Predicted by the Virtual Edge Institute to be a coming trend in digital events, Practice Greenhealth is syndicating its live-streamed event content to partners and allied entities. “By allowing sponsors to embed the live stream from our annual conference into their own websites, we’re able to take our messages further than we could on our own, and the sponsors are able to engage with their customers and prospects using content rather than marketing or advertising,” explains Laura Wenger, Executive Director of Practice Greenhealth. “We’re also hoping that by giving potential attendees a taste of our event, we can turn them into physical event attendees next year.”

In 2011, Wenger’s annual meeting had 18 sponsors paying $15,000 each to be part of the event. She offered the live stream as an upsell for sponsors at a $25,000-level, and eight of her 18 sponsors made the leap for the 2012 event.

Using a server configuration allowing the live stream to be distributed to multiple locations and embedded into websites through its Syndicast Service, digital event producer Digitell Inc., created branded custom players for each sponsor.  “The player is branded for the sponsor and surrounds the content – which is still branded for Practice Greenhealth,” says Digitell President, Jim Parker.  “The sponsor is then able to use the live stream to engage their communities the way they want to.”

Practice Greenhealth live streams its keynote general session, and one breakout per time period from the 40 taking place.

“There was a mixed response from the 2012 sponsors,” says Wenger. “Those who were aggressive in marketing their ‘event,’ had a great audience and enjoyed the experience. Those who did little marketing had small audiences, and weren’t as happy.” Seven of the eight sponsors have re-signed for 2013.

Practice Greenhealth does have a feed of the live stream on its own website, but according to Wenger, the syndicated content helps her reach those not typically on the PG mailing list. “That, and the additional revenue, are great benefits of syndication for us,” she says. “But to be able to add benefit for our sponsors is just as important.”

In a recent webcast on the growing role of video communication in business, Gartner Vice President and Distinguished Analyst, Whit Andrews, highlighted the emergence of video embedded into portals outside your own. “Video has to be part of everything,” he said. “Not just standalone content built on the notion of ‘If you build it, they will come.’”

And before you think this is probably too time-consuming or expensive – it’s free for non-profits, and launching a contest just takes a few minutes. Check out WomStreet.com, a competitive social media hub I’ve recently discovered and am working with.

An online contest enables you to engage with your community and promote your event through genuine peer-to-peer action. You put up an incentivizing prize, users submit entries and the community votes on their favorites. Participants are incentivized to share to social media channels in exchange for extra votes.

A new contest creation feature allows anyone to create and monitor a contest using an intuitive contest management dashboard. Every contest can then be accessed through a unique hyperlink. WomStreet has been used to crowdsource local, regional and nationally marketed events. Learn more here:   http://www.edminsider.com/changing-the-game-is-big-gigantic-onto-something-madison-wi-2713/

In addition to creating buzz and interest in your event, WomStreet can also be used to really connect with your audience and discover what they value. Can’t decide on a keynote speaker? Let your attendees decide. Need to know which education topics are better for roundtable discussions vs. half-day seminars? Your industry can tell you. No surveys, no guessing the “right” answer, no additional work for your program committee – just immediate and relevant feedback using the wisdom of the crowd.

How it Works

Contests can be created around music, images or video. Organizers use their own social networks, set event dates, make rules and share prizes. Setup takes only minutes.

Once the organizer opens the site, entries can be submitted.

Voters get five votes to start, but can earn more when they share the event or entries with their own network.  As new entries come in, voters are encouraged to revisit the site and vote more for their favorites.

Pricing

The new, easier-to-use self-serve model of WomStreet is free for non-profits and event organizers promoting their own events. Plus, if there are sponsorship opportunities WomStreet will help you configure online ads and share that revenue with you as the event host – essentially making this a revenue center.

Your Turn!

What are some of your ideas for leveraging this innovative solution?  I’ll start…

Have participants post videos explaining why it’s important they attend this year’s event. The winner gets to attend this year’s event free.

-or-

Invite speakers to record a five-minute session and the winner gets invited to speak.

-or-

Invite exhibitors to submit a five-minute video on how they can help attendees, and the winner gets five minutes at the opening ceremonies.

OK, now it your turn…what ideas do you have?

Less has been said about how easy it is to use NFC.

NFC is a wireless “touch technology.”

Users touch, tap or “bump” one NFC device (like a smartphone or tablet) against another—or against an NFC chip (known as a “tag”)—to acquire information or content.

If you’re not yet using NFC, you’re probably aware of how it works from Samsung’s edgy TV commercial, “Work Trip.”

NFC has been adopted by major business-to-business event producers worldwide, including CTIA, IBC and GSMA, and by large business-to-consumers organizations like the Walt Disney Company.

Event producers who’ve introduced the touch-based technology uniformly agree: attendees, exhibitors and staff—once they’ve tried NFC—are pleased with its ease.

After all, what act could be simpler than a touch? We’ve been doing it since birth.

With NFC, event ticketing, access control, games and contests, session scanning, lead retrieval and attendee tracking all are suddenly easier—and less intrusive—than they’ve ever been before.

Just listen to exhibitor Annie Elliott, who uses ITN’s lead retrieval app BCARD Reader on iPad at tradeshows like NAVC.

While most venue owners recognize the importance of a reliable and scalable Wi-Fi network, the fact is that many still struggle to bring their network vision to life. On the one hand, meeting and event planners are struggling to find venues with stable Wi-Fi systems. On the other hand, attendees complain that Wi-Fi is slow and doesn’t work or works in some locations but not others. Building a superior and affordable Wi-Fi network is a complicated task. It requires a comprehensive approach for optimizing network performance and resources for designing and installing innovative technologies.

Recently, Cisco helped MGM Resorts International meet the needs of guests’ ever-growing expectations by establishing a high-density Wi-Fi system. The new Wi-Fi system is specifically designed to enhance the guest and attendee experience. Some of the features and advantages include:

• 30 percent faster connectivity
• automatic Wi-Fi connection
• option to upgrade to higher bandwidth
• supports up to 120,000 concurrent users

“By working with MGM Resorts, Cisco is taking the customer from basic connectivity to an uncompromised user experience that allows them to utilize the rich guest services offered by MGM Resorts,” said Sujai Hajela, vice president and general manager, Wireless Networking Group, Cisco.

The new program also allows meeting groups to customize their Wi-Fi networks. In their own Wi-Fi network, digital strategists can provide information, notes, alerts, program updates as well as inform attendees about changes in real-time. They can also secure certain information by creating sub groups with unique passcodes. Sponsorship and advertising options are also available for those who want to balance event expenses and provide vendors with marketing opportunities.

With higher bandwidth, attendees can quickly download as well as upload presentations and streaming videos and growing trend for not just remote attendees but those onsite as well. Furthermore, location-based services allow attendees to easily locate their next session, a booth or another colleague using applications from mobile solution providers like Pathable and Zerista.

The high-density Wi-Fi has been deployed at MGM Resorts’ destinations in Las Vegas – Bellagio, MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay and The Mirage. This year, MGM Resorts plans to deploy high-density Wi-Fi at Las Vegas resorts, Monte Carlo, New York-New York, Luxor and Excalibur.

The Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA) annual Convening Leaders conference was held in Orlando in earrly January and although final numbers aren’t published yet, PCMA expects to crest the 4,000 in person attendance number while attracting another 700 more online with their hybrid program.

In a press conference, Deborah Sexton, executive director of PCMA noted that over 100 virtual attandees from 2011 had attended in person in 2012 and indicated that the PCMA hybrid was very helpful in pushing them to attend in person. The conversion for 2013 are not yet published though Sexton feels they’ll see an even greater conversion.

Remote attendance for the 2013 program was up almost 30% over 2012. Mary Reynolds Kane is the director of online marketing for PCMA and she indicated that their focus for the 2013 hybrid program was driving engagement and satisfaction with the remote audience. Her team did this by engaging in chat with everyone who joned the event and kept interacting with them via in-room virtual moderators. The general response has been very positive across the social media channels we have seen.

The hybrid audience represented more than 18 countries. “This year’s hybrid audience was bigger and more engaged than ever before,” Kane  says. “With moderated discussions, hybrid attendees from around the world contributed their own questions and comments to spark conversations both online and on-site.”

In the digital event space – as in the networking industry – Cisco reigns supreme. From alternate reality games (ARGs) to opening their environments three weeks early to allow attendees time to “play,” Cisco has pioneered and implemented truly game-changing strategies others now copy in the digital event arena. But when its goal this year was to increase engagement and add “emotion” to its annual GSX event, some scoffed. An online event is the antithesis of emotion. Isn’t it?

A top priority for Cisco’s GSX team for their 2012 event was driving engagement and bringing back emotion into the event. GSX is the hybrid global sales meeting for Cisco’s 20,000+ worldwide sales organization. Cisco moved from an in person-only event spanning three weeks to a virtual-only in 2009 and subsequently adding back more and more in person activities. GSX 2012 had five percent of its audience in one of the main geographic hub locations (physical audiences, speakers, stage, production, breakouts and catered events. Seventy-five percent of the attendees were in satellite viewing locations, (watching a broadcast on a screen in a group), and 20 percent were participating individually online.

“Engagement, emotion and recognition, or, as I like to call it – extending the love – were major goals for the 2012 event,” says GSX Digital and Technology Lead, Dannette Veale.

Cisco started with a very prescriptive, creative process to revamp its visual identity and rework its virtual platform accordingly. A very different approach with the user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) resulted in more of a website look and feel, and less of a 2D virtual environment – though they still used an INXPO platform.

At the same time, the team was highly focused on an equally engaging experience for all three audiences – in-person, satellite or individual online. Audience listening efforts became key.

Audience listening and engagement is so typical at physical events that it doesn’t even have to be considered. But in a closed, behind-a-firewall event, tools needed to be developed. So Veale worked with Cisco TV and its digital agency, JUXT, as well as their overall experiential agency, George P. Johnson, to create a home-grown dashboard system that let them gather input from Cisco Jabber for Q&A sessions and chat. “That allowed us to have a listening team go through and flag comments for review and approval to be published across the event environment,” says Veale. “We also leveraged a heuristic engine that was looking at all of that data and dynamically identifying what’s trending across all the audience segments.”

As attendees were watching, they would see bubbles in the bottom corner of their screens with comments from others, along with that attendee’s name and location. Engagement could be seen by immediate spikes in chat as these comment bubbles appeared.

“My favorite attendee quote really summed it up for us,” says Veale. “They said this was the most audience- aware event they’d ever attended.”

Recognition is important at a sales meeting, and excitement is the emotion. Cisco has a Chairman’s Club of the top 200 salespeople, who used to walk across the stage, shake hands with the CEO and get their photos taken – all in front of thousands in the audience. For 2012, Veale worked with the executive teams to get approval to pre-announce to the winners that they had won before the event actually happened.  “We brought them in with local executives, and corporate execs were connected via Telepresence or Webex, and we told them ‘You’re a winner,’ and we used the technology to capture those reactions,” explains Veale.  “The reactions were turned into a video montage we played as their names were being shared during the event for everyone to see. It really worked. Seeing the winners’ reactions and hearing how they felt about winning, really brought the emotion into it. The team also made a blooper video that was very fun.”

Cisco also created a “sales winner appreciation” tool that allowed attendees to send congratulations, high-fives and bear hugs to the winners. These were accessible from mobile devices, so even those watching from satellite locations could join in. Additionally, a “team appreciation” engagement was introduced which enabled anyone to honor their team with a user-generated digital e-card. Attendees selected team attributes, team members and regional affiliations, and then entered a text message and/or uploaded a personal video.  A back-end engine dynamically inserted photos of team members, regionalized b-roll, and attributes dynamically created by a group of dancers in silhouette into a video e-card, then notifying team members to view their appreciation accordingly. This system was open to attendees prior to the event and could be used to appreciate anyone or team in the company, not just salespeople. The result? A record number of people logging into the environment prior to the event—another objective – and 43 percent of the audience received an appreciation before or during the event. The messages and videos were featured for everyone to see.

“Almost fifty percent of the audience got some love, and that’s just a huge, huge number,” notes Veale.

Fifty-six percent of attendees were also “connected to.” The connection tool allowed attendees to find others based on profile questions. Depending on where they were attending, they could see who else was attending a local celebration party so they could meet face-to-face.

After the event, attendees could download theses contacts into their personal contact manager – something which 85 percent of attendees did – another indicator of engagement.

Veale’s team has been working to shift the perception that ‘people don’t know how to network in digital formats,’ and the work is paying off with large increases in ‘effectiveness-of-networking’ scores in post-event surveys.

Next on the GSX team’s list for innovation is the mobile experience. Like all events, the percent of attendees wanting to connect via their mobile devices is growing rapidly and developing a high quality, highly secure  mobile experience will require a good deal of planning and resource.  Of course they’ll also be looking to continue the growth in the emotional engagement as well. We look forward to learning more from Cisco’s innovative digital event strategies.