Personal Lessons Learned from Event Camp Twin Cities (#ECTC11)

September 2, 2011 |  by  |  Engagement, Event Marketing, Hybrid Events  |  No Comments
Personal Lessons Learned from Event Camp Twin Cities (#ECTC11)
Last week, I attended the Event Camp Twin Cities conference in Minneapolis, MN. I was honored to be invited to speak at the conference by Samuel J. Smith, one of the co-founders of the conference. What excited me about this conference is its overall mission to push the limits of what we can do with event technology. And I took this to heart, using this as an opportunity to debut a “new presentation.”

While there has been quite a bit written regarding the pros and cons of this model and how to truly merge two audiences – physical and virtual - for a hybrid experience (see summary below), my intent is to share my personal lessons from ECTC 2011 (in no particular order).

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Market Your Virtual Event Like a Movie

July 5, 2011 |  by  |  Engagement, Event Marketing  |  No Comments
Market Your Virtual Event Like a Movie
2011 is the year of the blockbuster comic book action hero. No matter where you go, you see some promotion, tie-in or article about X-Men, Green Lantern or Captain America. While your virtual event marketing budget cannot rival the movie studios’, it doesn’t mean you can’t market your virtual event like they do.
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Virtual Church

May 9, 2011 |  by  |  Engagement, Hybrid Events  |  No Comments
Virtual Church
I had my first personal virtual experience yesterday – as opposed to a business experience – when I attended church online. I had every intention of attending physically, but it was Mother’s Day, and I had a lazy kind of morning, then realized as I stepped into the shower that we’d never make it. I knew my church offered a livestream – and I’d been wanting to check it out – so I sat down in my sweats, with no make-up and wet hair, ate breakfast and attended church.
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The Current State of the Virtual Environment Industry

March 9, 2011 |  by  |  Engagement, Hybrid Events  |  No Comments
The Current State of the Virtual Environment Industry

by Idaho National Laboratory via Flickr

In late 2008, the financial crisis and onset of the global recession negatively impacted the meetings and events industry. Corporations pulled back on travel, slashed budgets and even canceled previously scheduled events in the name of cost cutting efforts. Yet, organizations could not stop meeting altogether. Meetings planners were still needed to plan, design and implement a multitude of corporate gatherings – customer conferences, product launches, sales trainings and more. They just have to do this with drastically reduced budgets and staff.
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Brian Wilson, Celebrity Talent and Virtual Events

September 29, 2011 |  by  |  Content, Engagement, Event Marketing, Other Buzz  |  No Comments
Brian Wilson, Celebrity Talent and Virtual Events

Tony Lorenz, founder of bXb Online (Note: Cece is providing consulting services to bXb Online), wrote an intriguing post today regarding Celebrity Talent and virtual events inspired by Brian Wilson’s of the SF Giants foray into virtual events. Tony highlights three considerations when leveraging celebrity talent for your event:

  1. focus on the objective, not the talent
  2. be relevant to your audience
  3. integrate the celebrity throughout your event

Are there other considerations to add?

The Brain and Meetings

April 5, 2011 |  by  |  Engagement, Other Buzz  |  No Comments

This article in MeetingsNet, Brain-Friendly Meetings – Not Just the Flavor of the Month, looks into the role that the brain plays in our boredom at meetings. While the focus was on physical meetings, there are salient points for creating interesting presentations for an online audience. The comments provide more insight as well.

Pre-Event Touchpoints to Engage Attendees

March 30, 2011 |  by  |  Audience Acquisition, Engagement, Other Buzz  |  No Comments

These “8 Ways To Create Pre-Conference Customer Touchpoints” apply just as well to virtual events as they do the physical conferences Jeff Hurt wrote about. Great tips – clip, save and use!
http://bit.ly/hMrSsz

Employing Virtual Guides for your Event

March 30, 2011 |  by  |  Content, Engagement, Other Buzz  |  No Comments

An interesting concept from Dennis Shiao on personalized guides to help virtual event attendees acclimate to the environment, find what’s hot, connect with other like-minded attendees and generally get more from a virtual event. As he points out, it will certainly add costs to an event, but might increase the engagement level to a point that it’s worth it.
http://bit.ly/i7on6j

Mobile Will Become Part of the Virtual Experience

March 29, 2011 |  by  |  Engagement, Hybrid Events, Mobile, Other Buzz  |  No Comments

As mobile becomes more a part of the face-to-face event industry, so too, will it become more integrated with virtual and hybrid events. Three examples here from Social 27’s Ike Singh Kehal.
http://bit.ly/fUuJRT

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