Heh, OK…..After reading that title, I can imagine chips being installed on reader shoulders all around the world.  :)  I am not saying virtual is better in EVERY way, just in some ways.

Have you noticed that people who oppose virtual events often focus only on the ways that in-person events are irreplaceable?  I believe they are right, but that does not mean in-person is the ONLY solution to EVERY collaborative/networking need.  Just because A is better than B in some ways does not mean that B is not better than A in others.

This post examines all the ways that virtual events are better than in-person ones.

1. Multi-threading

In a virtual event or even in an in-person event with a virtual channel, there is the opportunity to multi-thread.  Think about it this way, verbally we can only watch/listen to one person at a time.  This is called single threading.  Everybody listens to that one thread.  In a virtual environment though, the technology allows for multiple people to communicate at the same time.  ”Listeners” can then jump from one thread to another as they find something interesting.  I am not talking about different presentations here, I am talking about different conversations about the SAME presentation.

Twitter Chats are a great example of this.   Each Twitter Chat normally has a moderator who announces the topic.  From there different people submit ideas and different people reply or build on those ideas.  It is a free for all.  The most interesting ideas/threads get the most interaction.  The less interesting ones drop off.

2. Ease of switching

If I am at a conference and I don’t like the session, I have to make a visible show of walking out.  Perhaps there are other sessions, perhaps not.  I may have to wander into the lobby and see if the other few people milling around might want to engage in a discussion.

Online, if I lose interest, there are a myriad of other information sources to which I can turn for more interesting, educational, stimulating content.

3. Greater volume of content

This is obviously related to switching, but the sheer amount of content that can be made available via a virtual environment vastly eclipses what can be brought together into one physical location.  This allow much more choice and much better match with time spent vs. information sought.

4. Greater geographical diversity

Travelling costs money and takes up time.  The further people have to travel, the more of both required.  Thus, US events tend to attract US participants, European events tend to attract Europeans, etc…   Having spent some time working abroad, I have experienced first hand the value of opinions from different cultural perspectives.

While there are still timezone issues even online, we are much more likely to get an international crowd to our meetings

5. Niche topics

In order to maximize attendance, conferences often create a very broad topic.  The sessions then need to appeal to a broad range of the different types of people who are attending. Thus, niche topics are challenging.  Online, attendee costs are lower and they are not need to spend travel time.  Thus, our attendee pool is significantly larger.  This economy of scale can make more niche sessions viable.

We should be seeking ways to combine in-person and virtual experiences to best meet the needs of our audiences.  It is not “either/or”.   In person events should not feel threatened, they should be excited about new ways that they can provide value to their attendees.

This post was inspired by reading a Jeff Hurt blog post called “Since When Did Virtual Not Become A Live Experience?“

For a little while now I have been subconsciously irked by something, but only today did I realize why.  The trigger for this mild epiphany was a one year old blog post.  I will link you to it as soon as I explain my thoughts on the matter.

First of all, we all have our own biases.  Here is mine.  I came to KM from an IT/process background in 2000.  I came to SM from a KM background in 2004.

The irking I mentioned is being caused by the fact that I continue to practice both KM and SM and yet they don’t seem to be getting along.  KM has not embraced SM nor vice versa, despite their similar ideals: to support the sharing of information.

Many people have heard me espouse my theory that KM will never become more than an academic foundation because as each facet of KM gains a foothold, it breaks off into its own discipline.   However, I don’t believe that is what is happening with SM.  On the contrary, SM from its birth was very opposite to KM in so many ways.

• where KM seeks to provide structure/control, SM prefers chaos
• where KM tends towards large top-down systems, SM tends to be grass-roots
• where KM is often practiced by older professionals, SM has captured the imagination of a younger crowd
• where KM seeks to define the goal and then select appropriate tools, SM provides the tools and hopes that a common goal will emerge, but at the least everyone will individually find value

The triggering blog post I mentioned above is called Social Media vs. Knowledge Management: A Generational War by Venkatesh Rao.  Personally, I think he puts too much emphasis on age, but it is at the very least thought-provoking.

One of the parts I like best is where he talks about Generation X being in-between the Boomers who prefer KM and the Millenials who prefer SM.  By the very fact that Venkatesh wrote the post the way he did, it is clear he likes to seek out patterns and meaning which is more of a KM type trait.

This tension between KM control and SM freedom is typified by the discussion of taxonomy vs. tagging.  Only now, as I write this blog post, do I realize that my fervent advocacy of tagging over taxonomy beginning in 2005 was a sign of my shifting allegiance from KM to SM.  I have had many debates with KMers about taxonomy and I am perceiving in new light why we were not seeing eye to eye.

If there is to be a war (as Venkatesh terms it) between KM and SM, then Enterprise2.0 is going to be the battle ground.  In order to have successful E2.0 initiatives, I believe that we are going to need to borrow from both camps.  There may be compromises that make neither happy.  Keep your eye out for these clashes as your organization rolls out any web2.0 tools/programs company-wide.

Addition: Since writing this post, I found an excellent series of slideshare posts that discuss the relationship between KM and SM

Part 2, Part 3

Side Note: I am currently working on building a Twitter driven (SM) community for knowledge management professionals (KM) called KMers.org and launching end of 2009.  It will be very interesting to see what lessons we learn.

At first I thought I had finally found presentation nirvana.  Prezi is a relatively new entrant to the presentation tools market.  Their interface is revolutionary.  Rather than create my own elevator overview, here is one from Jay Ball,

In a nutshell, Prezi is a Flash-based presentation system that allows users to create incredibly dynamic presentations. Presentations where you can zoom in and out across a large area (no slides), create motion paths, embed images and video and do things that previously needed a pretty competent Flash developer and a whole chunk of time. It kicks traditional slideware way into touch.

I like to play with tools a bit before I lock in my initial opinion so play I did.  It was fairly quick to figure out how to use the completely novel admin interface.

Up to this weekend, I spent my whole career working out ways to present ideas in a clear linear fashion with sections, slides, pictures, bullets, and sub-bullets, tieing together my ideas, questions, and calls to action.  Now with Prezi, all of a sudden I am faced with a completely blank canvas and some tools to populate and navigate that canvas.  Of course, I could put up a series of slides, but that would defeat the purpose.  I was hungry for the full experience.

I used my December MPI online column as a test subject for building a presentation and learned a great deal about both the tool and myself in the process. (Note: can’t include prezi draft here because I am contractually bound to release my columns on MPI before they are shown elsewhere.  Once it is published, I will embed the prezi here).

The Good:

• Forces you to think about the relationship between the ideas you intend to present
• Very flexible in what/how you can present.  Good with both pre-planned paths, on-the-fly path changes, and even a combination of both
• End product presentation is sure to have WAY more of an impact than powerpoint or keynote

The Bad:

• Challenging learning curve to think differently
• New interface takes a little while to learn and even longer to become proficient
• Limited functionality
  • very little text manipulation: no fonts, no colors
  • line tools are very limited
  • no shape tools
• Takes a LONG time to get presentation set-up exactly the way you want it.
• Admin frames that help with zooming are displayed to the end user and so confuse the interface

The Bottom Line:

• Just practicing with Prezi will improve the way you use your current presentation tool
• Best for presentations where
  • spending significantly more time is a good trade-off in return for more impact
  • you are going to continuously re-use the same presentation with minor changes
• Needs a bit more work in order to have a good chance at mainstream adoption

Have you tried it?  What do you think?

There is already a meta-discussion on Twitter called #assnchat where association leaders collaborate.  How many of those associations are using a Twitter Chat (overview, tools) to create an additional collaboration avenue for THEIR members?  Judging from the Twitter Chat Schedule, the answer seems to be, “very few”.

It seems that social media savvy individuals rather than associations are the ones starting the chats.  Lara Mculloch-Carter (@ready2spark) started #eventprofs.  It could have been MPI.   Jeff DeCagna (@pinnovation) started #assnchat.  It could have been ASAE.

On the recent Oct 6 #assnchat (transcript), I moderated a discussion of how and whether associations should be creating Twitter Chats for their membership.  The chat included some good reasons for an association to run a Twitter Chat

1. It provides another avenue for collaboration
2. It’s free so it can be added as a benefit without driving up costs
3. Content tends to be very good on chats
4. Less intimidating than a conference call for those who are shy to speak out
5. Chat attracts attention from members and prospects due to its nature of tweets going out publicly

and some reasons why an association may not want to run a Twitter Chat

1. Discussion is 100% open.  There might be a privacy issues which necessitates more of a walled-garden
2. Participation may be low until more people are on twitter
3. Yet another channel might spread the activity even more so that it is hard to gain a tipping point of activity in any one channel
4. members may want a non-computer based collaboration since they are already on computer all day

In my personal opinion

• #1 – Certainly a good reason that you should watch out for
• #2 – Even with only 3 people in a Twitter Chat, you can learn a lot.  Get started.  Once word gets out, more will join
• #3 – when done well, channels feed each other rather than take away.  Tout your website during the chat and talk about the chat on your website.  Mention the chat during your f2f meeting and gain registrations for f2f from the chat
• #4 – I have found that most people who spend a lot of time on a computer, prefer additional means of communication that use the same device.  email, IM, and even Skype are often preferred over the telephone by heavy computer users.

A chat session is never going to replace face2face collaboration.  Due to human nature, we develop a significantly deeper/quicker bond when we can see and touch each other.  But, we should not consider the choice an either/or.  Chats can increase the demand for f2f and they can help with the hype.

There is a very different set of opinions based on the same chat session over on Memberclicks.  I hope you will chime in with some of your thoughts either here or there.

Don't let your events stand alone as isolated pillars

Some of the really great discussion lately on the #assnchat Twitter Chat definitely merits reflection.   Standard first stage use of social media for events are apps like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn as a marketing mouthpiece to reach prospective audiences.

That is just scratching the surface of the potential.  Event owners and organizational leaders are quickly realizing that social media provides value well beyond the megaphone.

Thanks to a variety of communication methods (including SM), periodic face2face events are just one element of overall community management.  Rather than using one as a broadcast medium for the other, they can both be used in conjunction to enrich a community.

That may sound good, but leave you thinking, “how the heck do I do that?”.  To some degree the answer depends on your audience (members) and your history with them.  However, since “it depends” isn’t very helpful, I will attempt to provide ideas from which you can pick/choose a-la-carte for your situation.  This post was inspired by @MichelleBruno’s blog post about additional revenue at events.

This first post covers pre-event ideas beyond the expected “create a webpage”, “create a Facebook page”.  Stay tuned for parts 2 (during events) and 3 (post-event)

• Show the buzz
  • Select and promote a hashtag EARLY.  Your attendees will collect there and create more buzz.  You can use a widget to bring those posts into your web environment for more exposure
  • If anyone writes about your upcoming event, give them a way to submit their blog post so that you can showcase it to prospects and attendees.  There is nothing a blogger likes more than exposure.
  • Give them online buttons they can use to proudly display on their site/blog that they are going to your event.  Give them a bonus if someone came to register through their button
  • Post links to any articles that were written about previous events.
• Ask your members what they would like from the event.  You don’t have to DO everything they say, but at least listen
  • crowdsource speakers, topics, session-formats, locations, etc…  try these tools: uservoice, crowdsound, ideascale
  • Provide a way for your attendees to communicate with your speakers.  Many speakers will customize their speeches if they know what questions people have.
  • Run info/Q&A sessions using live stream providers eg. Audio: blogtalkradio, talkshoe Video: ustream.tv, livestream.  Make sure you combine the live stream with a twebevent to make it collaborative and to add more activity to your hashtag.
• Inform prospective attendees who is already registered
  • Post a list that grows automatically as people register.  Don’t just put names, include organization name and title.
  • If your online community has profiles, display that they are attending as a badge on their profile and all their community contributions
  • Profile key people who will be attending including interviews with them about why they find the event valuable
• Give prospects and attendees a taste
  • Make sure you have more than just a short bio of your speakers, connect relevant posts from their blog, videos they have posted, etc…
  • Get your speakers to do some custom content for your event (community): podcasts, blog posts, videos, etc… all about the session they are going to do at your event
  • Run some web events talking about the event and previewing content from presenters
  • Show some of the fun/education that happened last year.  If you are not already taking lots of video at your event, you should be (more in next post)
• Open up some pre-learning
  • freebie samples to get people excited
  • Some of the presentations that did not make the final selection for in-person
  • content that they can get immediate access to once they register for the event
  • design some at-event sessions around the pre-event content.  Since the common foundation will be established pre-event, the face2face time can be used for greater collaboration
  • Provide an option for attendees to pay a greater amount to receive extra online content.  Some might want extra content, but can’t come a day early for your extra session.
• Help attendees find each other - If you have a quality online community, members can find each other easily already.  This is especially important before an event for people who want to maximize networking  Tools: Crowdvine, SocialCollective, Pathable
• Allow people to indicate sessions they want to attend.  Show everyone who is going to what sessions.  This is another way to determine the size of rooms, whether to run a session twice, or cancel a session.
• Provide a virtual expo.  There are software providers for this, but even a single webpage with links to a few brochures and their website per sponsor, helps to narrow down where attendees want to focus their time at the event.

I know many of my fellow #eventprofs and #assnchat colleagues will have more suggestions.  If you liked this post, please Re-tweet it on Twitter.

Before releasing a product it is always wise to do some customer research and to test said product with a sample set of customers.  However, one can never predict all the different ways that your product might be useful.  Unexpected consequences can be bad (children eating small toys), but some can be completely wonderful.

twebevent was recently launched as a way to combine video streams with a Twitter Chat.  We imagined that some people might blend audio from sites like TalkShoe and BlogTalkRadio to get a text chat going at the same time.  We did not anticipate that an enterprising user would embed an entire webcast technology.

@jfouts is a BrightTalk webcast user.  She realized that BrightTalk offers an embed and so she just plugged it into twebevent.  Voila, she had all the features of BrightTalk: slides, audio, polling, Q&A, etc… mashed wth all the features of twebevent: listed in the schedule, host branding at the top of the screen, Twitter Chat on her desired hashtag, etc…  You can view her recording here.

The moral of the story: the faster you get something out into the public domain, the faster you can learn everywhere it provides value.  There are lots of iterative improvements planned for twebevent, but we wanted to release it as quickly as possible even in an early state.  That strategy is paying off.

Disclaimer: I am not saying that everyone evolves in the way described in this post.  However, I do believe it is a trend.

Here are the steps I believe many people go through

Stage 1: What the heck is this thing?  What a waste of time.  Most of the people on here are talking about nothing (or at least nothing of interest to me)

Stage 2: Why does everyone keep raving about Twitter?  Maybe I should take another look.  Hmm, I am starting to find some interesting people.  I will login periodically to check out what they have to say.

Stage 3: I am finding more and more interesting people to follow.  People are starting to follow me, too!  I find myself checking Twitter more and more often now.  I am using ________ (Fill in the blank with TweetDeck, Seesmic, TweetGrid, etc…) and it makes everything so much easier.

Stage 4: What fun it is to track how many people are starting to follow me.  I am now thinking about things I can Twitter throughout the day.  I check it and post several times a day and I am finding it hard to keep up with the flow of information.  I have found TwitterGrader to keep track of my progress.

Stage 5: This is getting to be too much of a drain.  I am going to have to be OK with the fact that some things will get posted that I will not see.  I have found hashtags.  They make it so much easier to just track topics of interest.  I am starting to use Twitter for my business and have found some tools like hootsuite that are very helpful.

Stage 6: Some of my hashtags are actually communities.  They have Twitter chats which take place weekly and all the members support each other.  TweetChat and twebevent are two apps that I use to take place in these community discussions.

Stage 7: I don’t watch my main Twitter stream at all now.  I am using _______ (TweetDeck etc..) to create saved searches and groups.  I have a few Tweeple subsets that I check their streams as a group.  Otherwise I just check hashtags and participate in Twitter Chats.  I am getting to be friends with several of the Tweeple in the Chats.  I have even phoned a few of them to share ideas.  They are all so knowledgeable and helpful.

Stage 8: You tell me.  What happens next?

Thanks to @samueljsmith for the recommendation to add a poll.  Here it is.  Share your Twitter Stage

Follow me on Twitter through

• @spkrinteractive – speakers, events, digital media
• @swanwick – knowledge management, RSS, personal
• @twebevent – Collaborative Media: mashup of video and Twitter Chats

On 8/26 at 6:30pm we went live with the first online simulcast for the Knowledge Management Institute.  We did it even with a few last minute challenges: one of our 3 speakers dropped out on the day of and our A/V expert also dropped out on the day of (both due to illness).

We soldiered on.  This post is both the story of what happened and the lessons we learned from the experience.  I hope it will serve as some sort of a guide for other associations.  If you have experience in this regard, please share as a comment.

Marketing: we promoted the free event on some KM mailing lists, our own mailing list, KM LinkedIn groups, and Twitter.

Preparation: we tested as much as we could (hardware, software, bandwidth) days before the event.  We arrived to the event 2 hours early to set-up equipment and run tests.  We could not get our video camera to stream (remember, no A/V expert) so we went with a back-up webcam.

Event: we went live within a few minutes of on-time.  We started and stopped the live event after each session because we wanted it to be broken into separate files.  We were running a Buzz format session which means 3 speakers for 10 minutes each and then 20 mins of discussion in-between.  We had ~15 person online audience for just about the whole event.  We hope for more ongoing, but felt that was good for our first event.

Here is a description of the software that we used (all free):

• We kept the camera on the speaker and we used procaster.com (free download) to merge in the speaker’s slides from the streaming computer.  An on-site producer selects between speaker-only, slides-only, and smaller speaker together w/smaller slides at each point in time for what goes into the stream.
• Procaster.com automatically streams to an account on livestream.com (free account if you are willing to allow some ads into your video stream).  You can pay money if you want the ads removed.
• We took the embed code from livestream.com (it shows up right on the widget) and pasted it into the “Embed” field in twebevent.com.  This combined our live video with a Twitter Chat and placed it in the twebevent schedule for additional exposure.

To accomplish the above software configuration I recommend someone who is at least intermediate with using web applications.

Other important items:

• you will need upload bandwidth of at least 500kbps (.5Mbps).  You can test that with speedtest.net from the location where you will be streaming.

Lessons Learned:

1. It is best to outfit the speaker with a wireless mic that draws the sound into the streaming computer.  If the speaker is not mic’ed, you may get variable sound online as they walk around.
2. Camera with tripod and zoom allows speakers more mobility
3. If you are at a hotel with a conference code to get on their wireless, make sure that it allows you several connections.  This will allow some flexibility with testing (one streaming, one watching) as well as the ability for some on-site people to be tweeting to the event while another is running the livestream.
4. If your event is structured like the Buzz where there are periods of time that the audience is discussing something at individual tables, point the camera at the crowd so that the online audience at least knows what is going on.  Also keep them posted on timing via Twitter
5. If there is on-site Q&A, draw some of the questions from the online environment.  After the on-site session is over have the presenter answer more online questions on camera just for the online audience.
6. If you have an extra projector, project the tweets that are coming in during the presentations.  If you have a very large audience, you may want to moderate that Twitter stream.  There are a few applications that will help with moderation.  Twubs.com is one.
7. Upload the presentations somewhere that they can be accessed via URL (if you don’t have this, you can do it with Google Docs, remember to make the docs shared as “public”)  Link the uploaded docs into the twebevent so that people can download if they like.
8. Open the presentations on the streaming laptop in “Normal View”.  Then use the procaster “Zoom” function to frame the slide.  This will allow you to do other things on the screen like: changing from one presentation to another, use the procaster producer, and use the slide picker on the left to jump to any slide without flipping around the slides

All in all it was a great experience.  You can view some of the videos that we captured at http://twebevent.com/KMIevent.  We will be running another simulcast on Oct 7.  Join the KMI mailing list or just follow the #KMers hashtag for more information as we get closer.

Please contact me if you are interested in learning more.  I am @swanwick on Twitter

There are lots of articles and blog posts out there that list Twitter tools.  Very few of them seem to discuss the actual uses of those tools. Since the beginning of the year, I have been involved in scores of Twitter Chats and I am always on the lookout for better ways to handle them.

Below you will find a list of Twitter Chat tools and my personal opinions of the pros/cons of each one.  If you would like to share your pros/cons, please do so in the comments.

TweetChat

Tweetchat is the leader in the Twitter Chat race.  It is my favorite chat app and it is the favorite of most Twitter chatters.  The TweetChat experience is simple and yet powerful.  To my knowledge they are the only app where you enter the hashtag once and then it is appended to each tweet for you.  They do not append any additional URL’s.  These alone are reasons to make them #1.

Another very important feature they offer is the ability to determine the speed that the tweets will refresh as well as pause the stream.  While this may seem trivial, you will understand why it is important when we get to savorchat.   Tweetchat also allows you to block/feature users, reply to particular tweets,  re-tweet any message, and favorite any tweet.

I have only used Twubs for testing and never for a whole chat.  The reason is I have an idealogical difference with the fact that they default to tweeting their URL with every tweet.  While twubs is not as good as TweetChat at the actual chatting, they are an interesting choice to view a hashtag BETWEEN chats because of the content that can be connected around the chatting community: Links, members, images,

and   

Both of these apps allow you save searches.  This feature can be used to follow a hashtag chat.  While it is nice to be able to work within a familiar Twitter environment, the huge problem is that you always have to remember to type the hashtag.  Call me lazy, but that is too much work for me.  :)

Similar to TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop you have to remember to type the hashtag.  One advantage TweetGrid has though is that you can create a URL that automatically opens a specific set of searches for anyone who uses it.

Writing this blog post was sparked after experiencing my first SavorChat on Tues night.  On the one hand, I am really excited because they have some features that I have been thinking would benefit chats.  On the other hand, their first implementation has enough negatives that it is almost unusable.

1. They are attempting to provide breadcrumbs that show the reply chain of a particular tweet concept.  While this is useful in theory, there are a few problems.
   • Everything happens so fast in a Twitter Chat there is not really time to analyze the chain
   • Twitter chat replies are like a game of telephone.  The reply to the reply may have absolutely nothing to do with the original
   • They take up valuable space so that less tweets can fit vertically.
2. They are attempting to solve the Twitter lag problem by providing msgs that do not go through Twitter but instead are posted directly to all the chatters.  Again, good in theory, but here are the problems
   • The tweets come in one at a time so that the screen is constantly moving.  Reading moving text is very challenging so readers keep losing their place and have to start over.  This makes the chat appear faster than it is.
   • The tweets are not actually going out to Twitter so we are not getting the benefit of the built-in marketing aspect that each participant is sending Tweets to all their followers

If savor chat were to throttle their updates to come in batches, default to tweeting every post, and provide the chain as an optional advanced feature; I think they might get to the top of the list.

If you want to add media to your twitter chat, there is a new application called twebevent just launching which will allow you to do that for free

What apps do you prefer for your Twitter Chat?

Friday, August 7 was the first live trial of twebevent (read overview here) for #bizbutterflies at ISES EventWorld (archive available here).  Several lessons were learned from the experience and some of the audience provided their feedback.  The live session was simulcast via two online channels.  One through twitcam and the other through twebevent.  The audience began somewhat split between the two platforms, but it was clear early on that the twebevent chat was more active and so the twitcam audience migrated to twebevent.

Some pros and cons to each platform:

1. twitcam allows you to broadcast your webcam.  twebevent does not CREATE a broadcast, but it can consume twitcam video streams or video streams from ANY video streaming provider (ustream.tv, Qik, just.tv, etc…).  While twebevent is more flexible/powerful, twitcam requires one less step and so is easier to broadcast
2. twitcam shows tweets that contain the twitcam event URL.  twebevent shows tweets on the host’s desired hashtag – It seems that expert Twitter users prefer hashtag based Twitter chat
3. Video NEXT to chat (twitcam) is preferred to video ON TOP of chat (twebevent)
4. Hosts like the rich text space that they get on twebevent (left of video).  There is no equivalent on twitchat
5. twebevent allows for far more characters per tweet.  This is because twitcam auto-attaches both the twitcam URL and the host Twitter handle with every tweet.  twebevent just auto-attaches the hashtag.  Note: twebevent allows audience to tweet the event URL via a “Tweet this Event” button, but it is separate from the chat.

Some lessons learned for next time

• The best broadcasting combo might be procaster/twebevent  Like twitcam, procaster also streams for free into livestream.   But, procaster also provides the ability to merge the presenter and their slides into one video stream.  The host can grab the embed from livestream to place into twebevent
• Important to have a static URL that one can advertise WELL ahead of the event.  Changing URL’s creates confusion
• motion sensitive webcam, while better than a static webcam, is still not ideal.  Best to have someone manning the camera to follow the appropriate speaker.

Open items

• Need to test twebevent with Apple/Mac computers
• Need to check with TweetChat if they can make a narrower version so that video and chat can go side by side in twebevent
• Would be nice to allow a preview video in twebevent that is available to play until the appointed time for the event

All in all we are extremely happy with the first trial of twebevent.  It seemed to be the platform of choice for the online audience.  We have lots of improvements in mind and we look forward to partnering with the #eventprofs community to meet as many of their needs as possible.