Did you hear the one about Danna Walker, an American University professor who required her “Understanding Mass Media” students to do an e-media fast? She insisted they do no TV, computers, iPods or other MP3 devices, radio, video
games, CD players, records, cell phones, or land phone lines for 24 hours. Despite student shrieks of, “What, no cell phones?” and other cries of desperation, the fast was done, reports were written, and results got discussed.
In her article published in The Washington Post, Walker reported some students said they had gotten more sleep or spent more time with their families. Others said it felt like they were in isolation, because they realized most of their friends weren’t in their same geographical area. Clearly, those students had been spending more time on social media sites such as MySpace than with classmates and others in their real-time sphere.
Walker’s students are among those born between 1982 and 2000—often tagged digital natives, millennials, Gen Y’s, or Echo Boomers. Many of them live with almost constant electronic connect to friends and information sources on one e-device or another. And it’s likely they will carry these habits right into their professional lives.
“Matchmaking programs, which are popular in the singles scene, will continue to work their way into the meetings arena to bring people of like interests together,” says Corbin Ball, CMP, CSP, a meetings industry technology consultant. “One good contact at a meeting can pay for the price of the entire trip. Using these technologies to assist people with connect can increase the value of an event significantly.”
MySpace now has over 100 million users, he points out, and if it were a country it would be the 11th largest in the world.
“The popularity of MySpace and similar social networks should not be seen as just a fad embraced by teens and 20-somethings,” Ball says. “These young people are the largest generation born since their Baby Boomer parents, and they are out in force. The fact that they are so connected electronically as young people means they will expect to be connected as older professionals, and both technology and virtual communities will have to keep up.”
Gen Y’s aren’t the only ones hanging out on the social networking media landscape, however. Keeping up with and getting ahead of the new media adoption curve is what many in the meetings industry are all about. They understand building community with the help of Web-based social media can bring significant benefits to real-time events, such as attendance-building. The new media also helps extend the life of an event well beyond its calendar and real-time boundaries. They eschew the notion that social software will obliterate real-time meetings any more than TV sent radio into oblivion.
What’s Social Media?
Social media reside in the high-tech genre known as Web 2.0. They allow users to interact with each other in the virtual world by posting content, opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives via text, images, audio, and video.
This new breed of high tech helps event organizers to build online communities that function before, during and after an event. Users post personal profiles, facilitate dialogues, brainstorm ideas, complete surveys, blog, and share in forums online. People get to know one another before an event begins by reading each other’s profiles to find out who shares their interests, and by conversing with one another online.
Participants may help event hosts shape the content and direction of a face meeting by answering questions about topics they wish to explore, speakers they want to hear, and sessions they want to attend. Once a real-time event is done, attendees continue conversations they started in the online environment.
Leverage Software founder and CEO Mike Walsh says his private label network has seen over a million users among major corporate groups and associations in its four years online.
“Our users receive a people map of individuals who most closely match their interests. They can share files, photos and videos in advance of the event to better inform one another,” Walsh says. “A calendar management tool is one component that’s built in. No contact information is shared by the system or by the community host—our client—but by the individual who owns the data. So the user defines what information he or she wants to share. Users also have the option to use an anonymous identity. Thus, others may see one’s interests and capabilities but no contact information if they chose not to offer it.”
Walsh says two of his association clients—the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) and Healthcare Information & Management Systems (HIMMS)—invite only members to their online communities. The organizations drive attendance and renewals from one event to the next, sell sponsorships, drive revenue through the network, and solicit attendee and sponsor feedback through the online neighborhood. Another association might decide to open their community up to everyone and sell advertising.
“It depends on what you are trying to accomplish,” Walsh says.
Event Promotion
Art DeArmond, CMP, vice president of Mpact, an independent meeting planning firm located in the Nashville, Tenn., area, said he is organizing the first-ever Christian Meeting Planners Convention & Expo in Atlanta next January. To build attendance, DeArmond launched an online community via Ning software.
“We wanted to create community for conference registrants, and we wanted a platform with lots of adaptability and ease of use, ability to change things as we go along, and so on,” he says. “Registrants may invite others into the community, and we will invite others from the planner database we have.”
Content on the community includes forums, competitions, blogs, and a link to the convention website. One important role of the community is to input opinion about speakers and topics for the convention. Another is a feature that allows conference registrants to schedule appointments with suppliers for the convention’s marketplace, he notes.
While driving attendance to your meetings is a cause worth celebrating, imagine that your annual conference is sold out nearly a year before its opening. That’s the situation faced by the Washington, D.C.-based American Institute of Architects (AIA).
Christopher Gribbs, vice president of conventions for the association, says he is exploring ways to service both suppliers and members who can’t attend its Boston conference next May. In particular, AIA would like to pull more young professionals into the convention experience, and they are looking to new media for answers.
As a first step into extending its reach, AIA is debuting its Soloso Web portal, a member professional knowledge and digital content resource, this fall.
“It has five years of convention programs,” Gribbs says, “and it’s also a place for members to connect. They can create a profile of themselves and then network with others in the system who have similar interests.”
Gribbs also is looking beyond two-dimensional media to accommodate his overflow situation.
“We are looking to specialists in virtual trade shows who might be able to help us accommodate exhibitors and members who can’t get to the show the usual way,” he says. “If we do this, they’ll be able to see and hear a keynote speaker via streaming video, for instance, maybe tour a bit of Boston, and network with others right at their computers.
“Also, on Second Life, there’s already an architectural island populated especially by young people in our industry,” he adds. “So, we’re thinking, the audience is already there, so maybe the association should be there, too, promoting communication and education among our members.”
AIA recognizes the value in using social media to accomplish objectives.
“We know it can expand our conference outreach, and that it will draw young people into our profession who might be underrepresented—our emerging professionals,” Gribbs says. “We are big on professional education, and we’d like to give them a good forum for learning that is free.”
AIA’s approach is right on, according to Rohit Bhargava, vice president of interactive media for Ogilvy Public Relations in Washington, D.C.
“The best events I’ve attended are where the event is shared with a wider group of people in real time,” Bhargava says. “They are using social media to broaden the audience. That gives an event real power, because it makes a ripple effect.”
Catalyst Success
Atlanta’s Catalyst Conference is one live event that is already populated by a lot of Gen Y people.
Brad Lomenick, executive director of the Catalyst Conference, says the annual event targets to 18- to 35-year-olds in church leadership roles, and draws a lot of attendees from its online community. About 10,000 attendees are expected at this October’s conference, which contains a trade show, educational programming and other resources. But Lomenick notes that the annual face meeting is regarded as a reunion by the online Catalyst community.
“We made a decision to create more of a community than a destination,” he says. “The virtual and physical gatherings are all part of the ongoing experience. It’s certainly what Gen Y’s respond to. We offer opportunities for people to create their own I.D. and post content on our platform, similar to what people do on YouTube and MySpace.”
His inspiration is the TED (Technology Entertainment and Design) Conference in Monterey, Calif.
“Everyone who does events should sit at their feet,” he enthuses. “It’s an idea exchange, and everyone from former presidents to politicians, historians and tech leaders like Steve Jobs speak at TED. But they have only about 800 people at their event—because it costs about six grand to attend—-and they do a simulcast for others who pay the same entry fee. But they release all their talks from the previous year’s events online, and anyone can sign up for them. They create quite a demand for what they offer, and TEDsters are all around the world. I am one who has never attended the conference, but I am in the community.”
Lomenick’s point is that real time gatherings will never go away, and online community drives people to them.
Replace Face?
While a major association like AIA moves toward mounting a virtual event and providing free educational resources to members, others have a wait-and-see attitude. Some fear loss of revenue, others fear loss of control. But the train is out of the station, say industry technology experts.
“Associations should be all over this media,” tech consultant Ball says. “They already have a built-in network among members that people are paying for. Only about 10 percent of members actually attend meetings, so what about engaging all those others? Just think if you could increase your attendance just 5 percent by using this media, how good would that be for the association? If you benefit your membership, you make more revenue.”
Rick Calvert, a trade show producer and founder of this year’s first BlogWorld & New Media Expo in Las Vegas in November, agrees that online communities don’t just cultivate virtual connections, they enhance attendance for a face event.
“Online communities don’t eliminate the need for a face-to-face event, they cultivate it and make it better,” Calvert maintains. “This is because you make friends and connections before you arrive. Then you go there to look for specific people, people you feel you already know. It makes it much easier to do business with an attendee or exhibitor you already know.”
