2009 was a landmark year for the virtual events industry – early adopters expanded their virtual event initiatives and leveraged the technology in innovative ways.  Many industries (and associated corporations) entered the mix, producing their first ever virtual event in 2009.  Despite the economy (or perhaps aided by the downturn), virtual event platform providers enjoyed healthy growth in client demand, event volume and revenue.  The platform market expanded beyond the U.S., with the emergence of new platforms in Europe and New Zealand.  We even had the industry’s first ever face-to-face event, the Virtual Edge Summit (U.S. – Santa Clara, CA).

To get a better sense of how 2009 unfolded, I reviewed the past 12 months of postings on this blog and sought to categorize the trends and patterns.

Source: flickr (User: Linzi's Cakes)

Assorted Shapes and Sizes

In the early days, the industry was all about virtual tradeshows.  During 2007-2008, new event types were spawned – and in 2009, we saw many more instances of non-tradeshow events: virtual job fairs, virtual sales meetings, virtual partner summits.  In addition, we saw innovative concepts applied in hybrid events – where event planners staged concurrent physical and virtual events.  I wrote about learnings and observations from Cisco Live and Networkers Virtual, in which virtual and physical blended together.  In 2010, I expect to see many more hybrid events, with event planners leveraging creative ways to tie virtual together with physical.  In fact, I believe 2010 will be The Year of The Hybrid Event.

In addition to the assorted event types – we’re starting to see the use of virtual event technology to support ongoing business communities.  The community concept makes a lot of sense in conjunction with physical or virtual events – instead of “going dark” between live event dates, event planners can leverage the “platform” to keep the community interaction and dialog going – where the events serve as “momentum points” to drive continued activity within the online business community.  I brainstormed about tactics that could be applied to sustain virtual business community loyalty.

Social Media and Twitter

With all due respect to Facebook and other services, I believe 2009 was The Year of Twitter.  There are many ways in which Twitter can be leveraged for virtual events – here are a few ideas that I blogged about:

1. Leverage Twitter for Virtual Tradeshow Outreach
2. How to Promote Your Virtual Event on Twitter
3. Leverage Twitter Lists for your Physical or Virtual Event

Virtual event platforms have integrated with Twitter and other social networks – in 2010, I see the breadth and depth of integration expanding.  The expansion will be fueled both by interest (from the virtual event platforms and from clients) as well as richer interfaces (APIs) from the social network sites.  For instance, LinkedIn recently announced an open API for their platform.

In parallel to virtual events, 2009 was a watershed year for social gaming (e.g. Zynga, Playdom and other sites).  In 2010, we’ll see virtual event platforms leverage gaming for a mix of fun and business use.  I wrote about the reasons that virtual events should incorporate gaming.  Lastly, I believe the tried and true webinar needs to become more social – webinars need to encourage and support more participation from the audience.

The market extends beyond the U.S.

In 2009, virtual events platform vendors emerged globally – in order of appearance in this blog:

1. ExpoNZ – New Zealand
2. IMASTE – Spain
3. Ubivent – Germany

I expect to see a few more virtual event platforms emerge in Europe in 2010 – Asia Pac is sure to see local entrants as well.

Virtual Event Best Practices

I wrote a lot about virtual event best practices in the past 12 months. Here’s a selection of the more popular postings:

1. Virtual Event Best Practices
2. How to Market your Virtual Event
3. Best Practices for Virtual Tradeshow Exhibitors
4. Lead Follow-Up for Virtual Events
5. Assemble the Right Team for your Virtual Event
6. Increase Your Virtual Event ROI
7. Think Outside the Inbox for Virtual Event Promotion
8. How to Run a Virtual Event Command Center

Happy Holidays to all.  2009 was a great year for virtual events.  And I have news for you – 2010 will be even better!

Based in Mannheim, Germany, ubivent has entered the virtual events platform market with a recently launched platform.  According to Michael Geisser, Managing Director Market Development, the ubivent co-founders “met at university, working together in an IT research program and pursuing our PhD”.  The co-founders then spent several years working at multinational corporations, where they held numerous roles in IT and IT management.

In fact, Geisser and co-founder Thomas Butter (Managing Director Research and Development) were recently with SAP, where they worked on some of SAP’s first virtual events.  Ubivent is off to a fast start – they received 12 months of funding from EXIST, “a program of the European Union and the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology” designed to support innovation.  In addition, in late November, ubivent was selected as the most promising young company in Mannheim.

Target market

Ubivent’s initial target market is to serve large and distributed corporations – large companies have already adopted the basic technologies required for virtual events (including sufficient bandwidth capacity) and distributed companies can immediately leverage the convenience and cost savings of virtual collaboration (versus in-person).

“However, this does not mean that we do not offer our services for small, non-IT organizations”, noted Geisser. “We’ve also done projects with local authorities. Obviously, the entire project size has been not that extensive as for a global event with multiple thousands of participants.”

Since the European market for virtual events has not developed as quickly as the U.S. market, Geisser sees plenty of opportunity in Europe.  Geisser sees opportunity in all sorts of event types, but notes that “the type of the event is not as important as the content and the participants. We see the advantages of virtual events especially for knowledge-intense content (e.g. software, finance, etc.) with globally distributed participants”.

In comparing the U.S. and European markets, Geisser believes that while “US based customers put more emphasis on the look and feel, the European customers are very keen on getting a technically scalable and secure platform. Fortunately we’re combining both.”

Technology platform

Ubivent is a member of Microsoft BizSpark, a program that provides “software, support and visibility” to software start-ups.  While most virtual event platforms are built on top of Adobe Flash, ubivent’s platform is based on JavaFX, a platform for building rich internet applications that runs on top of JRE (Java Runtime Environment).

According to Geisser, the use of JavaFX serves as a competitive advantage for ubivent over competing Flash-based platforms – “JavaFX is one key advantage of our platform. This opens the door for completely new functionalities which are not possible with other technologies (e.g. Flash)”.

Ubivent developed an accessibility framework to assist visually impaired people in using their virtual events platform via a screen reader.  The source code for the accessibility framework has been published as open source.  The framework is built on top of JavaFX, which means that other platforms seeking to incorporate it would need to run JavaFX as well.

Virtual events vs. immersive virtual worlds

Geisser has taken a look at 3D immersive virtual worlds, such as Second Life and Twinity.  He believes, however, that the immersive virtual world is currently more suited to B2C or C2C use cases, whereas his B2B market is more focused on quick and convenient access to selected content.  Notes Geisser, “In a B2B context, the desire for avatars and the ability to walk through a virtual world is less distinct. Here, the focus is more the ability to quickly access information and other participants. The need to ‘walk’ through the virtual world to access this information or participant is considered adverse with regard to this goal.”

In closing

It will be interesting to watch the European market for virtual events in 2010.  Ubivent and IMASTE are two of the leading European-based providers – while they may encounter each other in common client accounts, I’m sure the providers from the U.S. market will be looking towards Europe (and Asia) as well.

Related links

1. Follow ubivent on Twitter
2. Ubivent’s Facebook page
3. Ubivent-developed accessibility framework, fxaccessible
4. Ubivent’s executive management team
5. Audio interview – ubivent speaks about their JavaFX-based virtual events platform

Source: flickr (User: Mzelle Biscotte)

For many, email is a constant stream, an endless loop – we receive too much of it, both “important” emails addressed directly to us and marketing emails that are sent as a result of opting in (or not) to past content, webinars, white papers and marketing lists.  Outbound, push-based email promotions face the following challenges:

1. Imperfect delivery rates (mail server outages, spam filters, etc.)
2. Decreasing open rates
3. Perception of spam – if recipients don’t remember opting in to your list (even though they did), they’ll ignore your email – or, opt out from your list
4. List fatigue due to overuse of marketing lists
5. Decreasing click-thru rates (CTR) – once you’ve made it past delivery and open, recipients are clicking less on your embedded offers

Adding to this mix is the fact that many users now interact with brands (and by extension, promotional offers from brands) via their social networks, instead of email.  A user is more inclined to respond to an @reply or direct message (on Twitter) compared to a conventional email blast from a marketer.

Given all this, it surprises me that email is still a primary vehicle for promoting physical and virtual events.  Event marketers have much to gain by thinking outside the inbox.

Social media and social sharing

Your first step outside the inbox should be in the direction of social networks.  Build a presence in social communities and you’ll find that you naturally generate interest and awareness to your event.  Previously, I wrote about leveraging Twitter to promote your virtual event.  As Ian McGonnigal (GPJ) astutely pointed out, those same tactics apply quite well to physical events as well.

In addition to Twitter, consider the following:

Create a LinkedIn Event entry for your event

1. Create a LinkedIn Event for your event – a LinkedIn Event page allows you to post relevant information about your event on LinkedIn (e.g. date, event content, etc.) – LinkedIn members can then indicate whether they’ll be attending, not attending or “interested”.  This can be quite useful, as folks often attend events based on knowing whom else will be attending.  By creating a LinkedIn Event, you’ll receive the benefit of having LinkedIn auto-recommend your event to other members, assuming their profile is a “match” with the profile of your event.  Members may also utilize search and find your event.  More info can be found on the LinkedIn blog page announcing the Event feature.
2. Post videos to YouTube – it’s the #2 search engine after all (behind parent Google), so having event videos posted on the site will generate traffic from the millions of folks who visit YouTube.com each day.  Record videos of your host, keynote speaker, group publisher, etc. talking about your upcoming event – if your keynote speaker has a prominent name, your videos will attract interest from users who search on that name.  When you have a critical mass of videos, create a YouTube channel.  About.com has a neat guide on how to do just that.
3. Create a Facebook Fan page for your event – with a fan page, you’ll generate interest for your upcoming event – and, you’ll build an ongoing community that you’ll be able to continuously leverage!  The All Facebook blog has a nice guide on how to build a Facebook fan page.
4. Leverage blogs – author a blog posting on your corporate blog – or, if you don’t have one, ask a relevant industry blog site whether you can author a guest posting.  Alternatively, leave a comment on postings from relevant industry blogs with a pointer (link) to your event.  The key here is not to over-promote your event – your first goal is to provide useful and relevant content/commentary with your event being a secondary (and subtle) mention.

SEO and in-bound links

If you pay attention to search engine optimization (SEO), your event page(s) will receive “organic” traffic – that is, traffic that finds you, rather than you finding the traffic (i.e. the “pull” from users searching, rather than the “push” from your email promotions).  Think about the search keywords that you’d want to associate with your event [e.g. when users are performing searches] and make sure the content on your event page is rich in those keywords.

To increase the page rank of your event page, increase the number of inbound links that point to your page.  A few simple ideas:

1. For all of your social media efforts (listed above), make sure they provide links to your event page – shazam, you’ve just created a number of inbound links
2. For event staff (especially those with large followings on Twitter), ask them to temporarily point the “web site” URL in their Twitter profile to the event page
3. Ask partners, associates, even clients to post a URL from their web site(s) to your event page
4. Add a “Share on Facebook” capability on your event page – this may result in page rank benefit as search engines begin to index Facebook wall posts – until then, what this really does is generate awareness and outreach of your event to users’ Facebook friends.  If a potential attendee visits your event page and shares the page with her 100 Facebook friends, then you’ve just received 100 free advertising impressions

Advertise

Some affordable options to consider:

1. Facebook advertising – purchase targeted ads on Facebook.  For a physical event, you can target by geography (e.g. starting with users who are geographically close to your event site).  For a virtual event, geography is less important, so you may want to target based on attributes in the users’ Facebook profiles.  You can pay per view (of the ad) or per click (on the ad), so the terms are flexible.  eHow has a good overview on Facebook advertising.
2. Content syndication – purchase web syndication with online publishers in your industry – get your event listed in their directories, content sites, etc.  They may charge you per click or per lead (completed registration).  Not only can this generate registrants for your event, but it also improves your page rank by generating more inbound links to your event page.

Hopefully I’ve covered a few “outside the inbox” options for you to consider – certainly continue to promote your event via email – however, use some of these options to lighten the load a bit on your email marketing lists.

I get a lot of enjoyment following trends and developments in social media and social networks – it’s an exciting time, with things moving so quickly.  Keeping up with the pace of change is part of the fun.  I’ve written a blog posting over on the InXpo blog – where I cover some recent developments in social media:

1. Twitter Lists
2. Social Search
3. Inter-connectedness
4. Mobile

The blog posting is titled, “Making Sense Of The Ever-Changing Social Media Landscape“.

Robert Scoble's tech-event-organizers Twitter List

What’s a very simple yet effective way to integrate the new Twitter Lists feature into your event?  Here’s what you can do:

1. Define your event hash tag (a “must do” for any event!)
2. Create a Twitter List for your event
3. If your company or event already has a Twitter ID (“brand”), connect it to that ID (e.g. twitter.com/<your-brand>/<your-event-list>)
4. On your registration page, ask registrants to supply their Twitter ID
5. Manually or automatically populate your Twitter List directly from registration!

As part of the Twitter API, there are methods in place to interact with Twitter Lists (look in the documentation for List Methods, List Members Methods, List Subscribers Methods).  As such, you could automate this process by having your registration page utilize the Twitter List API to auto-populate your list directly from registration.

In addition, you could use the Twitter API to inform registrants which of their Twitter friends or followers are (a) also registered and (b) already a member of the Twitter List.  Here are benefits of leveraging a Twitter List for you event:

Registrants promote the event on your behalf

It’s the crowdsourcing method for generating awareness – allow the participants to spread the word on their own.  After all, the combined reach of your registrants is far greater than your own.  By referencing your Twitter list on your registration page, users who supply their Twitter ID will likely go straight from registration completion to the Twitter list to (a) confirm that they’re now a member of the list and (b) skim through the pre-existing messages.

The concept is similar to a pre-event bulletin board or forum – the beauty of using Twitter, however, is that unlike a forum (which needs a critical mass of initial postings before it really takes off), a Twitter list is “pre-seeded” from the natural activity of the list members’ tweets.  You can be sure that as users register for your event, they’ll first tweet that they “just registered” – and then, continue to tweet about the event (especially as the event date draws near).  You’ll want to encourage all registrants to include your event hash tag when they tweet.

Facilitates pre-event networking among registrants

Whether physical or virtual, a key reason people attend events is the networking aspect – being able to meet, connect and interact with others, to discuss common business challenges – and to extend their social graphs.  Too often, however, one arrives at an event with no idea whom else is attending.  A Twitter List changes the game – you’ll not only know the identity of folks who are attending, but you’ll feel like you know them very well.

Consider friends or family members that you follow on Twitter or Facebook – do you find that you come to learn and understand them more via status updates than interacting with them day-to-day (or over the years)?  It’s remarkable how social network connections can generate a more complete picture of an individual.  With pre-registrants to an event, you may find that you’re really getting to know individuals, based on their intra-day status updates and industry thoughts.

This will lead to events whereby attendees will have pre-arranged meet-ups and appointments (with other attendees) in advance, making their event experience more rewarding.  Perhaps someone will build an integration from Twitter List pages to LinkedIn, so that event registrants can also extend their LinkedIn connections directly from the event’s Twitter List.

Allows exhibitors to get to know registrants/attendees

This will need to be managed/handled properly, as registrants surely wouldn’t welcome unsolicited pitches from exhibitors before they’ve even attended the event – but, imagine the potential for exhibitors.  You get to know the users who are attending the event.  Perhaps you create booth content or special offers that are tailored to what you’ve learned about your upcoming booth visitors.  Did they talk about pricing challenges in your market?  Well, how about an event-exclusive price break on your product, which you announce at the event?

If users commented about technical challenges using your product, bring the right specialists into your booth so that you directly address this pre-event feedback.  Lastly, exhibitors can seed some “must meet” lists based on the registrants who are tweeting within the list – build a profile of interesting users and ask your booth reps to be on alert if those individuals visit your booth.

Can you believe it?  Something as simple as a Twitter List can go a long way to making everyone happy: registrants/attendees, exhibitors and … YOU.

Related links

1. 10 Ways You Can Use Twitter Lists (Mashable)
2. Five Essential Twitter Lists For Every Event (CrowdVine)

Source: flickr (User: Werkplay)

In this age of social sharing, participation, “users as publishers”, Facebook updates and Twitter tweets, the webinar is a seeming anachronism.  In your typical 60 minute webinar, the presenters speak for 45-50 minutes – and the only “participation” from the audience occurs when the presenter selects your question to be answered.  Users are not able to see questions submitted by other viewers – in fact, they rarely know how many other users are also viewing the webinar.

At the Feeding the SAP Ecosystem blog, there’s an interesting posting titled “SAP Virtual Events: A Work in Progress“.  Here’s a great quote about webinars:

Or the presenters drone on too long, overloading the audience with slides and not coming up for air until there is a few minutes left and the participants are too burned out to even attempt a last minute question. Webinars that incorporate reader chat and questions throughout the broadcast, rather than exiling them to a shrinking time slot at the end, are much more effective.

I agree wholeheartedly with this observation.  I believe that webinars can be much more engaging if they adopted an unconference model.  According to Wikipedia, “an unconference is a facilitated, participant-driven conference centered around a theme or purpose”.  As a webinar presenter (or sponsor), you’ll still want to define the topic and prepare a set of slides to reinforce your speaking points and presentation objectives.

But, what if you were to hand over some control back to the audience?  It requires a leap of faith, I know.  But when the audience is directly involved, I think you create a more rewarding user experience – and, you stand to benefit as well.  User involvement should directly result in engagement, retention and satisfaction.

Here are some simple ideas from Web 2.0 that can be applied to create Webinar 2.0:

1. Audience drives the content selection – the presenter flips through two potential slides to the audience and then pushes out a survey to the audience.  The survey prompts the audience to select which slide they’d like to see covered.  The presenter then publishes the survey results and advances to the slide that won the vote.  This addresses one issue I’ve had with webinars – I attended the live webinar because the topic intrigued me; however, the content didn’t quite hit the mark.  If presenters gave more control and input to the audience, they’d have a better chance of giving viewers what they want.
2. Audience members render their own slides – akin to a virtual meeting (e.g. WebEx, GoToMeeting, Adobe Connect), where the meeting host passes control to another participant, who then shares his/her desktop.  For webinar platforms that support this, imagine how powerful this could be.  Viewers would need to know to come prepared with slide content – but imagine the presenter asking for real-world case studies of a given technology and allowing a viewer to render a slide about his real-world implementation experience.  Again, this is a leap of faith and a “risk factor” in surrendering control of the content.  However, isn’t that what Web 2.0 is all about?
3. Better balance between PowerPoint content and Q&A – a typical webinar has an 80/20 split (or more) between the PowerPoint presentation and Q&A.  I think it should be more like 50/50.  Scheduling frequent pauses (to answer questions) provides a lot of value to viewers – it means that they don’t have to wait until the 50 minute mark to have questions answered – and it signals to the audience that the presenters are “listening” to them.  Along these same lines, the webinar platform should allow all viewers to see all questions submitted by attendees.  And to cap it all off, follow up after the webinar by publishing an FAQ – list commonly asked questions along with their answers.
4. Answer questions coming from the statusphere – define a Twitter hashtag for your webinar and have staff available to monitor the tweets – then, have presenters address and answer interesting questions that were posed via Twitter (and other social tools).  This allows you to extend the audience of your webinar – and engage with users who might not be able to attend.  Additionally, have staff members tweet back (with the answers), so that users monitoring the tweet stream know that you’re not only listening, but participating back.

I’m sure we’ve just gotten started – what tactics do you have to recommend for bringing Web 2.0 to Webinar 2.0?

Source: flickr (User: Samuele Storari)

The virtual events industry got its start in replications of a physical trade show or conference – the very first virtual events were virtual tradeshows, whereby platform providers re-created the look and feel of a physical trade show within a web-based environment.  These sorts of virtual events continue to gain traction and I expect to see continued growth as additional corporations (and entire industries) enter the mix this year and into 2010.

Due to the flexible nature of virtual event platforms, however, we’re seeing parallel growth occurring via many other virtual applications that ride atop the same shared infrastructure and platform.  As I wrote in a blog posting titled “Virtual Events: Available In Many Flavors“, we’re seeing virtual job fairs, virtual sales kickoffs and virtual partner summits running on vendors’ virtual event platforms.

Another application/venue that’s gained traction in 2009 is the virtual business community.  Rather than a discrete and fixed event that occurs over a live date (or a series of live dates), the virtual business community is a 365 day/year service that users leverage for explicit business benefits.  In my opinion, the Intranet of 2001-2008 will be moving towards virtual business communities, powered by the same platforms that service virtual tradeshows.

For me, the concept of intranet does not inspire much excitement or enthusiasm.  I’ve used intranets to find information (specifications, pricing, a phone number, etc.), but have never yearned to log into the intranet while bringing up my morning email.  “It’s just there” was the mentality I used to have.  I believe that virtual event platforms can create a vibrant and virtual business community, significantly moving the intranet concept up the value chain.  In fact, the business community becomes a virtual office, tearing down physical walls (and cubicles) to turn a globally distributed workforce into a close-knit and collaborative team.

Here are key tactics in building a vibrant business community:

Get users to keep coming back

You want your user base to login to the business community each morning before they even fire up their email client.  In fact, a truly successful business community may support email-like communications within the platform, making users less dependent on email.  To get your users to return over and over, you need:

1. Content - it needs to be timely, relevant and useful.  Business-critical content should be housed here – the type of information that users need to get their job done – pricing sheets, internal contact information, customer contact information, product documentation, competitive analysis, etc.  Don’t lose sight of the timely angle – have your executives post company updates/news and make them available via videocasts or video webcam.
2. Network effect – a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem here – but, you need to get a critical mass of engaged and sought-after employees interacting in the business community.  Once you have that critical mass, you’ll see the community grow, as the “draw” will be access to and interactions with key colleagues.  This is the same network effect that AOL Instant Messenger, Facebook and Twitter enjoyed – users sign up because their friends, family or colleagues were already there.
3. Enable social and interactive tools – today’s intranet needs to be empowered with the capabilities of AIM, Skype, Twitter and Facebook.  This way, I not only find documents to download, but I interact with key people who have the answers I need.  If I’m a product manager and need an answer from a lead software developer, he might not answer my phone call or return my email right away, but if I connect with him via text or video chat, perhaps he will.  After all, I’m finding him in an (online) environment that he’s most comfortable operating in.

Enterprise-enable your Business Community

Today’s most successful social networking sites/services are used in a consumer setting (i.e. friends and family) – ask yourself what makes them successful and determine how those features can be adopted in a 100% (internal) business social network.  I could see parallels of the following services made available internally within the business community platform:

1. flickr
2. Yahoo Answers
3. Skype
4. Facebook
5. Twitter
6. StumbleUpon
7. del.icio.us
8. Google
9. digg

The key, I believe, is not just to enable social tools for the sake of being social – it’s to enable social tools while simultaneously connecting those tools to your business applications and business processes.  Possible ideas:

1. Integration with your HR / Human Capital Database – if you have a rich profile on each employee (birth date, interests, job function, etc.), expose shareable information within your social tools and auto-fill that information to make it convenient for all users.  So if I’m sending out an internal tweet, my user ID is hyperlinked to a rich profile that describes all shareable information about me and my job role.
2. Integration with CRM Database – are users posting links to industry news and analysis?  How about doing a keyword search by company and matching those up to sales opportunities in your CRM database?  If an article was posted about Acme Corporation’s latest product launch, let Acme’s sales rep know, so that she can contact them about applicable services that you offer.
3. Integration with ERP systems – perhaps a crazy idea, but what if you could tweet about your latest business trip and have the expense management system parse your (internal) tweet and auto-generate a row in your online expense report?

All told, the possibilities are endless and quite exciting.  I foresee the virtual business community (powered by a virtual event platform) to be a significant trend in the coming year.  I believe this to be the future of the intranet for 2010 and beyond.

Jeremiah Owyang has an interesting posting on his Web Strategy blog titled “Web Strategy: How To Integrate Social Technologies with Virtual Events“.  Jeremiah notes that the integration of social technologies should apply to both virtual and physical events – by way of these principles:

Three Principles Of Modern Events
To be successful, virtual –and real world– event planners must abide by the following principles:
1. Events should integrate with existing communities and social networks where they exist.
2. Events should have a strategy that includes the before and after –not just during.
3. The audience can assert control over the event, so encourage audience participation and know when to get out of the way.

I left the following comment for Jeremiah:

I’m a big fan of social networks – today, my primary networks are Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin.  That being said, I’ve considered today’s social networks to be a Version 1.0 of Web 2.0.  Now that social networks have built a critical mass of audience/community, I think that some key technologies can advance us to Version 2.0 of Web 2.0.  Some examples:

1. Presence Indication – While Jeremiah blogs that email was the first social network, I think of instant messaging as the dawn of social networking.  So all the way back in the mid 90’s, we had a technology to allow us to connect with friends, family and colleagues – and, provide presence indication.  I knew if my mom, colleague or best friend was online – and if they were online, they could indicate to me whether they were available or “Away from my desk”.  While some social network sites include in-page presence indication (including Facebook, with its Facebook Chat), I’m surprised that presence indication (and chat) have not been more tightly integrated into the core service of social networks.  If I’m running a social network site, but my users are using AOL IM or Skype for presence indication and text/webcam chat, then I’d want to build better presence/chat tools into my core platform.  Or, integrate existing technology, so that my users launch their IM client within my service.
2. Personalized Spaces – Facebook has done a great job in allowing me to post pictures, videos, links, status updates, etc.  What about blending the existing technologies/applications within Facebook with virtual world technologies to create a virtual room (for personal use) or a virtual office (for b-to-b use).  Vivaty is thinking along these lines, as they’ve integrated their 3D virtal world technology into Facebook.  So within Facebook, I can build a personalized room with Vivaty and invite my friends (or colleagues) to visit and interact with the objects I’ve placed in that room (e.g. perhaps a link to a movie review).
3. Profile Matchmaking to Extend Your Network – Virtual Event technologies have their roots in b-to-b use, in which virtual event show hosts tend to collect a deep registration profile on attendees.  This provides data points that allow the virtual event platform to recommend  like-minded attendees (who have similar profiles).  For personal use of social networks, matchmaking may not be relevant – you know whom your friends and family are and you’re probably not inclined to go find new friends (with the exception of a social site for online dating).  In a b-to-b setting, however (e.g. Linkedin), profile matching can be very powerful, as it allows you the potential to extend your network.  B-to-b networking sites that combine presence with matchmaking can create a powerful combination – imagine that I find like-minded people.  Instead of pressuring them to accept me as a connection, I can chat with them (based on presence indication) and introduce myself.  Later, both parties may be comfortable enough to become connections within that social network.

I’d be interested in your thoughts – what related technologies should social network sites look to build or integrate?

Source: BtoB Media Business

In the current issue of BtoB Media Business, Charlotte Woodward published a cleverly named article, “Face to Facebook“, that highlights the incorporation (by physical event organizers) of digital technologies into the once-static event web site.  The inclusion of these technologies is helping show hosts extend the life of their events and support a 365 day/year experience – with a (hopefully) engaged online community to go along with it.

The article references the latest CEIR / GPJ research report:

Digital sponsorships contribute only about 7% of an event’s marketing budget, according to a recent report from the Center for Exhibition Industry Research and George P. Johnson. The study, “Digital+Exhibiting Marketing Insights 2009,” conducted online in April and May, surveyed 287 event managers and corporate brand exhibitors about the use of digital media.

As a result of the trends noted in the article, my belief is that in next year’s report, the percent of event marketing budget allocated  to digital will climb to 15-20%.  Why?  Because online/virtual will become a standard component of physical events.  The “new” event web sites of today – that include video, blogs, social networking, trackability, additional “impressions” for exhibitors, additional revenue for event organizers, etc. – could stand to benefit by leveraging a virtual event platform.  So rather than building your own event web site from scratch, you leverage virtual event/tradeshow technology to power the next generation “site”.

For the event organizer, the business model seems rather straightforward:

1. Bundle sponsorship of the online community with the physical event sponsorship – upsell those low/mid-level sponsorship packages into a premium package, which includes a presence in the virtual component (e.g. full-blown virtual booth, signage within the environment, etc.).  You can create a “presence” for all of your physical event sponsors, but only those who have signed on for the full bundle will have real content behind the virtual booth storefront.  Those who opt not to purchase the bundle will have only their logo in the environment – a great way to incent the non-believers to enter the fray.
2. Create value to attract online attendees – the online venue cannot solely be an area to appease exhibitors/sponsors.  In the same way you attract attendees to your physical event, you need to make it valuable for online attendees to visit your virtual community.  For me, this means a combination of compelling content (e.g. videos, articles, external links, etc.) and effective social/sharing tools (e.g. blogs, message boards, chat, etc.).

The incorporation (blending) of physical and virtual events creates very exciting possibilities.  Let’s consider what b-to-b publisher Hanley Wood is doing:

Additional improvements also integrate all the customer data Hanley Wood has collected, demonstrating to exhibitors and attendees who register that Hanley Wood remembers them and allowing the company to make recommendations based on a customer’s profile and history of participation at its events.

“We can put together some cross-show marketing, as well as up-sell the events that these people participate in,” Buraglio said.

The aggregation of attendee data from physical + virtual creates value:

1. Attendees - by better understanding all of the touch points by an attendee (across physical + virtual), event organizers can more effectively package and target content that’s uniquely tailored to that attendee.  Give attendees precisely what they want (or need) and you create a more satisfied user, who will be more likely to stay engaged and return to the site frequently.
2. Exhibitors/Advertisers – by building a complete picture of physical + virtual engagement from attendees, you can more intelligently plan and execute your lead follow-up paths.  If a user had her badge scanned at your physical booth, then entered your virtual booth to download 3 separate documents, she’s probably an advanced lead / “A” lead.

Related links

1. Blog posting: The ABC’s Of Lead Follow-Up For Virtual Events
2. Blog posting: The Convergence Of Physical Events And Virtual Events

In May, SAP’s annual SAPPHIRE conference (SAPPHIRE 09) floored physically in Orlando, Florida, with a concurrent virtual event online.  This week, Cisco’s annual Cisco Live conference followed suit, with a physical event in San Francisco, California and a concurrent virtual event online.

Full disclosure: My company (InXpo) was the virtual event platform provider for both the SAPPHIRE and Cisco Live virtual events – and, I worked on the Cisco Live virtual event.

During a presentation at the Virtual Edge Summit in May, a presenter from SAP noted that considerations were made concerning the potential of cannibalization – whereby physical attendees may stay at home to attend virtually instead.  However, he noted that in reality, a combination of physical and virtual event extended the overall reach – and the virtual component served to augment the overall attendance count.  When combined (physical+virtual), this year’s attendee count for SAPPHIRE was the largest ever.

This week, I attended Cisco Live on-site, but spent most of my time online to support the virtual event.  However, in experiencing all the touch points of the event, it quickly occurred to me that the entire notion of physical vs. virtual is blurring – they’re coming together to form an aggregate attendee experience.

Some participants are not able to travel to the event’s venue – and as such, their only choice is to participate in a virtual component.  For those on-site, they can choose the attendee path that suits their preferences.  Perhaps that means attending the John Chambers keynote in person, grabbing a cup of coffee, visiting the World of Solutions (exhibit floor) and then returning to the hotel room to login to the virtual event, to follow up with a few exhibitors in their virtual booth.  Later, that same attendee may visit the customer apprecation event in Second Life, and then attend a tweetup at a nightclub (in person).  Here’s an image of my Second Life avatar at the Tuesday evening Second Life dance party:

The author's avatar with right hand raised

To make this convergence really work, I believe the following should be done:

1. Create a unique value proposition for each venue – virtual event, virtual world, physical event – do not simply re-purpose one into the other.  Dannette Veale explains it quite well in a Cisco Virtual Worlds blog entry, The Value of Virtual Events.
2. Tie the venues together in a logical fashion – link the venues together where it makes sense.  Convergence should happen for a good reason – and not for the sake of convergence.
3. Give the attendees freedom to choose – allow attendees to choose their own attendee path, without forcing them down any one direction.  Leave the hooks in place and each attendee will follow their own path.  Some physical event attendees may opt out of any convergence and focus 100% on the physical event.  Others may actively engage in the virtual event while on-site physically.  Either path is fine.
4. Integrate social media across the spectrum – whether it’s Visible  Tweets displayed on a physical monitor or Facebook integration with the virtual event – integrating social media increases engagement within the attendee experience and also extends the reach of the event to networks of social networks.  Here’s an interesting example of user generated, social media at the physical event – a physical whiteboard that asked attendees to write about where they were in 1989:

In Cisco Live Virtual, elements of the physical event were streamed into the virtual event.  By doing so, virtual event attendees (who could not travel to San Francisco) were still able to get a taste of the physical event experience.  For instance, webcams were deployed throughout the physical event to stream in live feeds from the show floor – and to host personalized webcam chats with Cisco executives.  One of the webcams was pointed at this Solutions Theater – from which virtual event attendees had a continous live stream of presentations given throughout the day:

Here are some of the ways I experienced physical/virtual event convergence:

1. Watching John Chambers’ keynote presentation online, via a Live Webcast streamed into the virtual event (by On24).
2. Viewing a Cisco Live Second Life session (LIVE!) from a booth in the virtual event – the session was broadcast by treet.tv in Quicktime – so users needed the Quicktime player but not the Second Life client application.
3. Watching a live (physical) demo of Telepresence, which was broadcast via a Live Video Webcast, which was carried within the virtual event (many layers of convergence there).
4. Participating in live chat sessions that Cisco executives (Carlos Dominguez and Padmasree Warrior [separately]) attended via webcam.  Attendees typed their questions (via text) and the executives answered via webcam / audio.  The executives answered just about every question posed, so it felt like a personal meet and greet with the executives.
5. Walking past the NetQoS physical booth – and noticing one of their demo workstations displaying their booth in the virtual event.  Quite a good idea – host visitors to your physical booth and remind them of your presence in the virtual event.  That prospect can’t return to your physical booth next week (when the event is over), but they sure can visit your booth in the virtual event [at any time] to find the needed information.
6. Reading one user’s in-show blog, where he asked physical attendees to name the “one [physical] booth that should not be missed”.  This particular user was not able to attend physically – but, he may be able to visit the virtual booths of the vendors recommended by his peers.

Moving forward, I expect to see many more events follow this model – whereby physical events will leverage virtual event and virtual worlds technologies to accomplish the following:

1. Deliver additional value to the physical event
2. Extend the reach of the event to a global audience
3. Blend physical and virtual components to create a more compelling experience
4. Drive stronger event revenue and ROI!

I hope to see you at a future event – I haven’t decided whether I’ll be there physically, virtually or both.