Thousands and thousands of downloads.

Interviews
Roundtable shows
Meetings Podcast is the Media now- attend industry events like PCMA and MPI to help distribute content.
We are the official podcast of the 2011 Virtual Edge Summit.

2) How many of you know what a podcast is?
How many of you listen to podcasts?
What shows do you listen to? —-cooking, beekeeping, poured a cement slab for a pizza over- watched a podcast on how to do it.
How many of you have created a podcasts?

3)    @ stitcher -TuneinRadio Mobile Apps and of course  itunes-

Commoncraft podcasting in plain english from Rob Sbaglia on Vimeo.

4) (KIVA SLIDE) how did I get into podcasting. I started listening to them in 2006.  Then started producing them shortly after that…
recording sessions for clients and starting meetingspodcast.
Kiva.org – micro-finance- really fun way to get the information out from the mouths of the folks in the trenches
Podshack radio-

5) (Audio-Video Slide) Podcasting can be audio or video-(rip audio from video)–
Recent study by my friend Tom Webster at Edison Research found -

-Most actually listen from a desktop computer.
-Two-thirds of podcast listeners do it in their in their cars by connecting an iPod or other MP3 player to their car audio system
70 million Americans listen to podcasts and that number s growing rapidly.

-Podcast consumers index very highly for social networking behaviors. which means it will be shared more with friends

-The podcast audience has migrated from being predominantly “early adopters” to more closely resembling mainstream media consumers.

-This equates to approximately 70 million Americans listen to podcasts. 2010

6) (Keep Members/Attendees engaged slide) What would I podcast for my association or business?  Get found!

People come to events & meetings for the experience–so keep the experience alive after and then leading up to your next event.

7) (GOOGLE SEARCH Slide) find you on the internet—–

Why not capture and distribute?
AANS -They have different feeds- all free to set up.  (Really great- different subscribe feeds for different topics)

(iTunes University)– (story)  free education….. If you are educating your members let them access it in many different ways as possible (we will talk more about that later)

9) Video Camera/Sound Board Slide) Start in by capturing your conferences and meetings contents audio and video

Talk to your production company or AV company and tell them you want to record it and what it is for. Put it in your RFPs- work with a livestream company to capture (sonic foundry)

10)  Also start thinking about recording stand alone podcasts- Think about how your audience might like there content, try different things ask for feedback…

Weekly or monthly digests of what is going on in your niche or industry.
Interviews,
Panel discussions
Debates.
How to’s. _ Get great downloads
Demos
Episodic (script some show)
Monthly sit downs with leadership- answer questions from members. (wells fargo)

Make them in familiar radio formats such as news shows, plays, talk shows, reports from the field, journalistic investigations and so on they seem to work best.  But down and dirty recordings/interviews are also great.

11)  Distribution—- Kid slide
Distribution (title of the talk!!)
Engage and give more experiences to members and find new members.

People learn differently- so give them content in as many ways as you can.

Put those videos down your rss/subscription feed and use your distribution channels.
Also ebooks or pdfs can also go down your feed….. very versatile for your audience.

12) Captured Content Slide
Transcribe it-  Crabtree solutions
Summerize sessions Mitchell

13) Audio and Video Podcast Files
Break down into blog posts (summaries of recordings to – Mitchell Beers company Conference Publishers)
Articles for industry magazines/websites
Newsletters and email marketing messages
amazon eBooks  —  (4 million kindles were sold this holiday season) – ebook sales are up 175%… you can put them up there from free.
Yearly Highlight Conference Book?  Blurb.com  ( Hire a photographer)

14) Podcast Sessions/Show  files
Player on your website & Blog
youtube (make it interesting to look at) Use you audio file and add images (art card video) nothing gets lost in translation- Powerful tool
Itunes & Stitcher
You tube Channel
Wikipedia  for your association.  Best ranking spot. Add links to shows you create.
Webinars with content- bring speakers in for Q & A

14)SOCIAL MEDIA
Make sure you take the time to do- descriptions filled in(transcripts) – tags- hashtags- keywords (use free google adwords tools to find the best phrases in your descriptions for higher rankings)

Twitter (industry hashtags)
Facebook (groups) status post to page
Linkedin (groups) status
Google+Page on google+. Google is ranking google plus pages higher. fill it with your content- shows etc….
Industry Forum boards

Hands on— so if you want to create a podcast right now download the mobile apps:  italk, audio boo, evernote app or sign into blogtalk radio, ustream which are all free services to capture your content.
After you have captured it. Email the file or link and send it to a friend and there you will have your first podcast.

If you want to go farther with that podcast go to Itunes and read Apple’s own guide to Making a Podcast. For all the info on using their service to get it out to your audience.
———————————————————————————-

How to record a podcast.
Meetingspodcast has been made the same way basically since we started-
1) We record with skype for interviews.  (call recorder- $$$)
2) Conference call service that records calls and exports an mp3 for those who dont use skype
3) Bring the file into Garageband (Apple) and before that Audacity for the PC- simple bumpers that I use each time…. my wife reads a small intro and outro to music from a friends band (Delgato brothers)
4) Export to itunes- fill in id3 tags
4) Upload it to Libsyn.com  hosts the file.
5) Grab the link to put on your blog from libsyn
6) fill out description, tags and use google adwords.  (also where you can put your transcripts if you like…add links to trusted sites so your readers and google can find you for organic search–  Use the more button)

Post!

8)  Now this free content you have sent out to the world.

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After seeing so many sessions the  below clever video reasonated with me. I myself fall into this script trap of what we think we are suppose to do when speaking to a group.  Though our creative team at Grass Shack designs awesome presentations and coaching for executives so they engage.   Speakers can learn a ton from the tricks of professional speakers, marketers, designers and PR folks to engage the audiences.

Adding a story to your presentation, images (no clip art) and knowing your audience is so important to get them hooked and learning your message.

The convention center was pretty overwhelming with the vast amount of sessions and a whole other conference taking place in the same venue: The Virtual Edge Summit.  But nobody was complaining.  The PCMA  Learning Lounge had several sessions going on at once.  Which worked really well but I did see some fantastic speakers with nobody sitting in the audience.  Sad.  But the Velvet Chainsaw guys who put it on are smart cookies and I am sure next year they will evolve it even more.

MeetingsPodcast was the official podcast of VES. Something we have never done and it was really fun.  This really meant we interviewed many of the speakers and then posted them on the VES site so attendees could get a taste of the sessions.  Many many downloads later we think will offer this service up  to help organizers and attendees get more out of the conferences they are attending.

If we had to give out a sexiest presentation award it really should go to Sexy Greg Ruby with his Foursquare session because that is the nickname given to him by eventprofs at Event Camp. I guess he holds the unofficial title!

Several podcasts are on the way from the show. Stay tuned.

The Stitcher Application is great because you never need to download the podcasts from your computer to your device. It is On Demand! As we launch a new show it will automatically appear on your mobile device!  Cool huh?

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Jon Trask and Greg Ruby discuss the 2012 PCMA and Virtual Edge Summit in San Diego. (Greg also did a facinating talk on Foursquare) Overall the show hit it out of the park!

General Session made some changes and using Skype to bring in speaker Sally Hogstead making the general session a actual Hybrid event.

Other topics covered:

Jane McGonigal

John Medina, MD

David Rich George P Johnson

Amount of sessions

PCMA Tweetup

MeetingsPodcast Meetup

This podcast showcases some of the speakers at the Virtual Edge Summit that we interviewed!

Adam Arthur, CDC Virtual Platform Initiative Lead, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention
Dave Nielsen, Founder, CloudCamp
Kevin Novak, Vice President of Integrated Web Strategy and Technology, AIA

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• Virtual Edge Institute Announces bXb Online’s $100,000 Commitment Towards the Digital Event Strategist Certification Program and Virtual Edge Summit Education (prweb.com)
• Virtual Edge Summit Hybrid Event Speakers- Show 204 (grassshackroad.com)

“Hybrid Events 101”

Todays show is a continuation of the Primer Series of educational podcasts for meeting planners and event organisers.  Mike McAllen founder of Event Camp and the producer of three EventCamp Hybrid events, plus technically producing many other corporate and association meetings and events using the Hybrid model. He discusses Hybrid Events 101.

If you are attending Virtual Edge Summit  or PCMA Mike or Jon would love to connect!  The MeetingsPodcast is the official Podcast of the Virtual Edge Summit Show!

Check out these other Blog posts to work on content for your hybrid meeting or hybrid event along with production.

Tips for making your Hybrid event “Quick, Light and Easy”

Top Blogs on Virtual Events

Hybrid Events with John Pollard 

Hybrid Meetings Offer Scalable Content Delivery

Hybrid Meetings Offer the Best of both Worlds
 

Interview with Mitchell Beer  (mitchell<@>theconferencepublishers.com) from Conference Publishers.    I have been a big fan of Mitchell and how his company captures content for meetings and events.

They capture targeted session summaries and sharp, compelling news capsules.

They gather and report the content as it is happening.

They also can help you develop onsite content and maximize its impact—before, during, and after the event.

I do like muffins.

Check this video out!

Lighting Choreographer – concept and system description - from drpopeye on Vimeo.

“How to look at a meetings venue like a Technical Director.” 

Jon gives some easy tips and tricks anyone who is putting on a meeting or event can use.  If you have any questions please email us at meetingspodcast@gmail.com and we will get right back to you.  This third edition to the Free Meetings Podcast Primer Series intends to provide AV knowledge for corporate audio visual planners for your meetings and events worldwide.

Jon Trask has always delivered on-budget and stress-free audio visual services and is in the business of making you look good.

Meetings Podcast Primer Series intends to provide AV  knowledge so that you get the most out of your services and rentals for meetings and events worldwide. Whether you’re organizing a 120,000-attendee conference, or simply need a microphone and speakers for a small presentation Jon and Mike are dedicated to the success of your event and ultimately your success.

If you have any questions please email Meetingspodcast@gmail.com or call 510 595 6921

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• MeetingsPodcast is Official Podcast of The Virtual Edge Summit (grassshackroad.com)

Look for our booth at the conference where we will be interviewing, networking and enjoying the warm weather in San Diego. Please stop by and say hello.

Jon Trask continues on the Grass Shack Events Media/ Meetings Podcast

Primer series:

“How to look at a meetings venue on a site survey.” 

Jon gives some easy tips and tricks anyone who is putting on a meeting or event can use.  If you would like a copy of the check list please email us at meetingspodcast@gmail.com and we will send you one.

imex america

Todays show has Jon interviewing the CEO of IMEX Group Carina Bauer @ 2011 Las Vegas IMEX show.

Interesting perspective on how the Las Vegas IMEX show went and how much business had transpired at the show.

Is IMEX for everyone?

Who benefits from IMEX?

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The focus of Meetings Podcast Primer Series is to educate, train, our community on the ins and outs of our industry. Becides Mike and Jon we plan to bring in experts in all catagories of event and meetings. Our goal is to a add an educational componet to Meetings Podcast. Our audience is a wide demographic andfrom the emails and meetinsg we have had some have asked for tools and resources to create, plan and execute more engaging meetings & events.

If you are a student or a seasoned planner who wants to hear from other professionals we will have an easy way to the subjects you need on demand through a podcast which can be downloaded from the Itunes store for free.

On today’s show we speak with John Pollard from Sonic Foundry about Hybrid Events.

He defines a hybrid event, explains how to do a hybrid event.

Transcripts:

Welcome back to the Meetings Podcast. This is Mike McAllen from Grass Shack Events & Media and today we have John Pollard who is the Event Services Program Director from Sonic Foundry on the show to talk a little bit about hybrid events. Most of the people who listened to the show probably know about Sonic Foundry and probably know about you, John.

Speaker 2: Well, that’s great to hear. Yeah, Sonic Foundry is now around for a little while. Maybe I should tell you a little bit about that just real quick. Sonic Foundry started in 1991 primarily creating tools, personal desktop tools for editing sound and video tools like Sound Forge, Acid, Vegas video and things of that nature and during the tech boom we bought a lot of companies and one of those companies was a company called Media Site and early in 2000 we sold all our other applications to Sony and focused primarily on the Media Site Technology which is a webcasting platform and one of the things that a lot of people probably don’t know in the events world is that we support hundreds well, actually we support thousands of customers but hundreds of educational institutions throughout the world use our technology to capture classroom content that is going on you know tens of thousands of content every semester is being captured using our technology. So what we do in my side of the business is we use that same technology to go to events and help capture content.

Speaker 1: Neat.

Speaker 2: [0:02:06] [Inaudible].

Speaker 1: Is that how they do like the — my wife actually is just looking into right now taking an online course like and is that — I’m assuming that’s how they do it then that wider capturing all these stuff for you know.

Speaker 2: Well, right. There are tons of ways to capture content. We believe that our solution is the easiest and the most reliable and the best supported solution. Obviously that’s what companies say about themselves. But I think with us easy to use and reliable and supported key terms. Yeah, so there’s a strong chance that she’s taking an online course that it is using Media Site.

Speaker 1: Very cool. Very, very cool. And so why don’t you also share who the heck you are and how you got into this business.

Speaker 2: Right. That’s a great question, thanks. It’s what we do, right when we talk back and forth.

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 2: I’ve been in high tech for you know 17 years or 20 years something like that and works for a lot of basically big companies with acronyms, companies like SAP and I’ve worked for large financial institutions and eCommerce and came to Madison to work for a startup and that crashed with all the other startups that crashed in the tech room and after a period in and actually the creative world working with advertising I connected with folks here in Sonic Foundry and I started here actually as a product manager.

So coming to this from understanding requirements, listening to customers, what do they want, what do they need and help drive a lot of what is in today’s product and what we use to leverage on both sides and how it was bought in the education world and the corporate world too in training and eLearning that sort of thing and taking that into the events.

Now I shifted into the events world just within the last actually this year to make sure that we are delivering the types of solutions that our clients are looking for — clients like you Mike or like event planners or production companies and that sort of thing trying to make it easy but also some of the events, the way events people need content, need to use that content is a little bit different from the educational world but the interesting thing about the tie between education and events is that really and actually I was just watching a guy talking about education and he’s talking about learning and you know one of the guys that spoke at Event Camp Europe was talking about the ROI events and talking about a large focus of being really on learning.

[0:05:08]

I mean we all wanna be there together. We want you know network with people and we wanna have those experiences but one of the primary objectives of coming together for an event is typically learning. So the tie between our educational routes and how it’s use in the technology and how it’s been use in events is actually closer than one might think.

Speaker 1: I agree. It is interesting too that you said that because I was thinking about that like I was just actually just watching like this. I was just doing a blog post about the Old Spice commercial and how they did that and how you know the production behind it but they really had goals before that you know and when you’re putting on an event there’s goals that you know part of it is not just to have an event but they’re trying to get some sort of message across, right. So the hybrid event really helps because you’re not just at that event you can carry it on you know –

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: — afterwards. Much like you’re talking about education so this is all being captured. You know you can give it legs, all the stuff. Don’t just have that week of your conference but you know talk about you know having the people another places, getting excited about it also being able to share it later is such a huge, huge thing.

Speaker 2: Absolutely. So let’s just — just for the sake of clarity and in case and not to exclude anyone. Let’s just define what a hybrid event is because I know it’s kind of [Cross-talk].

Speaker 1: Wait a minute. That was my first question.

Speaker 2: Oh, did I just steal your question?

Speaker 1: I don’t get to say anything if I don’t get to ask the questions but yes, I’m just kidding. Go ahead.

Speaker 2: No, I just wanna explain and everybody’s got maybe a slightly different definition but you know a simple way to think of a hybrid event is just that we’re taking a physical meeting at a location where there are onsite attendees and we are adding an online component to that event and I think at the base level and again I mean the base level is making content available from that. There are all sorts of other interactive ways you know chats and discussions and other applications that can be built around but at the basic level when you’re making some of that content available from an onsite location then you can easily create a hybrid event into your point and you can bring people and extend the reach of that event while it’s happening and this is something I’d like to talk more about is okay, then we can talk about taking that and using that throughout the year.

You think of that event as just one touch point in this yearlong strategy of customer contact or community contact. You know you’re reaching out to your people, you’re trying to have reasons to connect with your people, your groups, your prospects, your customers or whatever and the content from these events can be a great starter if you will, a great way to create discussions, continue the conversation as Emilie Barta was doing a lot recently and one of the shows she was virtually emceeing. A great way to continue that conversation and take it on and keep people involved with your brand basically. It’s a very, very much a marketing thing and it’s more of a strategic thing. We just happen to unable some technology that supports them.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And it goes back to the goals. You have to have goals you know. I’ve so many worked over the years with people that just have an event to have an event you know and it’s.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: If you don’t have any kind of what’s that action you want those people watching or attending what do you want them to do. When they walked out there you should have a goal like this. What is that you want to be? Do you want them to buy something? Do you want them to sell more stuff? Do you want them to you know it’s really something so basic but people don’t always think about that you know and that’s sad because in my business it’s become a lot of that.

We’re just coming in and putting up stages you know and hooking up cameras and there’s no talk about that but this hybrid event I think really can — it’s an actual great way to start a conversation about all that. For me it’s been and we don’t always get to do any kind of a hybrid portion of it but it’s always kind of brings in that conversation can come up and go okay, well I know you wanna have all your people talk but where are those goals you know that you’re going through.

Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely and that’s why I like that ROI discussion from Event Camp Europe where Dr. Elling Hamso is talking about and it kinda blew me away because he says just a matter of fact you know event ROI is actually really easy.

[0:10:10]

I was like okay, you caught my attention there. It’s so easy. Okay, well how easy is it and his thing is like look, if you’ve changed attitudes or changed behaviors then you can measure the ROI and if you have not changed attitudes or behaviors well, then your ROI is gonna be lower. Specifically he’s talking about learning and saying look, if you haven’t changed somebody’s behaviors or attitudes then they didn’t learn anything and hence your event was not very valuable so.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. He was very good. He was really good. I have to get him on the podcast.

Speaker 2: I bet that would be interesting. He might be more interested in me I don’t know. He’s a doctor.

Speaker 1: He is a doctor.

Speaker 2: Oh, you aren’t?

Speaker 1: Stage name like doctor or something. Play it on TV.

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker 1: So what goes into a hybrid event because we’ve kinda talked about that also?

Speaker 2: Yeah, that’s another great question, Mike and I’m glad you asked. Basically, from our standpoint again there are different levels of hybrid event but let’s just talk about what’s the simplest way to like get started with a hybrid event. It would be to take some of that content. Let’s say you’re really nervous about this and you’re maybe overwhelmed by the concept.

You know one way to get started would be just to take maybe some of your general sessions and make those available or maybe take one room that’s happening at your event and make that content available. You could do that live or capture it and turn it around quickly. You know what we like to do and part of our technology enables is, is for people to get that content even if they’re not doing it live but to get it up really quickly so that they can keep that online audience actively involved in what’s going on at around the same time that it’s happening.

So look, let’s face it. People can’t always get to the event. It’s not that they don’t wanna be there it’s just like hey, either the resources they don’t have the budget or they just don’t have the time scheduling or what have you it just doesn’t work out. So what you’re doing is like I said before allowing that event to extend its reach, include these people that really would be there if they could be there but they can’t be there.

So help them be a part of it anyway by making some of those sessions available. Once you’ve experimented with that and you’ve had some success with maybe capturing one room or just some general sessions then you can look at you know capturing everything and then what goes into that is basically in the room where the event is happening in the case if you’re working with Sonic Foundry Events Services what happens is we just slide in next to your existing AV so what we do is we have a recorder that we designed and developed and actually we do all those [0:13:09] [Inaudible].

So we bring that in, slide in next to existing AV company that you’re working with or what have you. We just take feeds from them so we take the house audio feed, we take a video feed, now we take a feed from the VGA that’s coming out in the back typically of a laptop and then the recorder does all the work basically in terms of synchronizing presentation content and video content and makes that web ready so that it can be streamed to your online audience.

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 2: Does that make sense?

Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it is a really easy, easy solution which is a huge thing because I’ve done you know satellite trucks and stuff in the past and you know to get some kind of a feed going out I mean in the past of course I’m not doing that these days very often but.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: It is really simple. It’s just literally is a box hooked in and then you get an operator from you guys or you know I guess there’s freelance people out there that do this, that they can get. Either way, anyway. It’s really a simple solution. And there are other ways to do it. I mean I’m not gonna tell you that you can’t do it other ways. There are other approaches that involve putting software on our presenter’s laptop or they’re involved other combinations of technology. I’m just saying the way it works with us is we come in there with the recorder, we slide the next DAV, we plug it in and go basically. You know I wouldn’t lie to you and say we’re the only way to do it.

Speaker 2: No. No. There’s gazillion ways to do it but it is in my experience you guys have been very easy and I’ve worked I think a couple of times now and it’s been just really simple experience and simple medium. It worked really well and it was easy and it wasn’t something that I had to worry about which is for everybody who plans events, knows those are the things you look for. Things that work that you know you don’t have to worry about so.

[0:15:12]

Speaker 2: Right, and maybe really quick to just insert and if I’m an event planner or I’m an event whatever I’m overseeing the event and I am in charge of determining whether we’re gonna do hybrid. Maybe some of the questions you wanna ask about whatever technology you use is you know is there any impact on the presenter, are they gonna have to do anything. I’m just saving with us, we don’t change the way the presenter presents.

So there’s [0:15:39] Inaudible]. They’re not uploading presentations but you know again, there are different approaches but that’s something to consider you might ask about turnaround time, how quickly can we get that content available if it’s not live. If you want it live then that’s another thing to ask if you want it live or if they do live. So those are some questions we can consider and that’s interesting too because the hybrid portion of it I mean you’re capturing it that’s one thing you could just capture. You don’t have to live stream it.

Speaker 2: No.

Speaker 1: Not at all but I mean that’s a great addition to have. I mean much like these pods you know that we have done at these Event Camps. I mean we’ve been doing that forever. There wasn’t a name for them but you know you stream it out into a different room at the event maybe an overflow room or something that’s the same thing.

Speaker 2: Certainly something you can do, yup.

Speaker 1: Yeah, there’s an overflow of throw. An overflow room you know when you have too many people you might be brining it out it’ just you’re brining it out anywhere. So it could be anywhere in the world really that you have an internet connection.

Speaker 2: Yes, sir.

Speaker 1: Interesting. Interesting. It is something that’s very accessible that I think people should think about more to grow audiences also. Our company does mostly internal events for companies like we don’t do a lot of you know conferences. I mean we’ve done a few. We have a couple conference clients that do big association kind of stuff but I am always kind of pushing it saying you know they’re always complaining about like the budgets and they can’t bring people in and like the whole pod thing is really a great option because you don’t have to fly everybody in. You fly in you know I mean of course you want everybody there because there is that face-to-face interaction that you can’t really get over the internet regardless but you can do the pod thing where you have teams in different areas and they can be involved.

Speaker 2: I think you’re right.

Speaker 1: And then if you’re capturing I mean there you go again they can go back later and go hey, I want you know everybody watch this kind of a thing or you know. It’s just a really great way to keep content go in and it is really affordable when you look at it as an event option.

Speaker 2: And I like what you’re saying about the pods and I think the pods are gonna become more interesting as we go and I think that will be a fun one to explore and another one of these maybe not separate podcast because there is so much that you can do then. With that concept it’s just that it does I think involved to your point about goals and planning. You know you gotta think a little bit more to make that an interesting experience but at the basic level people have in information. Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 1: And would we call that podcast a podcast.

Speaker 2: Well, that’s interesting Mike.

Speaker 1: I really wanna do that now. [Cross-talk].

Speaker 2: They’ll be no confusion or anything, right.

Speaker 1: That’s fantastic. We have to do that right away. You should trademark that name.

Speaker 1: Okay, so what else do we talk about? It’s funny because for this stuff I love talking to you or Erica, the lovely Erica about [0:19:01] [Inaudible]. People are so fantastic. And I’m not kissing your ass at all because there aren’t like you guys.

Speaker 2: Wow.

Speaker 1: But there’s so much that goes into this that we can’t chat about. So what do you think what else — I think we should.

Speaker 2: Well, how I can leverage that strategic portion, right. I was just thinking that let’s talk maybe a little bit about how could use this technology before an event, during an event and then after the event.

Speaker 1: Okay.

Speaker 2: If it would make sense. So let’s say you are you know you’re getting ready you have this event coming up and of course everybody is trying to drive interest in the event, get people to register, get people to attend. Well, one of the things that we’ve had pretty good success with in some of our own company events is actually creating little trailers for the sessions.

[0:20:10]

So the presenters have put together little one, two minute clip that sort of gives a highlight, just a video that they shoot and then they send that over and upload that to the backend you know part of our webcasting platform and then they can embed that on their event site and make it available to the attendees before they even get there so the same platform that you can use to stream the content during the event. You can actually use in advance as sort of backend content management system to get out all their content to that audience to use to market if you will.

So beforehand I think that’s a cool way to do it. It would be to have some little trailers if you will that would help people understand where they’re getting into, where they signing up for?, and maybe that would even you know if somebody were on the fence like oh, should I go and I’m not really sure if I know anything about this event. Maybe I’ve never been to that event. I don’t know. Even that might be even not enough to say oh, that looks really cool. I’m going you know. Other people that you know maybe our new Mike maybe I’m gonna test the waters this year just by checking it out. Then again there are all those people that we’ve already talked about. We just can’t get there.

So then during the event you can obviously take that content and you can have that embedded in any number of web applications or you know just to have simple pages that are displayed the content. You know you could try that with Twitter for other discussions, chat forms that sort of thing. During the event too you can also use platforms like ours to ask questions that they can be sending to the speaker or the moderator of that room that can be asking those questions but the idea here is you know and I think one of the things that some of the Event Camps have done really well is experimented and trying to pull in that online audience and keep them actively engaged with the event as it’s going because you know if I can’t get there but I’m interested in the topic I’ll watch that and I wanna be tweeting and I’m following the tweets and I’m seeing what people are saying and it gives me a sense of real participation in the event even though I’m not there.

Then after the event obviously now I’ve got well, I could have tons of content depending on the size of my event but now I’ve got this rich, hopefully rich content that you had all these experts there, you got it captured and now you can start sort of trickling that out throughout the year reminding people that it’s there. Maybe you’re embedding that content into a community site that you have or maybe you’re embedding it into blogs or discussion forums where you’re trying to get people to continue thinking about that or discussing it or changing their behavior based on what they’ve learned you know taking it the next step if you will after the content and then when it gets to be closer to next year’s event you can use some of that content or take little snippets of that content. You know just take in our solution we have a really simple editor that would allow you to sort of create new presentations just from little short pieces of the presentation so that you have like highlights from last year and say hey, this is what happened last year, get excited of what’s coming up this year and something that would make people feel like yeah, we wanna be there.

Speaker 1: Very cool. Yeah.

Speaker 2: I mean that’s just you know obviously there are tons of ways that if you have great content and you’re thinking strategically and you’re marketing and you have all these initiatives at your organization and especially as event planners and event professionals I think it would be who to help our clients be more strategic about these things and offer them some solid thinking about you know we provide technology. That’s’ what we do but you guys as the people that are working with those clients you can add a lot of value by helping them think differently about these events and how they can broaden the reach, the scope and how that fits into their overall marketing plan for the year.

Speaker 1: You know it’s great to have because like you said there is gazillion stuff you can do like gazillion amount of things you could do around hybrid events but what you’ve just explained before, during and after is a good little kind of road map for people to think about, to get started too. I mean there’s some things that they can do and it’s very simple and giving your event legs after the event is just an awesome thing. They build it up for the next one.

Speaker 2: I agree. I think that yeah, that’s a great way.

[0:25:00]

Speaker 1: But it’s so simple. I mean it’s really simple. It’s really a simple solution too that would really market your event like crazy. An easy way to get a lot of content to market like crazy or plus if you want I mean that’s to increase attendance but of course if you wanna keep your content going for your sales people or your whatever, whoever, whatever they’re doing your widget makers.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: This is all the stuff that can be — you just refuse in so many different ways.

Speaker 2: Oh, yeah and I think if I’m an event professional if I’m going into that client you know you could almost have a little workshop with these people and do something very simple like that. You know get your light poured out and put people, during, after and talk about, brainstorm a little bit about how are we gonna touch these people, how are you gonna involved these people. What can we handle? What you know not biting off more than we can you know physically handle in terms of people who are gonna be able to monitor this. You know I think sometimes you feel like you need to go, get really crazy but there’s just a lot of value in starting off simple too and just –

Speaker 1: Oh, I agree.

Speaker 2: — experimenting, getting that because there’s nothing that sells the concept more than just having some basic successes. So hey, if you have a long term relationship with these clients or you wanna have a long term relationship you can’t look at this like I just wanna get this one and that. You gotta be thinking and look, I wanna build, I wanna do all their events. I wanna be doing, I wanna work with these people so I wanna help them think a little bit you know more than just transactional on this one event.

Speaker 1: Right. Right. Right. Right. No, that’s great. It’s a nice I was just — my mind is whirling now about [mom]. I need to present that’s better with clients, it’s a great way of the smart, before, after should be I mean that should be done just regardless for your event not even talking hybrid.

Speaker 2: I mean I’m not yeah, I’m not [Cross-talk]. You know from my standpoint it seems that I would mix some.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Alright John, so how can people get a hold of you if they wanted to talk to you more about this?

Speaker 2: Mike, again that’s another fabulous question. Thank you.

Speaker 1: That is so insincere. Go ahead.

Speaker 2: I have to give you a hard time. Its well, you can reach me on you know email is johnp as in johnp@sonicfoundry.com. I’m on Twitter occasionally @johnp_sofo. johnp_sofo.

Speaker 1: Sonic foundry that’s what it is right.

Speaker 2: Yeah, [0:27:49] [Inaudible] if you’re interested in buying stuff, please do and you can find us on the Nasdq@sofo as well.

Speaker 1: Very cool.

Speaker 2: That’s at sonicfoundry.com. I’m happy to you there.

Speaker 1: Alright.

Speaker 2: I’m happy to see you at the next event.

Speaker 1: Yes, Yes. Alright, John, so I look forward to talking to you again. I think we should do our podcast.

Speaker 2: Yeah. [Cross-talk].

Speaker 1: So people look out for that and I will talk to you soon, John.

Speaker 2: Thanks Mike.

Speaker 1: Okay.

Related articles

• Hybrid Meetings Offer Scalable Content Delivery (grassshackroad.com)
• Why hybrid meetings and events will continue to grow in popularity. (grassshackroad.com)

Organizers Traci Browne and Greg Ruby, talk about what you can expect when attending EventCamp East Coast.  They will be following the Conferences That Work peer-conference format developed by Adrian Segar, there will be a cross-country virtual connection with EventCamp Vancouver on Sunday as well.

Related articles

• EventCamp East Coast moves to the Nation’s Capital! (eventcamp.org)
• Make Plans for EventCamp East Coast November 4-6 (grassshackroad.com)
• Two Concurrent EventCamps to Occur in DC and Vancouver, BC! (eventcamp.org)
• Tahira Endean from EventCamp Vancouver Show 186 (grassshackroad.com)
• The Making of an Event Camp (eventcamp.org)

On today’s show we interview Jason Falls of No Bullshit Social Media

Jason gives some examples of how small and medium sized companies have used social media and a little taste of what you can find in his new book.

Some links to find his book and where you can contact Jason.

http://nobullshitsocialmedia.com/book

Jason’s Blog http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com

Jason wrote the book with Erik Deckers. It’s from Que Publishing and is entitled No Bullshit Social Media: The All-Business, No-Hype Guide To Social Media Marketing.

Also if you are in the Boston area check out a show Jason is involved in.

Awareness Exploring Social Media Business Summit  Monday, October 17, 2011 from 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM (ET)

Whether you’re a small business owner looking for answers, a brand marketer hoping to learn what’s next for your brand or an agency or firm connecting companies with their customers through social channels, this power-packed day puts you in the know. The top thinkers and practitioners in the industry will bring practical, actionable to-dos that you can begin using immediately to help your business become more social and successful.
Awareness and Exploring Social Media are proud to present the Awareness Exploring Social Media Business Summit, an all-day, intensive learning event, Monday, October 17, 2011 at the Boston Marriott Burlington. Speakers include Altimeter Group analyst Jeremiah Owyang, Shift Communications principal Todd Defren, OneForty.com’s Laura Fitton and a Who’s Who of digital marketing and social media marketing notables.

ESM and Social Media Explorer CEO Jason Falls, Content Rules authors C.C. Chapman and Ann Handley, mobile and event marketing expert Tim Hayden, Location-Based Marketing for Dummies co-author Mike Schneider, Awareness’s Mike Lewis, email and social media marketing expert DJ Waldow and SocialFresh founder Jason Keath will also speak at the Summit. The event will also have a brand and agency case study panel that includes Dave Kerpen from Likeable Media, Rick Racela from Comcast Sports Group, Jonas Nieslen of Mindjumpers and Taulbee Jackson from Radious

 

Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Meetings Podcast. This is Mike McAllen from Grass Shack Events & Media and today’s guest is Jason Falls from the Social Media Explorer. He also has a new book out called No Bullshit Social Media. I met Jason several years ago in Las Vegas when he had one too many slushies at and he made an ass out of himself.

Speaker 2: Oh, I did. Okay. That’s not how I remember it but alright.

Speaker 1: I’ve been trying to change the perception of that. I put something into that so anyway Jason, thank you for talking with me and it was actually me who drank too much but you introduced me to the slushies of Las Vegas so.

Speaker 2: Absolutely. We had a good time and that was fun.

Speaker 1: That was a really fun time. No, it really wasn’t that fun. I mean I’ve never had a good time but I was very hazy after that because I had had with [Brogan] I just met him it was like a podcasting thing. Was it a podcasting conference?

Speaker 2: It could have been. Yeah.

Speaker 1: And I’d sat next to him and he had another little conference attached to it the Bourquin brothers had put on and he and I sat there the whole day. I had no idea who he was I mean he wasn’t at his you know popularity that he has now but he’s such a great guy. We sat and chatted. We sat next to each other the whole time and then he said oh you gotta meet my friend Jason and of course I meet him at a bar and the bartender was an old college buddy of mine so the drinks were a little heavily concocted I guess is a good way to put it.

Speaker 2: Yes, they were pretty potent.

Speaker 1: So yeah, that was fun time but anyway sorry, we should get off at that and get back to you because that’s why we’re here. So why don’t you tell the audience who you don’t know you from your slushy fame.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Who you are and what you do.

Speaker 2: Okay. Well, I like to jokingly sometimes tell people that I am a social media douchebag but I am a social media consultant and strategist. I have a long career in marketing and public relations but use social media on a personal level for a long time and then in 2005/2006 I started you know taking ideas to clients and an advertising agency that I was working at that time named Joe Anderson in Kentucky and it just so happened that some of our clients included Makers Mark Bourbon and a couple of other pretty big brands and that was an era where there were no social media strategist in the spirits industry anyway and so because some of my ideas actually you know made it to market and what not I got invited to speak at some places and do case studies and what not, did you know run the interactive department and did social strategy by Joe Anderson for a few years, left a couple of years ago to go out on my own as an independent consultant and now I’ve expanded my consultancy to an educational and information products company.

We’re working on market research products that we hope to launch this fall. We do events exploring social media business summits and then we also have exploringsocialmedia.com which is an online learning community and question and answer site where you can ask digital marketing experts not just me but other people as well. The questions you have and work through some of the trouble areas in not only the technology but also the marketing and communications problem. So that’s’ what I do. sociamediaexplorer.com is my blog. It’s been I guess an off red and heralded social media industry blog for a while now and that’s kind of what I’m up to.

Speaker 1: Very cool. And you’re up to a lot of stuff.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1: And you have this new book.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: So tell us about this book. I love the title.

Speaker 2: Yeah, No Bullshit Social Media is the title sort of stems from kind of my approach and my attitude especially when I go out and speak about social media because I have a very practical no nonsense business approach to social media. I don’t think that social media is all about joining the conversation and engaging and holding hands in the circle and singing Kumbaya. If you add the word marketing to the phrase social media you’re talking about business and so you have to talk about business metrics, you have to talk about you know profits and revenues and customer service and customer satisfaction.

So you got to talk about a lot of things other than just holding hands in a circle and singing Kumbaya and so the book really confronts that what we call the social media purist which we lovingly refer to in the book is tree huggers and hippies and we basically say look joining the conversation, engaging, listening all of the philosophical tenets that social media purist dispels.

[0:05:07]

We don’t disagree with them. We think that you need to have them sure but that’s not all that you need. You need you know the business awareness of what you’re doing and you need to be able to drive people and persuade people to do things and so the book really has that sort of no nonsense approach. Let’s stop being tree huggers and hippies and let’s start figuring out how this works for business. In the book the underlying sort of outline of the book is that it takes you through understanding the seven business drivers of social media marketing, what social media can do for your business so that you can decide which ones you wanna focus on and then we talked about how to approach those strategically and measure them.

Speaker 1: Very awesome and now I had written to you about these before because I you know read up on you a little bit and listen to some podcasts other podcasts that you had been on and I was offended by the whole hippies thing because I live right here in Berkeley, California area and you know I grew up in San Francisco. My parents are from the Ashbury area. I’m actually a child of that whole love time.

Speaker 2: Sure. Well.

Speaker 1: So I was thinking what he’s [0:06:15.

Speaker 2: Yeah, keep in mind now again we don’t think the hippies and tree huggers are 100% wrong. We just think you know they’re not 100% complete and the reference is and we say in the book and I’m happy to say now I consider myself to be a social media purist. I agree with all those tenets. I just wanna take it a few steps further and so you know we just try to have a very practical approach to social media marketing that goes beyond the puritanical philosophical tenets that people have been espousing for so long.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: And there are even several social media purist out there who will say to you, you cannot sell using social media and you can’t measure human interactions therefore you can’t measure social media and we’re trying to make sure that business people understand that those are myths and those are things that we need to call bullshit on.

Speaker 1: Oh, and I think that’s great because I have a small business. I have for the last 10 years and I have been heavily involved in social media kind of stuff but I just enjoyed it because I like just knocking to people so I’m --

Speaker 2: Sure.

Speaker 1: -- right away. But I have really had a problem with using it for business because I’m not politically correct all the time but I do own my own business it doesn’t really matter. I don’t really care but you know people wanna work with me; they wanna work with me because they wanna work with me. They you know it’s not.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: So I am excited about reading the book and I have not read it. Is it out?

Speaker 2: It is out. In fact…

Speaker 1: It just came out though didn’t it because?

Speaker 2: Yeah, it just came out and actually we’ve gotten confirmation that it is actually in bookstores now. So they’ve started actually filtering in the bookstores. It’s been available online for ordering for a few weeks from Amazon and Barnes and Noble and places like that and there are online retail outlets but it is now actually in stores. We have some photographic evidence that it’s on shelves.

Speaker 1: Nice.

Speaker 2: Yeah, we’re excited to get it out there and get it in people’s hands and excited for people to give us feedback and my publisher keeps saying make sure you tell people to give us feedback on Amazon reviews because those are very important. I don’t care where the feedback comes from but if you are inclined to review it on Amazon, please do so.

Speaker 1: Yeah, that’s great because I’ve always now gotten to the point now where I’m just you know I got people you read about how people should use social media you know with their business and you know I used to have two Facebook accounts you know one for business and one for one where I show pictures of my butt kind of a thing you know. So it was like I had two different ones and then that didn’t work. All the questions I got why do you have two different accounts you know. So I’m excited about your book knowing you and the title. I’m excited about kind of getting down to the task of this whole freaking thing because I and you spend so much time at it. How much time did you spend at it? You know it’s just something shiny for me like I’m --

Speaker 2: Sure.

Speaker 1: I should be doing my work but instead I’m on Twitter you know.

Speaker 2: Yeah, well and it’s funny a lot of people have told me in the last couple of years that they noticed that I’m not as active on Twitter as I once was you know a few years ago and I don’t think the volume of my activity has changed all that much. I just do it in sporadic chunks because if I sat on Twitter all day and had conversations with people all day I would never get any work done.

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 2: And at the end of the day I have to have you know I have clients who I’m consulting with, I have events that I’m trying to build and promote and prepare for. You know I have a research product that I’m trying to do research on and write and if I don’t get those things done I can’t pay my mortgage so --

[0:10:01]

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: – social media from my personal interactive standpoint can be at times it can be a distractor and it can be anti-productive.

Speaker 1: Uh-hum.

Speaker 2: Or counterproductive but you can also use those interactions and you know sort of smartly and say you know what I’m gonna share good content on Twitter to build more of an audience and I’m gonna make sure that when I have a few minutes between meetings or phone calls and what not I jump on and respond to people or answer questions or something of that nature so that I am a human being interacting with other people there and I’m a credible source on Twitter and then oh, by the way when my market research report comes out you know in November which is what we were hoping I can then turn to my Twitter audience and say hey, if you’re in this industry we’ve done some research we would love for you to take a look at this product that you might potentially buy and so that’s kind of a very simple way of looking at how you can use Twitter for business but you can also use it in other ways too.

If you are a company that has an audience that’s big enough and that the demand is big enough you can say you know what on this particular Twitter account we’re just going to share coupons and so for anybody who just wants coupons to our business follow this Twitter account. If you wanna engage with us we’re over on Facebook or we’ve got a separate Twitter channel for that but it’s okay to have just a buyer’s only channel if you want. Dell [out] is the perfect example of that. People who are enthusiastic about gadgets and wanna get good deals on computer hardware follow Dell out on Twitter and they’re gonna tweet our links to over stock situations where you can buy stuff cheap and they’ve got millions of followers and have driven millions in revenue from doing that not following the social media purist viewpoint of you have to engage in the conversation. You know they’re just saying hey, for this channel we’re just gonna give you good deals and we’re not necessarily gonna have a conversation with you here. There’s other places where you can talk to us but right here we’re just gonna say collect my junk, buy my stuff and there’s an audience out there that wants it.

Speaker 1: That’s a great idea.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: So in the book do you have several like case studies that are…

Speaker 2: Oh, like this. Absolutely. I mean we go through the seven business drivers that we talked about in the book which are the seven sort of major areas that you can focus on driving business through social media marketing and I’ll list those in a second. We go through each one of them and give a couple of case studies within each of those seven so that you get really good broad understanding of what we’re talking about there and then we also have several other sort of case studies that sort of you know turn back those myths and call bullshit on this you know philosophical tenets that social media purist you know like to a espouse without backing it up with business metrics and what not.

Speaker 1: Uh-hum.

Speaker 2: But there’s plenty of case studies in the book and you know we touched on some that people have heard of before. I mean it’s hard to write a social media book and not talk about Dell and not talk about Comcast and Southwest Airlines and a couple of others but we actually find some really good case studies especially small business case studies that I think are pretty fascinating to a lot of people alike and so if you look at each of the seven business drivers or the seven things that social media marketing can do for your business just to quickly enumerate them. It can enhance your branding and awareness and so we have several examples of that, a really good case study using green peas as an example there.

The second one is protecting your brand’s reputation and that can be finding people talking bad about you and mitigating that or finding people talking good about you and amplifying it or it could also be the technological side of protecting your reputation. If you’re the best in flower shop in you know San Diego, California and when someone goes to a search engine and types in you know San Diego florist you need to come up number one if you’re the best but if you are not doing things whether it be through social media or through search engine optimization to make sure that you rank number one. You may not rank number one because your competitors maybe doing it so social media adds to that technological reputation protection as well.

The third area that we talked about is enhancing public relations I think you understands what PR and media relations is and certainly social media allows you to be your own media and allows you to you know get a lot of you know [column inches] on the internet and build an audience for your own stuff without having to go directly to meet your folks.

The fourth one is building community. A lot of people talk about that one and we talked about ways that you can build a community like building an actual online social network and driving people to it but then there’s also sort of the intangible building community of people that just like you or follow you or comment on your blogs or post on Facebook and become sort of your brand ambassadors online. So we touched on that a little bit as well and then the fifth one is enhancing customer service. I think we all sort of know and understand that. That’s where you’re Comcast and your Dells are gonna come into play in those case studies.

[0:15:01]
The sixth one facilitating research and development and we found some really good case studies that show obviously particularly among larger companies but if you think about it using social tools then cost a whole lot of money so now even small businesses can do RnD if they focus on doing that in the social media space and then the last of the seven business drivers is actually to drive sales and leads and we talked about some case studies in the book of companies that literally set out to increase sales and using a social media channel and social media strategies.

Speaker 1: Oh, very interesting. I’m really looking forward to reading it.

Speaker 2: Cool. I’m glad. I hope everybody else is too. I would love for everybody to go buy 8,000 copies and –

Speaker 1: Give them to everybody.

Speaker 2: – give them to the people who haven’t already brought 8,000 copies so that you spread the love a little but… Yeah, I would love for a lot of people to go buy the book and we hope it’s gonna be useful for folks. I think we wrote it with the small business owner or the medium you know medium to large business marketer, communicator who are still rather skeptical and maybe not quite you know bought in to social marketing yet but I think people who are already sort of embedded in the space will get a lot out of it because while we do a good job of convincing that first audience we also I think do a pretty good job of saying okay now that you might be convinced or you might be bought in let’s look at how you would strategically plan to use these channels in your business and so I think people who are already bought in are gonna get a lot out of it too.

Speaker 1: Very cool. So for a small business what’s the biggest challenge for using social media?

Speaker 2: By far it’s the time. The time and energy that they need to put into it to understand it. I mean I spoke at a conference back in January that was actually a retail show for guns. It was gun show and this shop owner came up to me unarmed I think and said alright, social media smart guy I work from nine to 5:30 everyday and I cannot take my eyes off of my show room. I have to watch every person who comes into my show room because I have weapons on the walls and what not and I’m a one person show. I’m a one you know like a [0:17:32] [Inaudible] location. When do you suggest I have time to you know be social online when I have to worry about the foot traffic that’s coming into my store and my response to him was you know what I’m gonna answer this a couple different ways that might surprise you a little bit.

If you’re getting enough business without social media right now and you don’t have to drive more foot traffic then maybe you don’t need social media and there’s businesses out there that maybe don’t need to be using it but if you want to increase the frequency in which your customers come back or you want to increase the foot traffic of new folks and you don’t wanna have to spend a bunch of money advertising and what not then I would suggest maybe you go in 30 minutes early or you stay 30 minutes late or you devote a few hours in the evenings for a while until you get used to it to providing some content on your website or building a Facebook page and connecting with some people there and communicating with a greater audience that either doesn’t know you exist but would be interested in your product that they did or the core audience of people who you already know, the first people that are gonna come like you on Facebook are the people who already shop at your store.

So get them to come and interact with you online and then their friends will see that they’re interacting with you and so on and so forth so you can sort of virally and organically grow the number of people that are paying attention to you online and once you have that set up and you get use to the technology you can be sitting there watching your store and update your Facebook page from your phone. You don’t have to have complex computer systems and all that good stuff but at the same time I think that there’s a really good example of a person who may not need it and sometimes there are people who don’t need social media and I think you can make an argument that anybody could use it and it could be positive for any business but there are some people who because of the way that they get new customers, because of the amount of revenue that they have or the amount of revenue that they need maybe it’s not gonna be a top priority for them and that’s okay too.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I was gonna say that you’re [0:19:34] [Inaudible] like give away bullets or something but that’s interesting. I was just thinking too as you were saying that you should have a workbook that goes along with your book.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Just because I’m so something shiny guy that I see something shiny I can’t stick to a plan. It’s hard for me to stick to a plan but I guess that’s probably why you should work with somebody who’s a you know social media expert or something you know hire them like yourself.

[0:20:13]

Speaker 2: Right. Well, and quite frankly that’s another you know big challenge for small businesses is that you know getting help is not cheap –

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: – in general. Now, there are some you know alternative options like anybody can go to Google and search for what they’re looking for or how to set up a Facebook page and you can find you know resources out there that can help you do that from nothing but most small businesses because of the time commitment and because they’re focused on you know a lot more than just marketing much less social media marketing they need an easy button. They need you know somebody to do it for them or to at least hold their hand for a little bit to get them to be able to do it and it takes time investment and if you’re gonna hire somebody to help you it obviously is gonna take a monetary investment and there is not a lot of people who are doing that for cheap because the demand is so high.

Speaker 1: Uh-hum.

Speaker 2: And so we’re in one of those worlds where the supply and demand in economics just say if you know something about social media and you can help businesses you can charge for it and demand a fairly high dollar these days. That’s unfortunate because that leaves a lot of small businesses out of the equation.

Speaker 1: Yeah, but they can read your book.

Speaker 2: They can read my book or they can join my learning community which is the low price of $25 a month.

Speaker 1: A learning community. Tell me about that.

Speaker 2: Yeah. So exploringsocialmedia.com is it’s sort of based on the learning community premise so we have all these great content that like we have qualified content of how to build a Facebook page and how to FTP files to a server and you know all the different little technical tricks that you might need to know if you’re setting up your own digital presence. But then that content also scales up to how do I develop strategies. You know how do I measure you know social media activity so on and so forth.

So we get really in depth in these topics too but instead of having a learning community that also had a question and answer form beneath it we flipped it and so the premise of exploring social media is you don’t have time to search all this content you need somebody to answer your question. So you come in and ask your question and then myself and a couple of other digital marketing practitioners are basically on call to answer your questions and we’ve had questions that range from how do I add an administrator to my Facebook page all the way to I’m developing strategies for a nursing home and I need some advice and some ideas and our attitude is if you’re paying us to be in our community we’re gonna answer your question regardless of what it is.

Now we’ll tell you hey, I may not be the most qualified person to answer this question but here’s what I think or I’ll go out like I had somebody come in the other day who is a member of the community who works at a digital agency and so they asked a little bit more advance questions. They’re not worried about the one on one how to stuff. They’re worried about hey, I need to know what Facebook applications are good for contest. You know they’re looking for recommendations on products and what not and they asked an SEO question that was beyond my personal understanding and so I reached out to a friend of mine who is an SEO expert and said hey, a member of my community asked this question can you help me answer it. And so I tapped into my network of resources to help answer the member’s question as best we can.

It’s myself, Tamar Weinberg who has offered the book New Community Rules you know marketing on the social web. There’s DJ Waldo who used to be with Blue Sky Factory, he’s kind of an email marketing expert but also a social media digital marketing strategist. He’s in there. Nick Yoon who used to be the lead digital strategist for Yum! Brands which is KFC, Taco Bell and Long John Silver’s.

So we’ve got some expert level opinions in there that can help people answer their problems and then if you come in and you ask a question like I need to know how to convert my company. I set up my company as a Facebook Profile page and I need to know how to convert that then we simply answer the question by sending you a link to the lesson within the community that shows you how to do that and we show you how to do things via screen tests. Sometimes we do the little talking head just kinda talking to you to the ideas and then we have also obviously a lot of written content with instructions as well on how to do certain things. So it’s a pretty well robust resource for people. We haven’t put a whole lot of marketing you know money behind it or anything. It’s been kind of growing organically. There’s a couple hundred people in the community now and we’re being helpful and useful in answering their questions.

Speaker 1: That’s very cool.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: It’s a really great resource for somebody to use. Who’s in that community?

Speaker 2: The guy who owns the gun shop. He’s in there.

Speaker 1: Oh, really. Oh, that’s great. So what kind of local business if they just wanted to start out what do you recommend they do?

[0:25:05]

Speaker 2: Well, the first thing that I would recommend any business does is do a little homework first and know what you can get out of social media marketing and those seven business drivers that we talked about those are the seven you know main things and once you understand those the best starting point for you is to decide which one of those you wanna focus on because if you don’t start out with a goal or with a set of goals then you’re always gonna be frustrated because you’re never gonna know how far you’ve gotten.

We used the analogy in the book you know participating in social media as a business without a goal, a plan and some objectives is like piling the family into the van getting to the end of the driveway and saying okay, we’re going on a vacation and you haven’t booked hotels, you haven’t packed, you don’t know what the weather is, where you’re going because you don’t know where you’re going, you don’t have snacks in the car for the kids, you haven’t put the DVD players in the car so they can watch movies. Your vacation is gonna be a nightmare and you’re never really gonna know when you get to where you’re going because you haven’t planned to go anywhere and so that’s the same thing that happens with businesses that are like okay, I have a blog, I have a Facebook page, I have a Twitter account, I’m social or what are you doing with social. I’m joining the conversation. Okay.

Well, what are you asking people to do? What do you mean why am I asking people do? You’re not allowed to sell these social media. Well, what are you getting out of it? Well, I don’t know. What are you trying to get out of it? I don’t know. And so the most important thing you can do as a business to get started is figure out what you wanna get out of it. Is it better customer service? Is it sales? Is it insights and ideas from your customers that will help your business? Is it you know a community of advocates and loyal followers who will promote you online. Figure out what you want to get out of it and then focus your goals there.

Speaker 1: Very cool. So one thing I wanted to tell you too is that a lot of people that was in this show, all four of them, they were all events and meetings professionals basically and that you were the keynote at our very first Event Camp and I don’t know if you’ve been following Event Camp at all since you came and spoke and it was really cool the way you use the Twitter for you that was next to you just a couple of years ago.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: So the Twitter Feed that was actually was great that you turned in and was looking at it while you were talking and you were answering questions from the feed which I thought was very cool because no one has ever really done that since but we’ve had them now just to tell you that we just had it in Europe. It was the last one and they’ve been all over the world now and one is coming up in New Zealand and they’re happening all over the place which is pretty cool and you were the one who started it.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: You started it so people should know that you were one of the founders so to speak of Event Camp so.

Speaker 2: Oh, that was very cool. That was at the [Roger Smith], wasn’t it?

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah, that was cool then. I remember that.

Speaker 1: Yeah, and there’s one coming up at Vancouver and you know but a lot of the people who goes to the show are [0:28:08] [Inaudible] so I wanted people to know that you’re a very good speaker. So people should – are you still speaking I’m assuming.

Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely. I’m in the midst of — I’m booked to speak at least one event every week through in the middle of December this fall so but it’s part of the book tour. I mean I’m…

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2: I’m trying to promote a book so it’s a little higher –

Speaker 1: Sure.

Speaker 2: – higher frequency than normal but yeah, I typically I do a couple of events a month and I stay pretty active out there on the road. I do a lot more non-social media events you know an industry trade shows and what not because I’m trying to reach that audience that hasn’t quite adopted social media yet but I still show up at the Blog World in the Southwest and what not so you know I keep my road bag packed.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And you’re speaking at Blog world that’s right coming up.

Speaker 2: I will be in Los Angeles. I’m really looking forward to it. I think we’re probably gonna be putting together a little book party celebration for the book. So yeah, it’s gonna be fun.

Speaker 1: [0:29:09] [Inaudible] slushies.

Speaker 2: There will probably be slushies. If they don’t have any on the menu we’ll make them make some. I think Chris is gonna come too so we’ll have to revitalize the slushy thing.

Speaker 1: I’m not gonna come.

Speaker 2: Oh, come on. Don’t be a party blooper. Just don’t take [Laughter].

Speaker 1: It’s not possible. So let’s see. So where can people get a hold of you and give us all your — I’ll put it on the post too on the blog post but share where people can find you.

Speaker 2: Sure. The easiest place to connect with me is probably on Twitter. I’m @JasonFalls. I’m typically Jason Falls on most social networks so you can find me on a bunch of those places. social mediaexplorer.com is my blog. We tried to produce some really good content that makes people think about social media and digital marketing a little bit more intellectually thank some other blogs do but we try to stir up some conversation there. It’s certainly exploringsocialmedia.com which we talked about. Come there and check out the learning community and if you’re interested in the book which we hoped you are nobullshitsocialmedia.com. We’re trying to make that real easy for people to find. You can order it there from our publisher or from Amazon, Barnes and Noble and [book Smullyan uplift].

Speaker 1: Very cool. Alright. Well, Jason I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me. I know you’re a very busy man so thank you.

Speaker 2: Well, I wouldn’t miss talking to you for the world, Mike because since that first slushy bar incident it’s good to hear from you because we worry about you sometimes.

Speaker 1: Yes. Yes. Thank you and yeah and I’ll see you probably see you down in Blog World.

Speaker 2: See you there.

Speaker 1: Thank you again.

Speaker 2: Thank you.

Speaker 1: Okay. Bye. Bye.

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 delgado brothers.com.
 

Related articles

• Jason Falls: ‘No BS’ In Print, In Person, Online (mpdailyfix.com)
• Jason Falls & Erik Deckers on MTB Radio (marketingtechblog.com)
• 2 Minutes of Jason Falls: Why He’ll Never Miss a BlogWorld Event (blogworld.com)

We also announce our next live Podcast Meetup to be held October 12th at the Venetian/Palazzo Resort during IMEX America.  Listen in and then join us live in Vegas to network and have some fun on a Wednesday night!

FYI- For those who noticed the missing shows will be coming up soon- I had to get this episode up and I didnt want to go in and chage all the file names so the numbers would be in order!

Related articles

• The Evolution of Event Hashtags on Twitter Show 185 (grassshackroad.com)

If you havent seen him speak take a second and watch this.

Today Mike talks with Gerrit Heijkoop from Amsterdam’s Triqle Event Intelligence talks about  their web, mobile solution “Whats On?” Gerrit tells us about how it works, solutions it provides for event organizers and attendees. also runs us through a few case studies.

Little tip on how to pronounce Gerrits last name and company for our American friends:

Garrett High-Cope  from Trickle Event Intelligence

Transcripts

Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Meetings Podcast. This is Mike McAllen with Grass Shack Events & Media and today we have Gerrit Heijkoop from Triqle Event Intelligence. Hi Gerrit.

Speaker 2: Hi Mike.

Speaker 1: You know we talked a little bit before we started this interview and then I forgot that we actually just met over the internet again but I guess we’ve talked to each other before in the past but –

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: — for the Event Camp Europe on the Google Hangout.

Speaker 2: Exactly. We spend the whole day together. Well, you were the sponsor of the day.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Greg Ruby was there all day.

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 2: And I was there as well.

Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a really fun experience. I had never really used Google Hangout except for one other time and that was really fun. It was just kind of a fun little way to interact.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I completely agree. It is a very cool back channel because it’s more focused somehow you’re only talking to like 10 people and then you have the visual interactions through the video. I really loved it.

Speaker 1: Yeah, and it was interesting though we didn’t really have to sound on though so that was kind of strange for me. I mean it was neat to be able to see the other people. So I felt like there’s a little chat room in the Google Hangout whoever is listening that hasn’t used it before but there’s a little chat room and then it has all the video webcams of all the people that are in your hangout. So you can actually have a good — you could have a chat like we could have all been talking but everybody was watching the live stream and then everybody was on Twitter also.

Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a bit schizophrenic huh.

Speaker 1: And the pictures we set back and forth of how we had it all set up on our screens was very nerdy.

Speaker 2: Yeah, very but this whole internet hybrid events is a bit of the nerdy side of the events industry.

Speaker 1: Right. Very much so.

Speaker 2: I guess.

Speaker 1: And so where are you located? I guess people should know that too.

Speaker 2: Yeah, we’re calling at this moment from Amsterdam the Netherlands in Europe.

Speaker 1: Nice.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Nice. Nice. Nice. I’ve met a lot of really nice people from Amsterdam over the years.

Speaker 2: Oh, cool.

Speaker 1: It’s funny I’d love to go up there sometime I’ve never been but someday I have to get up there. So let’s talk about Triqle first of all. So Triqle is it’s an Event Intelligence Company. Tell me a little bit about Triqle.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, we are actually a joint venture of guys who are really good in web building actually male guys, a graphic designer and me and myself I have an event management and social media background. The funny thing is our web guys are also two semi-professional classical musicians on cello and violin and our designer is a film festival fanatic.

So all in all we have quite some events experience and also had some event frustrations and those are mainly in part about how organizers or planners or who run events how to have to communicate with their at least because there’s always a lot of stuff going on, always a lot of stuff last minute changing and how can they reach us.

So from that personal frustration that’s when we decide hey, I think we can do that better and if we combine our skillsets I think we have everything in the room that we need to create cool solutions and that’s when we found it beginning of 2010. It was one-and-a-half year ago we founded Triqle Event Intelligence first on the side of our day jobs and went out to launch our platform WhatsOn and that’s basically our technology platform that we developed and besides that we also provide consultancy and project coordination on the whole field of communication between the organizers.

Speaker 1: Very cool. And so can you tell me a little bit more about how — one thing that I thought maybe if you could say you know what would it be like for a customer to how it work probably actually why don’t you do it from an attendee background like if you were an attendee in an event how would it work.

Speaker 2: Well, I can do both but most often I start with the planner, right because those are our customers.

Speaker 1: Uh-hum. Uh-hum.

[0:05:00]

Speaker 2: And then imagine you’re running an event and your event has a program or a schedule so you somehow need to convey that message to your attendees. Everyone in the events industry always has to do that what’s going on at what place and what time and who’s there and why should you be there. That moment ago you start with the website, right? So you put it on your URL/program and you type in the whole program on your website or maybe even before that you start in some Excel or Google block in your team and you create a program.

Now, then next its 2011 so everybody around you will tell you well, you need to go mobile. Oh, yeah great so we’re running a mobile app. So here’s the second to a third thing where you’re gonna enter your program info and put all the stuff in there, bios and beginning time and end time and then someone says yeah but we got this really nice venue and the venue invested heavily in this costing system, they got a lot of screens up there so we should use the screens. Oh, yeah. Yeah, good idea.

So let’s make some slides that we can put on the screens. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you’re gonna put — you make slides and put the program on there and well, 2011 so it’s iPads also. We might also want a mobile website and well, of course there’s always the people that still need print so you also have to make something in print and then one day before your event you get a phone call that your main speaker is sick or his plane is delayed or you have to switch rooms you know everybody I tell the story this recognized program. Event programs are changing. Always. Last minute.

Now, in the above case you have to in a worst case scenario you’re dealing with like six or eight suppliers everyone having a bit of your content. You have to call them, make these changes everywhere and anywhere and you probably won’t be able to do that. So your visitors are confused. They’re showing up to a room where rescheduling was. Well, lots of frustrations.

Speaker 1: Uh-hum.

Speaker 2: And mainly lots of questions on your head during the day of the event. Now what we thought is as we recognized that you always have to convey this message let’s see if we can get as much as more important than the medium you choose to convey. So that’s when we came up with an online service called WhatsOn where you have a sensual database with all your program information and everything you wanna convey to your visitors and based on web technology that’s already available all of these devices that I just made they had browsers they can run an internet browser.

So we made some really smart user interfaces which adapt to the screen that you’re looking at and always shows your — wow. So that’s part one. So you have one click, you update your information and it’s up to date everywhere from any place. Now as a visitor if you look at our interface we provide the schedule as a chronological list so you see the first item on the top and the second and the third and the first and during the day the interface runs with the program.

So everything that’s past, that’s no longer in progress that disappears from the list. So if I go on my mobile and I go to the mobile website or I take a look at the screen or I go in the iPad or whatever I want I always see on one glance what’s going on right now, how long it will last, what’s the next thing after that and on the mobile that I can also click on it, read what’s it about, do some interaction with it like give it a like or a dislike or leave my comments on it. So there we really pull in the interactivity.

Speaker 1: Very cool.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: That sounds like a great thing because it just seems like I’m always either well in the past I always fiddled with the programs that you get you know and you’re always like looking for that one page that you’re carrying around this giant thing.

Speaker 2: Exactly. Exactly. One page and you’re flipping it or you just fold it and…

Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds great and a lot of these apps now like you said they always have like you have to kinda scroll through it to try and figure out where you are on the…

Speaker 2: Exactly. That’s the other thing that we’re noticing also in the apps but also in our own practice or we’ll also incorporated that in a redesign that we’re working at. What our industry is gonna be doing is trying to put that whole book that you’re talking about trying to fit that on the mobile device.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: So we put the whole list in there, we put all the bios in there; we put the abstracts in there. As much as possible we all want it in the app and we need a map on there and we need well, as much as possible and what we’re seeing from our users and also what our data or analytics data is telling us that people don’t wanna read that on their mobile phone. So.

[0:10:05]

Speaker 1: That’s true, huh.

Speaker 2: Yeah, it is not the nicest device to consume all that information.

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 2: So if you wanna read about the session or read about the speakers I think the website is still the best place or even the book. I mean the book is nice to read about the event it’s just not nice to navigate through the event. And in our next read I mean our current interface already does that but we’re working on the redesign which even more brings out the — I don’t know if that’s a proper English would but the actuality so really about what’s going on right now.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: This is what’s on in the schedule, this is what’s being on in Twitter, this is what the organizer at this moment wants to tell you or stress out and then really capture the power of the cross media. So on all devices everything at the same time, real time up to date.

Speaker 1: Very cool.

Speaker 2: Yeah, and I remember even at this Event Camp Europe you‘re using it there. Are you?

Speaker 1: Yeah. What’s going on now and you’d kinda sent me a link within our little hangout we were in and oh, this is very cool. I didn’t even know that you are the one who [Cross-talk].

Speaker 2: Yes, I made that. Well, and it is a generic solution. So the basic layout and the list and the bars that’s generic but the colors and the logos you can really quickly edit those and make it look and feel like it’s really yours and your event. So I do believe in a generic solution for all events but then still on your specific event it should look and feel like it are really especially for you. So there’s no logos from us and there were no colors you can really style it in your own way.

Speaker 1: How does that work if I was gonna say I’m a meeting planner what’s the interface like for me? Do I log on to the website and just drop these things in or how does it work?

Speaker 2: Yeah, we have two models. We have if you go to our website you’d see on the bottom there’s two big bars and the one says why I spent money on stuff you can do it yourself and for those people we have WhatsOn do it yourself which indeed you create an account and a website and you enter the information all yourself but to do that you have to be a little bit tax savvy or a nerd so to say from the beginning of our talk and on the other side we have why I spend time on stuff the pros can do for you and that’s our pro service.

So in your dream scenario you don’t have to do anything you just throw your info at us or we even come and get it from you and we’ll make sure that everything is alright but then you have to pay us and in the first scenario that’s a lot cheaper and then you have to do all the work. So that’s basically how the business model is designed. You pay a low license fee for a relatively low license fee for the technology and you pay for service.

Speaker 1: That’s awesome. So then if someone does gets the hang of it they can actually do it themselves but you guys are there to help them in the process of –

Speaker 2: Exactly.

Speaker 1: — learning and you guys will do as much or as little as that the planner need.

Speaker 2: And what we’ve learned from the one-and-a-half year that were working now is that most meeting planners and organizers don’t wanna do it themselves. You know they just want that guy or that email address and say fix it. I don’t wanna think about it and that’s fine we love to do that.

Speaker 1: Yeah, it’s very cool. Yeah, and well that’s kept me in business too all these years because people can do what I do too but they want somebody else to do it so that’s great.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that’s how the industry works, right. You need a really good meeting planner or organizer that ties together all these strings to a big cohesive knot.

Speaker 1: Exactly.

Speaker 2: And each string should be a really good supply of who goes out of his way to make it work.

Speaker 1: So like the updates, the on the fly updates then you would have somebody standing to do that.

Speaker 2: No, both ways. Yeah. Yeah. So it could get us on sites and help you out with all the stuff and also make sure that you’re still up to date or you have a backend interface where you can do that yourself.

Speaker 1: Very cool.

Speaker 2: And you can either change one item because it switched the room or speaker change. You can also use operations. For example you take all items up to the break and you’re moving back 10 minutes and then the break you shorten that one 10 minutes and then you’re back on track from the break on.

Speaker 1: Very cool and that’s so important. Wow, that’s very cool.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Yeah, and I can see this being used for a lot of internal things because our company does mostly internal meetings for corporations. We don’t do a lot of conferences.

[0:15:04]

I mean there’ll be internal conferences and I could see there’s been very, very helpful for internal use.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, we’ve actually used it for all time events. We did some medical conferences, we did some one day simple presentation like events because there’s different reasons to use it. I mean on the big conference you wanna use it because there’s so much program information and it’s so complex that you wanna have it in one way and the WhatsOn now feature is really neat.

On the more simple events which we call technically like a one track event so you have one room with speakers and a break and a lunch or whatever that is actually more of a decorating feature. You put these screens in there like these big screens or you beam it up behind the speakers and it just creates this whole look and feel of your event in the venue because it has your colors and your logos.

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 2: And your stuff that’s going on.

Speaker 1: You said narrowcasting earlier and I don’t know what narrowcasting is. What is narrowcasting?

Speaker 2: Yeah, I should be careful with that term. I had to learn that one day myself too but it’s actually the opposite of broadcasting. So broadcasting sends out a TV message to millions of people in their homes and TVs. Narrowcasting is basically creating designated content for a small group in a certain venue. I guess you have it in the States, right. I don’t know how you…

Speaker 1: Probably. I just never heard of it.

Speaker 2: I’ve been known to forget things I learned too so.

Speaker 2: Yeah, so like the larger venues or they have these screens all around their place and the system that gets the content on their screens that’s a narrowcasting system or at least we call it that.

Speaker 1: Yeah, it’s very cool. It’s a very good term. I’m gonna steal that and use it all the time now.

Speaker 2: Watch out because people don’t know what it is.

Speaker 1: Let’s go to the make me seem smart for once. What’s different from your solution than from other you know mobile solutions? What’s the biggest differentiator?

Speaker 2: Well, the biggest difference is that we’re not trying to be so complete as possible we’re trying to be so relevant as possible.

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 2: And we leave stuff out.

Speaker 1: That’s great.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: That makes perfect sense and it’s very green. I guess you’re a green company too because you’ve…

Speaker 2: We are also green solution if you choose not to print but I’m not there yet saying you should not print never anymore. I mean there’s people who still like to print a program and as I said to read about sessions is a nice medium but we did some events like one for the MPI here in the Netherlands which went totally green and what we did we had the mobile website and we had the screens and the venue and at the morning of the event we send every delegate a personal SMS or a text message that is in English saying well, welcome to the event today. Click on this URL and you’ll have your program guide on your mobile all day and in that way we made sure that at least everyone had access to the mobile program and well, for the people who didn’t have a phone with internet.

Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2: They can look at the screens.

Speaker 1: That’s very cool. I didn’t even think about that because everybody I mean I just assumed everybody has a mobile but some people don’t, huh.

Speaker 2: There’s still people who don’t I mean it’s like maybe 80% or 90% of the mobile phones has internet right now but.

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 2: And that’s our whole point and that’s why we also went away from building the perfect event app. I mean a mobile phone is just one of the ways you have to communicate to your visitors and if the statistics says that there’s only 80% of your visitors having a mobile and the number is lower but I mean they all have the mobile but they don’t all use apps. As an organizer you always need to communicate to a 100$.

Speaker 1: Yeah, because you need to reach them all.

Speaker 2: Right. Right.

Speaker 1: And that’s why they live in the integrated cross media solution.

Speaker 2: Very cool. So do you have another example of an event that you’ve worked on that might be interesting.

Speaker 1: Well, so like I said we did the smaller event which went paperless. We also did a very large public theatre festival in the Netherlands which spread out over a 10 days and there were like 1200 shows going on.

Speaker 2: Wow.

Speaker 2: Another feature that we have is that you can use tags, you can create categories of tags and you can label certain program items with these tags and then you can quickly filter the list based on these tags.

[0:20:04]

So for example a tag was that was theatre, there was music and there were art projects. So if you click on an item and you said well, this is in the category music and you click on this music tag it will show you all the other items in music going on at that moment. We also had like geographical tag because it wasn’t an island and the island was divided in three parts and we had west, middle and east. So if you click on the tag east you only got all the stuff that was going on at the east side of the island and that’s how you could navigate through the [0:20:41] and enormous program and get what you were looking for.

Speaker 1: Wow, it’s very cool. So it works at all sizes. That’s awesome.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. And specifically for that event it was cool that we have a life integration with a ticket sales software. So we could actually show live on the items rather the tickets were sold out or still available or limited so that also created some sense of urgency.

Speaker 1: Very cool. So are there any other features that we’ve missed to talk about or…

Speaker 2: Well, these are the most important. I mean but that’s not something you can brag and we have a fool Twitter integration so both inbound and outbound so we show all the tweets that also really nice on the screens.

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 2: And we show the tweets on the mobile and our devices and every program item you can very easily share with your friends on Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn and we’ll produce these tweets saying I’m at this and this event going to this and this session with the hashtag and a link.

Speaker 1: Very cool.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: That’s very handy and a lot of people like they’ll just follow the tweets than your broadcasting. That’s really fantastic.

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker 1: Get another people interested in your event.

Speaker 2: Exactly.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Alright well, thank you Gerrit. I guess we’ve covered everything I’m trying to make sure we get everything so I think we have.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we do.

Speaker 1: And I’d love to have you back on the show again when you get some updates going and I’m sure you guys at Triqle were gonna come up with some other cool stuff.

Speaker 2: Yeah, as I mentioned a couple of times we’re actually in the process of redesign to incorporate all the lessons that we learned last year but we’ll come out with that probably at January 2012. So I’m still a bit on two toes you know. I’m still very enthusiastic about the current solution but I’m even more thrilled about what’s coming.

Speaker 1: That’s fun. [0:22:45] [Inaudible]. Where can people find Triqle and find you. Give us some info on how to get hold of you.

Speaker 2: Yeah. We have a websites at www.triqle.eu and I’ll spell that because it’s not [0:23:02] [Inaudible] it’s triqle.eu from Europe and you can send an email to me at WhatsOn so that’s whatson@trigle.au or find me on Twitter under @Triqle or @heijkoop and I’ll spell that last one. It’s my personal twitter account and that’s @gheijkoop. And I love to hear from people what they think, their questions and we see if we can help.

Speaker 1: Perfect and I’ll put on the links on the Meetings Podcast site too so you know if someone is too lazy to write that down they could just go click from this podcast site. But Gerrit, thank you so much.

Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for having me Mike. Really cool.

Speaker 1: Yeah, and I look forward to talking to you again and hopefully one of these days we’ll actually meet up face-to-face.

Speaker 2: Yeah. The coffee or the beer whatever you want is [0:24:09] [Inaudible].

Speaker 1: Sounds great. Okay, thank you so much.

Speaker 2: Thanks.

Speaker 1: Bye. Bye.

Organizers Traci Browne (@TraciBrowne) and Adrian Segar (@ASegar), assisted by Andrea Sullivan (@BrainStrength) and Greg Ruby(@Greg Ruby), have added an additional day based on comments from the folks that attended the original EventCamp East Coast. In addition to the retaining the Conferences That Work peer-conference format developed by Segar, there will be a cross-country virtual connection with EventCamp Vancouver on Sunday as well.

Those that attended EventCamp East Coast left commenting on the powerful bonds they made that weekend:

“…one of the most innovative and eye-opening professional experiences I’ve had. Aside from coming back with lots of new tips and ideas, I easily established triple the number of new contacts, and formed stronger relationships with them, than at any other conference I’ve been to.”
“…an experience that was unparalleled and will definitely remain a highlight of my event education for years to come.”
“…I have never been to a conference where I felt like I got to know so many new people so well.”

EventCamp East Coast is what YOU make it to be. There are no predetermined topics and presenters. Participants share their learning goals during the opening roundtable session and later suggest topics and cast votes on what sessions they would like to see given. Sessions are facilitated by your fellow EventCampers and bring out the many years of experiences of fellow attendees. No PowerPoint presentations here! It is meaningful learning outcomes where you have helped to create the weekend’s programs.

There are two pricing options available to attend EventCamp East Coast – full and day passes. Full conference registration is $425 (until October 21) and includes two nights lodging and all meals from dinner on Friday through lunch on Sunday. Day passes are $250 (until October 21) and includes dinner on Friday, lunch and dinner on Saturday and lunch on Sunday. Many local attendees of last year’s EventCamp East Coast regretted not staying over and missing out on the camaraderie with fellow Campers.

Check out our website at www.EventCampEastCoast.com! I hope you will decide to join us for a productive weekend of learning and fun.

ShowGizmo combines web and smartphone technology to create more productive, valuable events. It enables event organizers, sponsors/exhibitors and visitors to access and manage information for trade shows, conferences, exhibitions and other events events and better connect with each other using the wide range of functions to achieve better results and improve their return on investment.

Transcripts:

Speaker 1: Welcome back to the meetings podcast. This is Mike McAllen of Grass Shack Events & Media and today our special guest is Marie-Claire Andrews. Hi Marie.Speaker 2: Hello. How are you?

Speaker 1: Hi. Hi Marie-Claire. You are from ShowGizmo.

Speaker 2: That’s right.

Speaker 1: And you are down in New Zealand which is fantastic and so first why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself and how you got into like the events world.

Speaker 2: Sure. So we’ve actually been running ShowGizmo or smart shows the company name for just over a year now which I think makes us if not one of the oldest mobile app for events companies probably at least a teenager if not kind of middle age and before that we were selling virtual events technology. A group of us thought that we’re being based here in New Zealand we have all sorts of challenges about reaching audiences and getting people to come here is quite a big deal, it’s a long long way and I think people are still worried sometimes that the lights aren’t on the weekends and the sheep are going around the treadmill to keep the internet going and things like that.

So we were trying to think of ways to encourage people to participate in events and virtual event technology seemed the way forward but it was a little too difficult for our community to grasp. It wasn’t a satisfying experience at that time. This is a couple of years ago you know when the tech was just coming out and frankly everyone still wanted to mix and mingle but we took what we learned from all of that and our experience in running events ourselves and watch the smartphone revolution just coming at us full and thought right let’s take a look at those good learnings and create a mobile app for an event but not a shiny fancy glitzy one for the big huge events. We wanted to be the smartphone app for everyone.

Speaker 1: That’s cool.

Speaker 2: And so that’s what ShowGizmo is. We’re aiming for midsize organizers and the associations and anyone who really wants to take advantage of the technology but maybe not spend quite so much and not have to learn very much about [geekery] where we take our best place.

Speaker 1: That’s nice. It’s very good.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: People like for us to be simple. I was looking through your website and you just don’t do events there in New Zealand you do them all over the place.

Speaker 2: Well, there’s only four million people here so there aren’t that many events actually really going on. There’s probably about only 40 major event organizers here so for a company like ours to be successful we have to be out there and we have right from the start. So we’ve been mobilizing events over in the UK, we did complex over there, we’re in the Middle East, in Dubai, Bahrain, Kenya, Australia. Yeah, right around the world and we have our first US event is just happening this month. So it’s very exciting.

Speaker 1: Oh, really. Where is that?

Speaker 2: Pretty much — in Ohio.

Speaker 1: Oh, how funny. That’s great.

Speaker 2: Uh-huh.

Speaker 1: Congratulations.

Speaker 2: So every continent but Antarctica. I’m not sure there’s a massive events industry there so we don’t see about that.

Speaker 1: No. No. No. No. So tell me what is ShowGizmo. What does it do?

Speaker 2: Okay.

Speaker 1: For you.

Speaker 2: Internet show. ShowGizmo is actually a website really. It’s an event community. So that profiles the show, the exhibitors, the delegates and that’s where the analytics about whose doing well what and whose interested in what gets captured and then it’s supported by native apps, native smartphone apps that put the show in everyone’s hand. So think of it like a template really. The app ShowGizmo is in the store all the time and our event organizers populate it in real time by entering information into the site so they get native apps really quickly. You know by the end of the day if they’re speedy in filling in their forms but they don’t have to code a unique app for every event or wait for those apps to be put in the store. So it’s like yeah, it’s like a template I guess. We also write label and create custom apps but really ShowGizmo is a cool product.

Speaker 1: And so ShowGizmo is like pick and choose like from a menu of things that you might want for your app. Is that how it works?

Speaker 2: It’s actually a structured template. So the event organizers give away a little bit of flexibility and return for the speed and efficiency I guess really. But it has pretty much everything you would expect. So it’s a digital show guide. It’s got the exhibitor listings. It’s got Twitter feeds. It’s got a floor plan. It’s got the schedule. It’s got speaker presentations.

[0:05:00]

Speaker 2: It’s got all of the things that we notice people really want to wanna take their phone out of their pocket for an event you know the key things and that it also actually has integrated lead capture in it for exhibitors. So through QR code scanning they can basically generate more leads. So the delegates use our app to scan their code at their booth, get a little of that exhibitor’s information straight to their phone and then return, give their name and email and information to the exhibitor.

Speaker 1: Wow. That’s very cool.

Speaker 2: Kind of like eating away at those third party bar code scanners that have been out and about in the market for a while.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Everyone has a scanner in their hands so why bother.

Speaker 1: Right. Right. And I guess then they can give you also all their information about whatever their booth is or whatever they’re selling, right.

Speaker 2: Exactly.

Speaker 1: That’s the exchange.

Speaker 2: Exactly. So you don’t have to carry around all of that fancy brochure stuff that looks so shiny and smells nice and then you throw it away when you get home.

Speaker 1: Right. It’s very green. So I guess you’re saving all the trees and everything in the world.

Speaker 2: Absolutely.

Speaker 1: So how do you find and this is a question just because I’m just sadly here in the United States most of the time.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: So how is it for like for these other countries like for internet. Is the internet faster? It’s interesting because it’s so slow here and you go into these big conferences and it’s just you know these great cool apps you get here and then you go to like comfort and you can’t use it because everything is so slow.

Speaker 2: It’s so slow.

Speaker 1: Yeah. I wondered how it is down there in New Zealand and then how you scale that to other countries.

Speaker 2: New Zealand is kind of fascinating because it’s a small population. We actually get used as a test case for quite a lot of tech innovation. So we have pretty awesome internet here and actually every event I’ve been to here in New Zealand has really good wireless app to shows. So unlike we went to the UK for example and whilst their general 3G is great once we got into the events you know you are being pillage for the amount of money you have to spend to have a decent internet connection inside the event arena. So it’s quite mercenary there. It’s still good quality but very expensive and the data roaming charges are just deadly.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: And that’s the challenge. That’s the thing we have to think long and hard about is that you know whilst our first premise was to try and encourage more people to participate in events if they’re dealing with data roaming or you know just to browse an exhibitor’s profiles it will cost them 23 bucks and that’s not really ideal. But in the Middle East it was pretty good. Bahrain a little bit slightly slower. It’s just the pricing of it is what effects the uptake really and they use.

Speaker 1: Right. It’s funny this is so kind of out topic.

Speaker 2: Yup.

Speaker 1: But I met a guy recently here where I’m very close to Silicon Valley where all the tech is going on too.

Speaker 2: Yup.

Speaker 1: So I met this guy and we‘re having a beer and he was telling me he has a small company and he just brings his own internet into the outside the event and he can just shoot it across the whole –

Speaker 2: Wow.

Speaker 1: — comfort center and I should be handing this case carried out to everybody because he says.

Speaker 2: Wow.

Speaker 1: And then you can brand it as whatever you want and supposedly it’s free space that anyone can do that.

Speaker 2: Awesome.

Speaker 1: Here. Yeah, and it was way faster plus it’s branded so when you go the front page it says ShowGizmo would like to offer you free internet and so everybody you know it’s pretty cool anyway. I thought that’s…

Speaker 2: I’d like to meet — yeah, I’d like to meet that man. He sounds cool. Send him down.

Speaker 1: So what are you finding with ShowGizmo that people, the attendees, the best features what is or the organizer what are they most jazz about it when you weigh how are you getting all these clients everywhere.

Speaker 2: Well, first of all because they can have a native app instantly. So often they’re making decisions they like. We’ve got to have an app for an event. It’s a box to tick, the world is telling us apps, apps, apps. I’m not quite sure oh I’ve left it very late. What shall we do? And we can roll it up super-fast for them so that’s one thing. And then also we have an account management service so we actually help them with their mobile strategy as well so yes, we’re geeky and we’ve got some great tech but we’ve also got a team of people that know how to bring it to the event mix so that helps them hugely but in terms of the features the system itself the delegates mainly what they want to use as the map and the schedule. They wanna know where am I going and what’s happening next that’s the thing we noticed they click on most.

The exhibitors love the lead capture. They totally understand about getting their brand in people’s hands for a whole lot longer than just one or two or three days of the event and then yup, knowing that they can capture more leads through the QR code is just a complete winner for them and then the producers they make money from it, they get it sponsored and there’s various but real estate they can use to get the apps sponsored and then they’re also capturing a whole lot more analytics about whose doing what which can help them sell next year’s event and then just little things like the push notifications and the alerts and the emails you can send out through the system just extends their whole life of the event.

[0:10:29]

So we’re all trying to find ways to you know leverage the event itself outside of the short period of time it’s live and then starting with a lot more with Facebook and lot more with LinkedIn and then the mobile app being available for basically up to a year that’s a really you know build up community and talk with them for a lot longer and…

Speaker 1: Oh, I’m sorry. Go ahead.

Speaker 2: No. No. That was full stop.

Speaker 1: As you were talking I had 16 questions I wanted to ask you but that being said that’s the coolest thing too was that you said is that you’re totally dialing in to people to use this.

Speaker 2: Uh-hum.

Speaker 1: Do you ShowGizmo because I know that we’ve had so many problems trying to get apps up and running fast and then also to have somebody to you know to help you along –

Speaker 2: Yup.

Speaker 1: — with some sort of strategy that’s brilliant, right because it is that’s just always the problem that we have because people are decided to do events how late now they don’t all the time.

Speaker 2: Yes. Yes. And they I mean the technology at the end of the day I mean Tim will kill me for this but it’s just technology, right. It’s just cool tech.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: They only matters if people use it and they only use it if they understand what the point is and so there’s a whole new communication strategy for event organizers. They have to explain the benefits and how it intermingles with all the other communications they’re doing around the events so that’s what we help with. We give them that language so that they know how to get people to do things and enjoy it.

Speaker 1: That’s fantastic. And then also with the push notifications then you can also make changes the whole time. I mean.

Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1: So if there’s a change some speakers said or something you can alert people or.

Speaker 2: Yup, and they can actually update the content that goes out into the apps in real time. So they just use their websites, change the schedule around, reload the presentations and then next time you have a quick look at the schedule you’re seeing the real schedule.

Speaker 1: That’s very cool.

Speaker 2: It is live. Yeah, we think so. Thanks.

Speaker 1: So obviously however is in Ohio can they go check out. I guess you can’t just walk to an event to check it out but how would somebody find you.

Speaker 2: So the best way is our website. Showgizmo.com gives people the chance to connect with us and then get a free demo. So people can explore and create an app and download the system and play around at our website as if they’d already brought it if they just rock along to the website.

Speaker 1: That’s awesome and then if someone would want to get a hold of you how could they get hold of you.

Speaker 2: My long complicated name at showgizmo.com.

Speaker 1: marie-claireandrews@showgizmo.com. Okay.

Speaker 2: It’s just my first name. We should make it MC should we.

Speaker 1: Yes, we should because your name is very difficult Marie-Claire. Okay, well thank you very much for talking with me. I would love to have you come back another time to you know I’m sure you guys are gonna — sounds like you’re constantly doing new stuff too. So –
Speaker 2: Yup.
Speaker 1: — to have you come back and talk again next time.
Speaker 2: Thank you. I’d love that. Next stop Antarctica.
Speaker 1: Yes. Yes. That would be fantastic. Alright, Marie-Claire thanks so much and thanks again.

Speaker 2: Thanks, Mike.

Speaker 1: Bye. Bye.

Marie-Claire Andrew Event Tech ShowGizmo Tuesday  09/27/11

Gerrit Hiejkoo Event Tech “WhatsOn?”  Tuesday 10/04/11
Jason Falls    No Bullshit Social Media Tuesday 10/11/11
John Pollard  Hybrid Events  Tuesday 10/18/11

Related

Ever wonder how they made the Old Spice commercial with the handsome guy? Owning a production company is a wonderful thing sometimes. I read how the creative team of Craig Allen and Eric Kallman who work at Wieden + Kennedy put together the commercials. The goal was to make a commercial women would like.  The research shows they do the shopping for most households. They also wanted it to be fun for men to watch. They talked about doing the creative and not worrying about how it would be made. That would be up to production team! I love this because this is the goal in any creative brainstorm on how to get the clients message across to the audience and have them walk away to do some sort of action. So you think BIG without worrying about costs. Then let the production team figure out how to produce the content.

This can be translated to any type of video, media, meeting or event. What do you want your audiences actions to be when they leave that ballroom after your conference? Watch that video. After interacting with that Media.

The first video that was the sensation was done in one shot with a little CGI (Computer Generated Imagery)done int he editing room. Basically the part where the diamonds pour out, the old spice body wash comes out of his hand and the clam. But everything else was done in one take. Well As I read it 3 days and 150 or so takes. Pretty awesome.

The video below looks like they used a stunt double

What are the goals of your next event or project? Love to hear how you thought about the goals of the project and made it work…

Tahira Endean from Cantrav talks about a new blockbuster EventCamp!

EventCamp Vancouver Canada

November 4-6th 2011

Event technology and collaboration are on the menu!

About Event Camp Vancouver

The best thing about planning Event Camp Vancouver so far is the passion
and energy that the people of our community are contributing to the
success which will be shared by each of you attending this event. When
you register and attend, you too will find that participants don’t just
come to the event – they contribute and add to the event.

Event Camps have a rapidly building history of events created by
event professionals for event professionals, where collectively we take
risks and push boundaries exploring social media, hybrid events,
innovative formats, peer-based learning, and remote and face-to-face
engagement that builds relationships, all in unique settings.

Related articles

• The Making of an Event Camp (eventcamp.org)
• EventCamp Ruminations: A Historical Look Forward (eventcamp.org)

I pulled this video from Ingrid’s website this morning… worth a look. Get out and start something today.

On todays show Jon Trask, Mike McAllen and Elisabeth Glau talk about 3 hashtags

Elisabeth explains what a hashtag is, how it can be used etc…..

#Eventprofs  Event Professionals started in 2009

#Eventcamp

#WEC09 #WEC10 #WEC11

Some cool tips and tricks from Elisabeth like WiseStamp , how to create a event hashtags etc…

Eventprofs mentioned: @elizabethglau @jontrask @mmcallen @jeffhurt @michaelmccurry @jessicalevin @mizcity  @ready2spark @tahiracreates @greena_v

Speaker 1: Hello Jon.

Speaker 3: Hello. Hello.

Speaker 1: Thank you very much for joining me once again.

Speaker 3: No, sorry.

Speaker 1: Before we get started I wanted to thank pathable.com, one of our sponsors. They built online communities around your meetings and events and also quickmobile.com, they build mobile apps for your event or your meetings. Elizabeth, today I think we are going to do a show about the evolution of three hashtags and just talk a little bit about hashtags.

Speaker 2: Great.

Speaker 1: Well, yeah why don’t you kinda lead us on this journey of hashtags?

Speaker 2: Alright. Thank you, Mike. So we’re gonna talk about a little bit about Twitter 101 to get us started for those of you that’s are not as familiar with what a hashtag is and how you might use it. So on the Twitter Feed if you see a word that has a pound sign in front of it that is considered a hashtag and the way that people use these are to distinguish a certain topic or subject or an event which is actually what we’ll be talking about as well today.

So there are three that are mainly use in our industry. The three that Speaker 2:we’re gonna talk about today are Events Profs which would be pound sign Event Profs so short for Event Professionals. I believe this was started by Lara McCulloch in roughly 2009 and now it’s pretty much the number one hashtag for people in our industry to communicate with each other and in all types of postings about you know links to articles, commentary and things relevant to the meetings and events industry end up with the people who post the Event Profs hashtag somewhere in the middle or at the end of their tweet.

So that if you did a search just for that specific hashtag the pound sign Event Profs and you would only see those tweets which for a lot of people that are just getting started on Twitter that’s an important skill to learn. It’s how to filter out the good stuff, how to filter out the people that are in your community and the tweets that you really wanna see as opposed to what a lot of people still think you know it’s just a lot of garbage about people talking about what they had to eat.

So if you can learn how to utilize the hashtags which I’m assuming correctly it’s not something that Twitter even created. It’s something that users created on their own and it’s just kind of took off and now it works really well to you know filter out the content you’re looking for.

So Event Profs is you know the main hashtag that most of us in this industry use and then EventCamp so pound sign EventCamp which is all one word was started by Mike McAllen and a few others in our industry who were all using the Event Profs hashtag. So if you can imagine a day when you all didn’t know each other, how fully does that see at this point, right.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: And you were you know meeting people on the Event Profs hashtags. So you were tweeting away and you know you see these tweets from somebody else that you’ve never met you know face-to-face or real life and you may actually start a conversation with them because they might you know post a tweet that you want to respond to whether it’s you know good, bad or ugly you know all of that goes on certainly but it’s for good conversation. So you kind of meet people on social media channels and using hashtags kind of a main way to do that. So Mike, maybe you can just give us a brief history about how you the EventCamp and the hashtag and actual event that started.

Speaker 1: Well, I used Twitter for — I’ve been using it for long time like since 2007 I think.

Speaker 2: Uh-hum.

Speaker 1: And I was just diddling around on that because I’m kind of a nerd and I started meeting people you know chatting with all kinds of different people and then this Event Profs started and they started this really going to those weekly chats that they have.

[0:05:12]
You know they have a topic and some of them would moderate it and you’d all go into you know follow that hashtag and everyone would be you know there’s like you could go to like a say like tweet, chat or something and you just follow that one hashtag the whole time the Event Profs hashtag for that time that the chat was going on and it was pretty fun to be able to have a conversation with everybody. Of course everyone else is watching that Twitter stream, the regular Twitter stream wondering what the heck is he doing and then like talking to people. I mean you know a lot of topics and things were all over the place.

So I think it was confusing for a lot of people and probably a lot of people still wanna get involved in it but once we did the Event Profs thing for a long time I heard a couple of people Christina Coster and Jeff Hert were talking about doing a live you know getting the face-to-face group to bring all these people together in one place and so I said oh, I’d be happy to help so then I did the production of it.

So that’s kind of how it started and we did it in New York I guess two years ago and it was really fun, weird, weird thing because you had known all these people from you know from Twitter and then here they were and you got to see them face-to-face. It was a very strange kind of a big and it felt like camp kind of a thing where we’re all just kind of you knew everybody so it was kind of exciting but.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: That’s kind of how it started.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: I talked a lot. I’m sorry. What was your question?

Speaker 2: That was perfect. That why I wanted to you know kind of you know you know how you got started and who was involved in that so.

Speaker 1: Yeah, it was really fun. I probably had no budget whatsoever like nothing so nobody had heard about it. You can get any money so I got people to donate a lot of stuff which has been happening still or to follow up face-to-face the once that have happened so we had another like national one which was like the main one and then there’s all these off shoots one at Twin City Event Camp. There was one at East Coast. They’re having one up at Vancouver in November and another one in Washington DC in November so it’s kinda exciting the way it’s kind of –

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: – evolved.

Speaker 2: And it’s an interesting you know study just tell me about yourself and you can just certainly listen to our pod recap from Event Camp in Silicon Valley.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: So the interesting difference I think to point out is you know this event that was literally just started by some volunteers and you know went out and you know some of you and you don’t have to spend a lot of your own money over a couple years you know getting this thing you know still going and finding sponsors to provide the things that you needed to produce the event whereas the third hashtag we’re gonna talk about is the WEC hashtag.

So for the past three years anyways we’ll just talk about 2009, 2010 and 2011 so that you see as an event that’s put on by MPI. So this is a very large membership organization and people spend a lot of money to be a member and then you spend a lot of money to attend to these events. So I was just thinking after you know on the plane ride home from WEC this year I was just trying to you know kind of analyze a little bit how the conversation after this event specifically had changed over the past three years as you know certain people had started learning you know Twitter in 2009 and have evolved and where we still have a large portion of our community who are you know just now trying to learn it or have yet to you know try to learn how to use Twitter and get involved you know learning hashtags and using them at events something like that.

Speaker 1: It was really fun at those events like WEC if they have like a tweet up you know like where everyone who follows like the hashtag you can say hey, there’s a tweet up at this time and you can actually will meet the people you know at the event like WEC that was the first time I had ever done that and it was really fun to meet.

Speaker 2: Exactly what you were you know trying to accomplish with EventCamp. You know if you have a tweet up at a larger event like WEC then you do get the opportunity to meet people face-to-face maybe that you are seen on the Twitter streams. You know you’re seeing their — the fun part about it is you’re seeing their Twitter names. So depending on how close their Twitter name is to their actual name you may or may not recognize someone if you do meet them face-to-face until they tell you what their Twitter name is. So something I tried to do you know more often now if I remember to do it is write my Twitter name on my nametag even though my Twitter name is my real name. People don’t need that extra connection get it. Oh, Elizabeth Glau. That’s your Twitter name. I get it.

[0:10:19]

Speaker 3: Well, you even started putting those like in our signatures, on our email.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 3: Along with your email address you know your Twitter handle and things like that so people can reach you in a variety of ways.

Speaker 2: Oh, you know I’ve even gone bigger and I used the program called Wise Stamp and it will pull in my last tweet that I tweeted out into my signature. So not only can you –

Speaker 3: Wow.

Speaker 2: – follow me from there but you can actually see whatever my last tweet was that I tweeted out. It’s kinda funny because it makes me a little bit more you know I paid a little bit more attention to it thinking oh, okay now that tweet is gonna go to people that I’ve been emailing about whatever subject. I mean obviously I can delete it all there but you know [Cross-talk].

Speaker 1: I would be scared to do that like.

Speaker 2: Yeah, well. We have different tweeting styles so.

Speaker 3: I would you be scared for you to do that too, Mike. [Cross-talk].

Speaker 1: That’s funny. But one thing I wanted to ask you about Elizabeth is just making sure which hashtag you’re actually using because for example while we were talking on my tweet deck I called up the hashtag WEC not WEC11 and I got the world endurance championship.

Speaker 2: Awesome. That’s a great point and actually it’s worth mentioning WEC specifically because and this is the way for you know event planners to think about it. You need to create the hashtag that you want your attendees to use and you need to advertise it profusely so that you are making sure that they are all on the channel that you want them to be on so that you can monitor the things that they’re talking about and again this could be you know good, bad or ugly and you know I’ll dig into this you know in a whole another you know podcast and I do on some of my blog posts as well but you know the reason why you should be monitoring you know what your attendees are saying on a platform like Twitter while they’re at your events. So you need to tell them what the hashtag should be.

So WEC use which I write you know the format is WEC09 was the one they use in 2009, WEC10 and then WEC11 this year. So something to keep in mind as you’re creating a hashtag for your event is you don’t wanna make it too long because it takes away from the 140 characters that you have in your tweets. So the longer your hashtag the shorter you know amount of space people have to actually you know to put in a link and you know put in their tweets and there are links shorter of course. Some of you may not know Twitter is now automatically shortening links if you send out your tweets from the Twitter platform itself. It will automatically shorten your link for you.

Speaker 1: I saw a conference that you said that with hashtag and it really was it was like 20, it was like the whole conference written out on their hashtag and it was on their webpage I can’t remember what it was but it was such a bad idea.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: No one can tweet with that and of course people aren’t gonna use it then they’re gonna make up another one that’s shorter.

Speaker 2: Again, you need to you know hire a social media strategist to help you with all of this.

Speaker 1: That’s a great idea. I mean that’s a great thing to do.

Speaker 3: You know there is an actual strategy behind this. It’s not just random.

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 3: I don’t think it’s true. I mean for example wouldn’t you wanna do hashtags for each individual session in some cases rather than having an overall show that you might have another one per session so people could be giving direct feedback within a room that sort of thing, right.

Speaker 2: Yeah, it’s definitely something to you know talk over with you know somebody that kinda knows a lot about Twitter and engagement strategies because something WEC did not go well was they tried creating a hashtag for each day. So there was like WEC11mon like for Monday. So their hopes were that you would you know include both the hashtags I guess or that you would just use Monday and everyone would — no, I think they wanna do this both because if you were talking about content from fashions on Monday you wanted to you know include that hashtag as well but unfortunately, I don’t think we’re thinking about was most people are using these platforms from their mobile phones these days and it’s hard to follow more than one hashtag when you’re adding that.

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 2: And so yes, you could definitely set up one for a session specifically if you wanted to you know make sure that you’re monitoring — if you have a facilitator you know a moderator of some sort just for that session and you wanna make sure that people can tweet in questions for the speaker.

[0:15:20]
You know that might be one way to do it however, again people can only monitor one hashtag at a time and for those that do wanna pay attention to what else is going on at the same time not very often than in one session you know paying attention to the speaker and you know monitoring the Twitter feed and getting good nuggets of information that aren’t actually happening in the room next door because people are tweeting out things that the speaker is saying at another session. Now, that of course you know seems a little ADD. You know press quickly some of your attention from you know the speaker that you’re looking to but again I think it goes back to and we’ve talked about this before the whole other you know engagement strategy you know having the speakers that are going to hold your attention.

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 2: Then you know you’re gonna be less likely to maybe you paying attention to the Twitter feed you know other rooms or you know God forbid checking your email or doing something that’s completely unrelated to you know the conference that you’re attending and that often you know relies on the speaker to have good content engagement.

Speaker 1: Yeah, that’s very interesting too because I love to sometimes when I don’t see a conference that I can’t go to I’ll just go and watch the Twitter stream go by. You know I put up my own tweet deck or whatever I watch and it’s very interesting to me to watch.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I did that for PCMA last year and quite honestly it really did. I mean I was dealing the events virtually you know if I was watching the speakers on the screen but I was also tweeting. I was participating in the tweeter conversation just as if I was there which was really cool. I mean I pretty much I’m also like I was there I was just missing the face-to-face interaction with a lot of the people that I you know did know on the Twitter so you know. Oh you know Mike McAllen is there or you know [0:17:13] [Inaudible] Connelly in there. I wanna be at that event too. I wanted you know see them face-to-face and have a drink with them after these sessions or you know whatever.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: But when you’re virtual you get a lot of good content, you can participate in their conversation you know I’m missing that face-to-face you know piece of it. So I did have a little quick chat with [0:17:38] [Inaudible] about her experience at WEC because she was a virtual attendee this year and I really just wanted to see you know how she felt as a virtual attendee regarding you know the Twitter Feed and that kind of stuff and she pointed out that since younger people are more comfortable with the medium but the folks that had been around longer are more comfortable with the content.

So it’s an interesting you know way to look at it concerning most of our population is not on Twitter yet or are just you know trying to learn it now. They’ve got a lot of good content and knowledge but they’re not as comfortable with you know tweeting and all in using these platforms to you know share in the same way.

Speaker 1: Right. Yeah.

Speaker 1: From a personal perspective that was how I felt when I started and I still I don’t tweet like from my office on kind of regular basis I use it when I’m at a show to try and add to the conversation. So I use it in specific ways but I don’t just sit here let’s say and tweet out who I’m going to lunch with or what I’m having for lunch or when I’m doing my laundry or something you know.

Speaker 2: Right. Right.

Speaker 1: And so I limit my tweeting mostly to things that I think are relevant to the people who might be following me and that was kind of a thing I had to learn and had to come to understand how that works.

Speaker 2: Yeah, so the reason I started on a new topic was I felt like three years ago when I was just starting to learn Twitter and it was at WEC that I learned. I first signed up right before I first start using it there you know people I feel like the community was a little bit more forgiving three years ago and it was okay because you know pretty much everybody was still learning it. So you know it was okay to make mistakes and people were you know willing to help you learn and you know I had great you know Twitter mentors.

I was just trying to pay attention to the people that were using it and you know how they will use it whereas today I feel like it’s a little bit more eluded and it’s not as welcoming because a lot of us that haven’t been using it for a couple of years now we have gotten to know each other. We’ve all met face-to-face whether it’s at EventCamp or we’ve met you know at WEC over the last three years or you know and so I saw a lot of the conversation going on in the WEC hashtag was those of us that did know each other was you know tweet each other and you know making jokes and there was a lot more socializing and not as much you know sharing of contents. It’s like you know the past couple of years. Did you guys notice that all or do you feel like you know I’m off base with all of that?

[0:20:35]

Speaker 1: No, in fact I would say that I observed a little bit from my own perspective there’s kind of an insular community within the meetings industry that are very, very active and I would say there’s probably a group that you could count in the hundreds who are the people who are regularly using Twitter for example using that tool and I don’t see a lot of new names popping in. I don’t see a lot of fresh voices or things. I kind of see a lot of the same people a lot of the time.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: So I almost wonder if it hasn’t really penetrated far enough into the industry to be useful. I mean we all use it and we all have an understanding of it like you’re saying but how are we reaching out to people who aren’t using it at all. I mean I had someone like me and [0:21:30] [Inaudible] in Vancouver WEC because I was saying I don’t really understand Twitter and I’m not really sure how to use to it and she talked to me about it and it was kind of an advocate for it and brought me along.

It’s like you have something that’s interesting to say, here’s how to do it and really encouraged me and that helped me going forward. I didn’t feel so self-conscious and so awkward and I wonder if this kind of Event Profs community that we have is a little bit insular right now and we’re not trying to expand it enough.

I also think there’s a lot more hashtags now too so people [glum] onto other ones and they won’t be you know like seems like you know there is engage 365. There’s you know ASAE people use that. There’s a lot more of them now too and there seems like there’s a ton of it in fact like GMIC. Do they have their own?

Speaker 3: [0:22:29] [Inaudible].

Speaker 1: Green Meetings is another hashtag. This is like so many hashtags now too that and then as we said for your meetings you know people they just tweet for that meeting you know they’re not really part of the Event Profs group or the chat group. I don’t know. It’s an interesting thought. I think you’re right though. I mean I think that –

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: – it’s very insular and I can see that in people all the time you know. I just kind of flashed on. I remember back when AOL started they used to have chat rooms and it’s a little bit like that in a way because if you would go to a certain chat area like I got very involved at one time in a tourism travel area one about London and about England because I like travelling there and I was talking to people all the time and it was sort of like what I’m seeing with Twitter. I mean there was a community built around it but it wasn’t a community that added a lot of people all time. Occasionally, some would sort of wonder in but most of us knew each other and it got to the point where a huge group of people all went to England together and had Thanksgiving in England you know and those sorts of things all grew out of this but it seems like community sort of evolved in that way and they don’t necessarily keep expanding or outreaching.

Speaker 2: Uh-hum.

Speaker 1: Yeah, that was part of the thing to try to bring other people and to have the Silicon Valley Event Camp because I was trying to get new people in. I think kinda a thing you know like the community around it. There is the insular group but that’s any kind of group I guess. You know you –

Speaker 2: Uh-hum.

Speaker 1: – you like something you stick with it then if somebody breaks in they break in you know start being involved but it takes a little bit once it’s already started.

Speaker 2: Yeah, any association deals with you know you have the cool kids for lack of a better term, right. You know your members that have been members for a long time. It’s hard to remind them to make new people feel welcome, right. Even at a face-to-face events. So you know I think the Twitter Feed is just you know basically just kind of you know representative of you know what’s probably happening at the event which is another good reason to monitor it because even if it’s not you know your whole group you know not on Twitter it might be you know it’s large enough percentage of your group to really fee to give you the sense of what’s going on in the hallways even though you know people are talking about it on Twitter instead.

[0:25:10]

Speaker 1: That’s very interesting and it’s very relevant like you say to your face-to-face meetings and things as well. One of my best MPI memories is at one point I was in San Diego Chapter. I was in San Diego for a number of years and the first MPI meeting that I went to down there you know you’re walking in, you don’t know anybody, you’re kind of just awkward and nervous feeling no matter how experienced you are because you don’t know these people and Chris Cunnings who was in the chapter down there I walked to the door, she saw me, she didn’t recognize me, she walked across the room and it’s like hi, who are you? Let me introduce you to some people. Let me find out what I have to do and having somebody like that in your group who looks around for the people who are little bewildered or a little not sure where to go really makes a difference. It really helps your organization and that’s something I think we can carry to not just Twitter and not just social media but to our actual in person meetings as well.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Is engaging people in that way, getting them involved and bringing them in and making them feel comfortable.

Speaker 2: Well said.

Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree. That’s great. And it’s a whole new dynamic isn’t it? All this stuff because it’s follows online.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I don’t think anybody has quite figured it out. I was talking with the producer last night and I said it’s kind of to me still like hybrid meetings and all of these things that people are trying to put their arms around. It’s like the early days of television. People are writing the rules still

Speaker 2: Uh-hum.

Speaker 1: You know that can be in the late 40s early 50s there were no rules. So you just did what made sense to you and you got some really big colossal failures and some really interesting successes but there was no manuals. There was no way that this is how you produce television the way that there is now you know 50 years down the road.

Speaker 3: Well, just like Elizabeth said the whole hashtag thing that we’re talking about was developed by people who are using the system. They didn’t come up with it you know I mean the Twitter founders didn’t come up with it just evolved constantly.

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 2: Yes and this signage I’m finding you know new websites everyday about how to you know make my you know social media more efficient you know. It’s like crowd booster and social mention I mean there’s a new website that I still look almost everyday recently like this week. You know it just all come to my attention for some reason but you know all these you know businesses basically that are founded around you know just your Twitter you know conversations or Facebook or whatever it is. So I think yeah, like in the early days of any other technology people are just trying to you know rush in and make some money off of it because it’s you know the new thing. That’s what everybody is doing so.

Speaker 1: Right. And it’s interesting to me too because I got into the Twitter thing a long time ago and I got just sick of it kinda because I was spending so much time you know just following links. You know people would oh, there’s a link you know and what my nap size attention span it was surely bad because I kept going to something else, something else. I think it’s really important to have somebody like you who can help people along you know with the strategy behind it because I mean I always — the same with you I’ll come up with that cool little site. I think oh, my God I keep following this to see how we’re doing with this and that and then I don’t do it.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: I’m off on my Twitter stream going oh look at this you know something shiny.

Speaker 2: Right. And that’s because you have you know a business to operate and run outside of you know media efforts.

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 2: To be just you know supporting what you’re doing whereas you know in theory you know somebody that’s sitting all day on social media researching these 10 things you know I’m doing it for like 10 or you know do not recommend it to my client you know down the road. I can say yeah, you know I took this a little bit to see how you know now like you know I either see you using it or not. So yeah.

Speaker 1: Well.

Speaker 3: And that’s like the perfect set up Elizabeth for the live meetings we’re gonna do on the 27th.

Speaker 2: Exactly. So.

Speaker 3: Running this write down the path for everyone [Cross-talk].

Speaker 2: On the 27th. Yeah, we’re gonna be talking about this exact topic you know. So many websites so little time you know for planners who has the time to deal with all of this. Jon and are gonna talk about it maybe have a little tweet up if we can get you know some people to join us down in San Diego at the Omni on the 27th at 4pm.

[0:30:09]

Speaker 1: It should be a lot of fun. It ties right into the Chapter MPI. This is the San Diego Chapter mixer and after that there’s a baseball game which is available. So it’s like a really kind of a cool time down the gaps at district. The Omni this is a wonderful hotel. I’m really looking forward to checking that out and I haven’t seen parking a couple of years. I’m looking forward and checking that out.

Speaker 2: Wow. Exactly.

Speaker 1: So I mean it really should be a lot of fun and we’re hoping that we’re gonna have a nice turnout and see some folks there who listened to the podcast who happened to be in San Diego.

So can I ask a question about that cool thing? Because I’m not down right to San Francisco but I’m trying to get down there. I’ve love to go to it. So what’s exactly going on that week? You’re putting the tweet up against something else an MPI maybe.

Speaker 3: What we’re doing is we’re having the tweet up an hour before the MPI and [0:31:07] [Inaudible] combined mixer.

Speaker 1: Oh, great.

Speaker 3: Those are happening like a block away from the Omni at five o’clock. So we’re gonna meet from four to five and then we’ll walk over to the mixer from five to six and then we’ll have a baseball game at seven.

Speaker 1: That’s awesome. So that is also another good reason to you know get people to go that they can talk about Twitter and you know.

Speaker 3: Exactly.

Speaker 1: All these questions at a perfect time. That’s perfect.

Speaker 3: If you’re already coming down to the MPI Chapter Meeting it’s free to come to our tweet up. There’s no charge and so we’re just hoping the people made come down an hour earlier and have a chance to talk about social media a little bit.

Speaker 1: That’s awesome. So there is eBite for that, right. So where’s…

Speaker 3: Yup.

Speaker 1: Where can I find that?

Speaker 3: It’s not [0:31:54] [Inaudible]. It’s not on our LinkedIn. A group or a Meetings Podcast. There’s a Facebook event created that you can also find it on a template. It’s September 27 in San Diego at the Omni.

Speaker 1: Awesome. And I’ll put the link on our site too. So if they want to go to the Meetings Podcast site they can click on there.

Speaker 3: That sounds great.

Speaker 1: Perfect. Right. Alright. Cool. Alright. Well, thanks guys. I think we’ve talked hashtags into the ground so if anyone else has any questions they can — Elizabeth, how can people get a hold of you?

Speaker 2: So you can find me if you are already on Twitter you can find me at Elizabeth Glau. You can find my Facebook Page is a great place for you to post the questions because then other people can see the questions and you know I’m hoping lots of people at the same time the Facebook Page is Building Blocks Social Media and my email is eglau which eglau@basicsocialmediatraining.com.

Speaker 1: Awesome. Awesome. And then Jon people can find you at…

Speaker 3: Oh, so many different places.

Speaker 1: Where are you on Twitter? What’s your — you’re Jon Trask on Twitter and…

Speaker 3: I’m Jon Trask on Twitter. Yes.

Speaker 1: Awesome. And then jon@grassshack — what’s our email?

Speaker 3: grassshack.com.

Speaker 1: And I am at mike@grassshackroad.com and also mmcallen that’s mmcallen on the Twitter. Alright guys. Thank you so much and I’d hope I can get down there on September 27th to San Diego but if I don’t, have a great time and I look forward to listening to the whole show.

Speaker 3: And just another reminder for folks who are coming up on our 200 show we have no specific plans yet but we’re coming up on our 200 show.

Speaker 2: Ooh, who wants to [0:33:58] [Inaudible] it?

Speaker 1: Yeah, we should have a big party. We’d hire [Cross-talk].

Speaker 2: Exactly.

Speaker 1: Alright. Guys, thank you so much.

Speaker 3: Have a great week.

Speaker 1: I’ll see you both later.

Speaker 2: Thanks.

Speaker 1: Bye. Bye.

On today’s show we talk with Greg Ruby from Greg Ruby Consulting about being a virtual attendee in the USA for an EventCamp being held in Europe.   We also  discuss Google hangout and upcoming EventCamps in Vancouver and Washington DC.

Transcripts:

Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Meetings Podcast.  This is Mike McAllen of Grass Shack Events & Media and today’s guest is Greg Ruby from Greg Ruby Consulting and what else did you say your company is called, Greg?

Speaker 2: Ruby Enterprises.

Speaker 1: Ruby Enterprises from Baltimore.  Greg, thank you for joining me.

Speaker 2: Thanks for having me here.

Speaker 1: I think most of the people that listened to the show know about the famous Greg Ruby so we won’t have to really go into your background and you.  How many times have you been on the show now?  You’ve been on it several times.

Speaker 2: I think this is my third time.

Speaker 1: Excellent.  Excellent.  Excellent.  Excellent.  Today [audio jumps] a little bit about our experiences with Event Camp.  The last time John and I and Elizabeth kind of basically tore apart Twin Cities because of our experience but you know in hindsight maybe we should have been a little nicer but it was just our experience of what we had and what we had the heat of the moment and I think we had valid points but you know I guess this is all learning experience.

Speaker 2: Oh, definitely.  You have to try it and then you know welcome all issues.

Speaker 1: And I know you listened to it probably didn’t you or did you not.

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker 1: And so what do you think?  Do you think we were okay on that or I mean I’m sure.

Speaker 2: I agree with most of your comments.  I might have waited maybe another hour after the Event Camp Twin Cities had ended before doing it.

Speaker 1: Yeah, because we’re a little hot.

Speaker 2: Yeah, it’s always good to sat back, think a little bit of them [0:02:23]

Speaker 1: Yeah.  Well, we thought we just go for it just because of that’s how we felt and really what we say doesn’t really have a lot of effect on the grand scheme of the galaxy that we live in.

Speaker 2: You know but that’s and I agree with most of your comments that were spot on.

Speaker 1: Yeah, so anyway but they did do it again and I’m really thankful that they did.  You know it’s great that they keep doing these event camps.  People do and then so that brings us to Event Camp Europe.

Speaker 2: Yeah, there’s a lot of things that can make me wake up at four am on the morning on a Friday to attend a virtual session.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: I just want those.

Speaker 1: Yeah, and I got to be there earlier so it was…

Speaker 2: Oh, what was it for you like one am?

Speaker 1: It was like one, yeah.  I had gone to bed at about 10.  I am an older man now so I go to bed around 10 usually and I get up at like six so now I get up early but I actually set my alarm and I didn’t really tell my wife what I was doing because I knew she would you know we’d have to have a little discussion about what craziness I’m involved in with this Event Camp stuff but I did get up at one, came downstairs, crack myself a beer and sat down to watch.  But you and I had kind of organized beforehand to say hey, let’s try out the Google Hangout and hang out together for it so it was nice that you were there when I woke up.

Speaker 2: Yes, to see early in the morning was a little of a shock.

Speaker 1: Yeah.  Well, it was still evening really for me but everybody else had a coffee in their hand so I got a kick out of our group of people which really started out with Gerrit.  Gerrit was the one who and did you know Gerrit before this?  Have you ever met him?

Speaker 2: He was [smacking] me on Twitter during the Event Camp Twin Cities.

Speaker 1: Oh, was he?

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker 1: So he was in Amsterdam.  That’s right.

Speaker 2: Yeah.  He was making fun of me wearing shorts and being on camera from the silly pod.

Speaker 1: That’s great.  So you guys had — you could actually see them so we could never see you guys at the Twin Cities one.  We can only see the lady who kept showing her chest.  I don’t know where she was from.

Speaker 2: Okay, I think I knew who that was but to protect the innocent we won’t mention names here.

Speaker 1: Yeah.  No, it wasn’t her fault.  She just kept coming up to the because people were walking into our pod to check it out because we were in the hotel and we had invited all the hotel stuff besides the other people to come to it and they kept coming in and so on the screen on I guess on our plasma that they had sent out.  I don’t know.  I don’t remember why was that?  No, we were all in there I guess weren’t we?

[0:05:09]

Speaker 2: Yeah, to be honest the event was so small from where I was sitting.  I could basically just make out the table and see that there were people there.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: But that wasn’t approachable.

Speaker 1: But she kept coming up I guess she was doing something behind her webcam so she just basically had her chest in front of it the whole time so everybody was laughing and not laughing at her but laughing.  She didn’t know it was happening but they were all — people were coming into the room and going out what is this camera here because she happened to always have her chest under and we would just say oh, that’s the most popular pod.  But anyway, so I digressed.  I apologized.  This has gone off on a regular conversation that we may have Greg.  So who else was in our – we had Derrick Stomp and Derrick is he also in Amsterdam?

Speaker 2: I believe so.

Speaker 1: And then there was Babs.

Speaker 2: Yeah, Babs is also from the Amsterdam area.

Speaker 1: And then Melissa.

Speaker 2: Melissa who is based in London.

Speaker 1: She was in London, okay and then Tracy Brown.  Tracy Brown from Philly.  She was with us for a while.  Cameron Toth was in there for a while and I’m sure I missed a bunch of it.  I’m just talking about the time I was in there so.

Speaker 2: Yeah, [Kevin Bull] from the Seattle, Washington area came in once or twice the area.  A lot of people were going in and out of our Google Hangout in the course of the afternoon.

Speaker 1: Yeah, and then you can only have like 10 people there at that time.  Who — there was an office there too, right.  Was that Melissa’s?

Speaker 2: That was Melissa’s group.

Speaker 1: So they had about 10 people, didn’t they?  There seemed like there are a lot of people in that room.

Speaker 2: I would say maybe six to eight.

Speaker 1: Oh, okay.

Speaker 2: It might be a little bit higher maybe up to 12.  It was nice because in the post scheme chat that we had on Twitter we discovered that the [0:06:57] [Inaudible] were actually been invited by Melissa’s company so it was by an invitational only pod.

Speaker 1: Oh.  Oh.  Oh.  So all those people were not – were they were in her from her company.

Speaker 2: They were from her company or clients.

Speaker 1: Interesting.  Interesting.  So how was your experience with that or did you like it better than the pod?  Did you get more out of it?  I felt that I was listening to presentations more than I was on our pod really.

Speaker 2: I found myself listening to the presentations more and I felt more interactive than I would have been if I was just a virtual participant.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: It may feel like a pod for me.  I can very easily see the [0:07:38] [Inaudible] sitting around the table joking and having some beverages and talking about the items.

Speaker 1: Right.  Right.  Right.  Right.  Yeah, it was really fun.  I enjoyed it because it wasn’t just the main Twitter scheme which you could throw your comments into if you wanted Emily to ask question be involved but we can have our own little session going on in our Google Hangout.  Now, if people got a listening habit tried Google Hangout I would really try it out.  It’s kind of a really powerful little tool.

Speaker 2: Absolutely.

Speaker 1: I was trying to figure out how I could capture this for the podcast and capture it and there is a way tub it’s only on PC so I don’t have a PC I only have Mac.  So I was kind of stopped by that and I thought I should get another PC in here just able to do things like that but anyway it’s really powerful.  Cool.  Google they’re doing everything aren’t they?

Speaker 2: Yes.  One day they will rule the world I believe.

Speaker 1: And so what happened here at the event?  Do you remember?  What was your favorite session?  Did you have a favorite one or?

Speaker 2: Oh, I enjoyed the session that Brian Kruger did about Event Tech.

Speaker 1: Yeah, and I missed that.  I was sleeping during that not because of his presentation but I went to bed.  Actually I went to bed and came back.

Speaker 2: Good recovery there.  Good recovery.  He just hit on a few points.  It was a very casual program and he wasn’t using a lot of big words that will confuse it to you or me.  So I found it very easy to follow along.

Speaker 1: So they had some problems too there with their technologically that they couldn’t get a Wi-Fi I guess that was their problem.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I was online for the entire virtual session.  There were hardly any issues being a virtual participant that I saw.  There was once or twice the feed was so slow but I understand that those onsite there was a limited number of internet access so if you are late arriving you may not be able to get on till someone else had load out sort of like our Google Hangout.

Speaker 1: Yeah.  Yeah.  Yeah.  Yeah.  And it’s too bad because you know it’s too bad that we couldn’t talk to more of them or them interact with us but I guess it was such an old building.  I mean really old.

Speaker 2: Yeah, it was built like 1376 I believe from reading the press clippings.

Speaker 1: Yeah, so kind of an interesting place to choose but I mean that’s here nor there but it’s more for the live audience I guess.

[0:10:14]

Speaker 2: Yeah, it was event ROI week which this was the second year I believe.  So there is a history of doing meetings related events there just maybe not this technical of an event.

Speaker 1: And the whole event ROI week was held at this.

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker 2: Oh, interesting.  Interesting.  I didn’t know that.  I didn’t know that.  That sounds like and I do remember one of the speakers who I enjoyed and I’m blanking on his name right now but I’m gonna look it up right now.  He was talking or talked about ROI basically.  I think no, he did the PechaKucha.

Speaker 2: PechaKucha.  Yes, that was Elling Hamso who is the founder of the event.

Speaker 1: Oh.  Well yeah, because he was interesting and that his slides he said — oh, I just figured we couldn’t see his slides because we were watching it virtually and I was really enjoying his talk and then he said oh my slides aren’t working and I didn’t spend time fixing the slides you know hey, you were doing fine without any slides.

Speaker 2: Uh-hum.

Speaker 1: It goes to show you, you don’t really have to have slides always.

Speaker 2: No, this was the second time I’ve seen him do a PK presentation.  He did one his first ones at Event Camp Twin Cities last year in 2010.

Speaker 1: Ah.

Speaker 2: He’s a great presenter.  Really knows his stuff.

Speaker 1: Where’s he from?  I mean is he a European guy?  I mean.

Speaker 2: He’s European.  I wanted to say Switzerland but don’t hold me to that.

Speaker 1: And at Twin Cities did he come out for it?

Speaker 2: No, he was part of the Switzerland Basel POD.

Speaker 1: Ah, very cool.  Very, very cool.  Yeah, I really enjoyed the whole experience I have to say I really did.

Speaker 2: It was a blast.

Speaker 1: Yeah, it was pretty fun.  It was good.  I was surprised that people I saw some blog posts that were like or a blog post that was just didn’t like it.  They said it was horrible but you know I don’t think that person has the spirit of Event Camp much like I had after Twin Cities.

Speaker 2: I’ve seen two blog posts from folks and they were both from onsite attendees, the face to face crowd.

Speaker 1: Yeah, there were some valid concerns that I sober up.  The one blog post was called it was a blog post what was the name of that?  I’m trying to remember it now don’treadmyblog.com.

Speaker 2: Uh-hum.

Speaker 1: And I just like that title where he was at Event Camp Europe and left after an hour.  So I’m just carrying some of his comments.  Another gentleman on Twitter at William Events did a blog post on his company Gallus Events.  Maybe possibly they didn’t understand the theory behind Event Camp where it is an incubator for ideas.

Speaker 2: Uh-hum.

Speaker 1: And wanted to be a little more hands on why you should do hybrid events rather than.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you say was someone being preached at.

Speaker 1: Yeah.  Yeah, I know and you could see that could happen.  People aren’t really getting it.  It’s interesting to me.  I was thinking more and more about how kind of the hybrid thing takes away from them I think at the face to face sometimes in these situations because there isn’t the money to throw at to make the interactions as good but the hybrid interactions you know we’re basing it all on Skype and there’s the delay and it just seems like it’s never kind of really dialed in that you can do.  If you have a little bit money to throw out I think you can make it work a little easier or just have people Skype in is just fine.  You know if you Skype in a presentation it seems to work fantastic.  It’s when you go back and forth that they run into some problems.

Speaker 2: Very true.  That’s one of the things at Event Camp.  They’re trying to show you what can be done but they’re doing it on a very limited budget.

Speaker 1: Yeah, and that to me is sometimes it’s kinda defeating it for companies maybe not but you know the ones that in the past you know we’ve done you know these kind of you know satellite uplinks for years that have worked perfectly you know.  So now this technology is trying to do it to show that it can do it for free.  In a real business context I don’t think it’s really — can do this.

Speaker 2: Exactly.

Speaker 1: Yeah, anyway that’s a problem.  That for Event Camps kind of think maybe they should really just dive in locally and not be so maybe live stream it but don’t try and go back and forth.  Like this experience.  I really felt was good.  They didn’t need to come to us.  We could ask Emily Questions.

[0:15:08] 

Speaker 2: Uh-hum.

Speaker 1: You know and she would always answer mine.

Speaker 2: And to me I’ve had some participation with all the various different Event Camps.  This one felt much more professional to me than some of the other ones which were a little bit lack or a better word Kumbaya.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: This seemed very focused and driven.  I think they did a great job  with it overall.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I do too.  It’s funny to say the Kumbaya thing because I think that is a big problem kind of with it for people.  I mean I know that as one of the founders I felt kind of alienated from everybody just because maybe we’re a little too self-congratulatory in how we ended our — it just seemed kind of that way but I’m more of a behind the scenes guy anyway I don’t ever wanna be seen I’m better in black and in the back.

Speaker 2: Yes, that’s true.

Speaker 1: I have a face for podcasting and I like that better but I thought maybe that was nice about this one.  It was just there wasn’t a big deal.

Speaker 2: I did think it was interesting that the event organizers did take a small portion of the program to just come on stage and talk about their experiences.

Speaker 1: Uh-hum.

Speaker 2: It was a nice perspective that I think that for some of the audience.

Speaker 1: Well, I think people should do more of these.  I mean I like the idea.  I love it but I don’t think it should be such a big deal.  That’s my — I mean I was trying to do that for Silicon Valley.  I wanted it to just very more of a camp you know where you come but it didn’t work out that well for me but I think it would be great for that to be that way like you know Greg Ruby could have an Event Camp you know.  It doesn’t have to be a giant one but you could bring in some cool speakers and people could come in but that’s in a perfect world for Mike McAllen not for everyone so I understand that.

Speaker 2: Definitely.  Definitely.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: That’s the nice thing about Event Camp you can have different formats and play around with things.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree and there’s so much technology out there like Event Technology that we don’t talk about and that’s something that I think is really something that could be thrown out there at these.  I understand that we’re trying to make better meetings but there is all this cool technology out there that we could really you know have because you go to like an MPI or PCMA and you go to the trade shows which they don’t really have any more I guess but you can’t never fine like do cool technology.  It seems like its all venues and you know there should be an outlet for that to learn more about all these new cool stuff that you can use.

Speaker 2: Oh, definitely.  But as former events guy I appreciate having the things for me.

Speaker 1: Yeah, that’s true too.  That’s true but you know those last ones I went to and walking through there it felt like it was just all venues and that was good because a lot of big meetings planners need to find venues for their meetings so I mean I understand that but I’m a production guy and I’m a member too so there was stuff for me.

Speaker 2: You can play with all the toys though.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I wanna play with toys.  Anyway, okay.  Well, so I think the other thing that we should talk about is the other Event Camps coming up and you’re involved with one of them.

Speaker 2: Yes, I’m gonna be involved with the 2011 version of Event Camp East Coast.  It’s gonna be held outside of Washington DC.  We’re gonna be using the hashtag ECDC Event Camp DC for short.  It will be held at the National Conference Center, November 4 through 6.  We’ve added another day on to it.

Speaker 1: Cool.

Speaker 2: So it would be two-and-a-half days or so.

Speaker 1: Wow.  Wow.   That’s a long one.  And is it gonna be done in the same way it was last time?

Speaker 2: It will be a pure [conference design] however on the last day, Sunday, after we do the more introspective and some PechaKucha sessions we are gonna be having a reach out to Event Camp Vancouver virtually so we’re gonna go cross transcontinental to make it a little bit different.

Speaker 1: That’s fun.  That’s a fun idea.  And so Event Camp Vancouver is also happening in — is it the same dates or?

Speaker 2: Same three days.  November 4 through 6.

Speaker 1: Wow.  So that’s very cool.  Very, very cool.

Speaker 2: And I know they have all kinds of stuff planned too also.

Speaker 1: Yes.

Speaker 2: Planned also.  Yeah.  It should be a fun weekend.

Speaker 1: Yeah.  Yeah.  Do you have a site up or anything yet or is that.

Speaker 2: It will be wwweventcampeastcoast.com.

Speaker 1: Okay.  And is it up yet or is it?

Speaker 2: It is up and running.  Registration actually opened on Monday.

Speaker 1: Oh, very cool.  Congratulations.  That’s great.  You guys got that going and I don’t think the Vancouver guys have theirs up yet they might be up by the time this is posted but I guess they’ll be Event Camp I’m hoping Vancouver.com.

Speaker 2: Agreed.

Speaker 1: But they are in Canada so this is another good one that’s getting more of a worldwide more and more of a worldwide.

Speaker 2: Yes, it’s going international now.

Speaker 1: International.

Speaker 2: I’m waiting for Event Camp Cancun.

Speaker 1: Yeah.  Yeah, well maybe you and I should do that and have it.  We can plan it up and see what we will come down.

Speaker 2: It would be a good thing.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so.  Alright, Greg so where can people find you if they wanted to get a hold of you and hire you and work with you and…

Speaker 2: Ah, on my website.  Its gregrubyconsulting.com or you could email me at greg@gregrubyconsulting.com.

Speaker 1: Great.  And you are Greg Ruby on Twitter also.

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker 1: Excellent.  Alright, Greg, thank you and I look forward to talking to you again.

Speaker 2: Thank you.  It’s been great.

Speaker 1: Okay.  Bye.  Bye.

Speaker 2: Bye.

Female: 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.

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I have been producing types of hybrid meetings and events for many years. The old way rolling in a satellite truck and the new ways with the plethora of online event technologies to choose from. Obviously, some serious planning needs to take place to have an engaging meeting virtually. You can hire great people to give you great content and back that up with great execution, but not every company can afford this.
But a well thought out event can use the hybrid portion to enhance the meeting with no budget at all. Capturing the virtual audience during the event or after as on-demand and keeping the conversations going.

Take a quick look at the below SapphireNow SAP hybrid event. Obviously SAP has a little money to throw at the events content and execution but everything is scalable. Friends have said to me. “Wow that was a huge event you guys produced.” But I always say the larger the show the easier it is for us. You are afforded the preproduction time from your client to identify the meeting objectives and then design the meeting based on those objectives to make sure everything is in place. Below is a well thought out event.

Below is an example that not all great ideas are created equal.

• Block Buster Hybrid Event EventCamp Silicon Valley August 24-26th, Including Innovative ‘Pod Experience’ for Meeting Professionals (prweb.com)
• The Zen Of Hybrid Event ROI: How To Build Great Content AND Keep The Finance Director Happy (supersizeblogging.com)
• Unisfair Hosts “Hybrid Events: The Best of Both Worlds” Showcase Event on Dec. 9 (prweb.com)

Halfway into a crazy month Jon updates listeners on WEC Orlando, the Podcast Tweetup at WEC 2011 and briefly looks ahead to Event Camp Silicon Valley, Event Camp Twin Cities and the launch of a new service called AVforPlanners. Could we pack anymore into this month? Unlikely….

But, stay tuned for loads of details in this and upcoming episodes.

Today’s show is after a day of meeting with the VisitOrlando staff and part of the executive team from the Peabody Orlando.  Jon and I especially enjoyed talking with the Peabody’s General Manager Barb Bowden. Then we headed off to SeaWorld to watch the new whale show and learn about having meetings at SeaWorld.  It is apparent that they have many different offerings for meeting planners and groups to hold meetings and events at the parks.

Related articles

• Orlando MPI WEC PreShow- Show 180 (grassshackroad.com)
• Southwest Airlines and Seaworld Team Up to Give Away 40 Trips in 40 Days (blogsouthwest.com)

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MPI World Education Congress in Orlando Florida PreShow Show is the topic.  Looking at the the week ahead in Orlando Florida for MPI WEC. Sessions, technology, speakers and networking are on tap.  Jon shares his schedule and  Mike is making his.  Please contact us if you will be at the show!  Contact us @  www.twitter.com/mmcallen or www.twitter.com/jontrask

You can find more on the MPI website.

Mike and Jon look forward to visiting with the Visit Orlando team for a pre-visit of some of Orlando’s hot spots for meetings and events.

Please join us for Meetings Podcast Monthly tweetup in Orlando on Monday July 25th. Register here

My computer is a Mac Book, so I packed up and headed to the Apple Store. I was greeted there and directed to the scheduler, she gave me a slot and set my expectation that I’d be waiting about 15 minutes, so I was shocked five minutes later when someone came to me and said they were ready for me. I was taken to a tech and I explained my issue. He said that he had petty good idea of the problem and would take it back to run some diagnostics. About 10 minutes later he was out holding my computer and a memory chip.

Seems one of my RAM chips had died. He gave me advice on where to buy another, told me it was running acceptably without it if I needed it right away. Smiled and sent me on my way….no charge.

The chip was a third party chip I’d installed that I’d bought at a retailer on my route home. So, I decided to stop and see if they would help with the “Life Time Warranty”, and maybe just buy another chip if not and the cost was reasonable.

I parked at MicroCenter and went the Mac Department where there were three employees, two chatting at the register and one standing alone. I said one that I had a bad chip and my understanding was they had lifetime warranty. He said…”Well, that’s not handled here. You have to contact the manufacturer.” Okay, I can accept that, but what does a new chip cost. A brief conference was it decided that would be $17.99. Well, for that price and the time involved I figured I’d just replace it and move on.

I asked where the chips were? No longer stocked in the Mac area, I was directed to the far side of the store and told to look for someone there who would help me. (I’m not clear why one of the three folks there couldn’t accompany me that 50 feet?)

I stood in front of the memory chips for about ten minutes before there was any sign of an employee. I asked for the chip I needed and he handed me one for $29.99….(during he wait, I’d seen the $17.99 one’s…they were not a match for what I needed.) He seemed a little disappointed that I didn’t buy the $5 warranty , but seeing that it was a $30 dollar replacement for one I had warranty issues with already, that seemed like a waste of money.

I considered an impulse purchase of an ink refiller that I’d thought about trying. But, there were no employees three and the unit wasn’t priced. I figured that I’d settle for the chip and head home.

I stood in the worst 3 person line that I’ve endured in ages. Literally, fifteen minutes. One overwhelmed clerk trying to pull the security package off a video card…quite unsuccessfully….after ten minutes or so, one other register opened up, and the new clerk rang the next three people up (including me) while the first cashier was still struggling with the original customer. By this time the line behind me had grown to at least 20 people.

Did, I mention there was no air conditioning?

Yep, July 4th holiday weekend Friday…close to 100 deg outside and no AC in the store….

So, where am I going with all this?

We talk all the time about price and value. But, often people don’t actually put any specifics to the value part.

My trip today was a specific example of “you get what you pay for”.

I paid more for a Mac Book when I bought it. But, their portion of the day was a dream. Efficient, helpful respectful of my time and had me walking out sending a posting on my phone about how great they were.

The MicroCenter part of the day…not so much fun. I saved a couple dollars, but I was met with the minimum of service and an overall experience that won’t entice me to go back anytime soon….unless price is my only criteria for the “thing” that I need.

I related this experience today to a show that I had this week in Chicago.

The in-house AV company was a lot like “MicroCenter” in my story above. They were all about price, but not really bringing any knowledge to the table to support the meeting.

They actually argued with my planner that more than 2 speakers weren’t needed in the ballroom, when physics and a reasonable design called out for 4 times that many….(I won’t try to explain the entire setup, but lets just say that more than half the crowd and the people on stage answering questions wouldn’t have heard much, and the rest would have heard lots…of feedback….from the in-house speaker coverage suggestions”.)

So, had they been awarded the show they would have either had to add gear and people, or had a train wreck of a show that sounded awful. Would the audience have known, cared…or would they have just shrugged and thought…“Wow, that sound squealed a lot…” and then moved on?

What about my planner? Would her boss, who was completely price focused leading up to the show have noticed the problems? We’ll never know…because we jumped through hoops to find a way to do it right at a lower cost. But, now the bar is set lower…and the boss expects the better value and service he got at that lower cost. Did I do the right thing? Did my vendor by helping me out?

Are we part of the cycle in our overall business (not just AV) that has people expecting more and more for less and less constantly?

I gave Apple level quality in Chicago for MicroCenter prices…hoping that someday it will recover and pay me back…but, will it?

So, what is an experience worth?
Do our meetings matter enough to look beyond the dollars and look really at the experience we’re creating?
Is the lowest dollar quote going to actually meet the needs of the event?
And if it doesn’t, will anyone notice?…Or have standards and quality been pushed far below price on the selection criteria in our business?

I worry sometimes that our entire industry is losing the thread of looking at anything beyond the total at the bottom of the quote.

How do we define value?
How do we put a price on service?
Or, is that not relevant anymore?

I’d love to hear some planners comments.

Of course we had it at wonderful House of Blues Anaheim

- A discussion with Joan Eisenstodt about the recently announced changes by MPI in Supplier Dues and Chapter Rebates.

On today’s show we chat with Joan Eisenstodt of Joan Eisenstodt Associates.  She’s a consultant, trainer and facilitator and a long time MPI member.  She also moderates a discussion board for industry topics at the Meetings Forum Focus

In today’s podcast we examine the ramifications of the changes in dues for suppliers and how this impacts the organization as well as its individual members.  We also examine the new rebate structure in regards to local chapters and spend time talking about our concerns and questions on both topics.

The conversation continues here and on the Meetings Focus Forums

We will also continue the discussion at the upcoming Town Hall Forum which we will cover while we’re at WEC in Orlando.

Please join us for this important conversation that continues here on the Meetings Podcast.

Does your event start new conversations or take advantage of a dialog with your attendees? What can your event do to bring your community together? If you can bring together your existing community others will follow and give your product a huge boost.

I do not condone tattooed trike races for your next meeting but I also am not knocking it if it works for your customers or attendees.

What are you doing to get your attendees form a stronger community?

In the past few weeks MPI has made some very significant changes within the organization.  It was brought to my attention via social network postings from some friends within the industry last week. At that point I visited a site where there was some detailed discussions going on last week, but I wanted to bring that discussion over here for folks who follow us and might not be aware of the changes that MPI has announced.

First off that discussion is here:

http://www.meetingsfocus.com/Forum/tabid/267/forumid/1/threadid/1527/scope/posts/Default.aspx

You’ll have to register to post there on the Meetings Forum, but it was a fast and painless process.

Here’s the MPI Statement about the change in Supplier Dues:

http://www.mpiweb.org/Membership/SupplierDues

A small excerpt follows:

Supplier members like yourself are important partners that enable us to not only create richer planner connections, but also build more marketplace intelligence that directly helps you build your business. I hope that you continue your affiliation with this great organization as we move into the future, expand our influence and continue to help one another succeed.

The MPI board of directors has approved an increase in supplier member dues to an annual rate of $450 effective July 2011. Your new dues as an MPI supplier member remain one of the lowest amongst major associations within the meeting and event industry with the highest potential for return.

- MPI Chairman of the Board, Eric Rozenberg, CMM, CMP

So far some of my personal concerns were voiced in my postings over there and a letter to the upcoming “Town Hall” forum at WEC.

Among the questions that I have are the following:

MPI has always treated all members as equal, so this is a fundamental change in the structure of the organization and I worry about its effect on long-term membership, supplier participation and retention of members.  I wonder if a general modest increase in renewals wouldn’t stay closer to the spirit and history of the organization.  I also wonder how much input from members the board considered?  I’m a long-time member and can’t recall any advance discussions about such a large restructuring within MPI.  Was there a survey or were members consulted for comments?  This seems a big change to an organization that is “owned” by all of the members to have undertaken without some deep consideration of the overall memberships reaction and concerns.

By setting up a “Class System” you create doubt as to which category many folks fit into.  I for example, am a supplier to some members and buyer to others.  By treating us unequally you sow confusion and create classes in an organization that in my opinion should adhere to the idea that we are all equal “industry professionals” whose roles can shift from day to day and sometimes from moment to moment.

Suppliers have always been asked for a larger level of contributions at the national and chapter level, this move may serve to drive may of them away or to lower their local contributions because of the increased national requirement.

This change affects smaller and startup companies more than the “big companies” who have a larger and more flexible marketing/ad budget to work from.  Where a large organization might reduce their overall staff membership support by a percentage, an independent small supplier has no option by to pay the higher amount or leave.  So, for example in my case I might attend less local meetings to offset the increase, depriving me of education and networking opportunities and making the membership less valuable…ultimately making me question the ROI long term of staying.

In the same way there are changes on the WEC front that impact suppliers and chapter support that impacts all members that we will save to discuss later.

Many of these items were discussed on the Meetings Forum thread linked above, including some responsive information from MPI on the topic.  So, they are paying attention and working to make sure the discussions are balanced.

For now, the podcast will be first looking at the supplier dues increase and discussing this topic (and maybe more) later this week with Joan Eisenstodt as well as (hopefully) a representative of MPI who have both been invited to chat with us prior to WEC.

It’s an important topic and one that we here at the podcast feel should involve as many members as possible in discussion about these significant changes in the organization.  Stay tuned for more information here at the Meetings Podcast.

Hat tip for the cool image to TruthOut

It is becoming he must have equipment for meeting planners. Saving backs all over the world from the equally dreaded and loved show binder! You can find all of these in the iTunes App Store.

1) Pages – It’s like Microsoft Word. Technical agendas, transportation, BEO’s and any word documents can be edited in this app.

2) Manage -  To-do lists with folders.  Rate by importance and due date as well as change color and write with a pen.

3) Evernote – Where I do all my note taking. Put notes into folders and email them.

4) MobileMe iDisk – Allows you to store all your docs, photos, even videos in a single place that is accessible from your computer, iPad, or iPhone. (Also Dropbox.com is a great sharing solution)

5) Penultimate – Can be used as a writing tablet. I don’t use this app a ton, but if you really have the need to write notes you can. There is an actual pen you can purchase.

6) iBooks – Is not only for downloading books (I use the kindle app for that) but all PDF’s can be stored and read in iBooks. This includes all diagrams and beo’s if sent in PDF form. Don’t waste your money on an actual pdf app as this does it for free.

7) Numbers – Allows you to open and change excel docs.

8 ) AutoCad WS – If you use DWG files for diagrams.

9) Dragon Dictation – Speak notes outloud if I am to rushed to type and then email them to myself.

10) Flight Aware – Track flights of VIPs / presenters and see if they have arrived or are delayed.

11) World Mate -  Travel it tracks all my flight, hotel, and transportation info. Even where you park my car!

12) Gate Guru- Lists everything by terminal/gate at the airports for when you need to grab a quick bite or a pillow from brookstone.

13) Emergency Radio Police scanner app that can keep you up to date so I could inform others.

14) Angry Birds, Words with Friends, Pandora (music) or other game to play on down times.

15) Skype- Skype is a great way to make phone calls or instant messages for your communication needs.

16) 2Do – For creating to do lists on multiple projects at the same time and being able to names notes and flag critical due dates.

17) VMWare View- for virtual desktops linking with your work PCs and application sharing

18) Quick Office-for viewing editing Microsoft Office documents

19) Noterize – for signing contracts and e-mailing them with your ipad.

20)  Don’t forget to make sure to  back up everything to your laptop every evening!!!!

Thank you Stormi Boyd, CMP Senior Event Manager at Keller Williams &
Dahlton Bennington Dir. Business Meeting Services: SFN Group for the list!