Yes, the #eventprofs chats are back! These popular, one hour, Twitter chats on a wide range of topics of interest to event professionals will be once again held twice-weekly: on Tuesdays 9-10pmEST/6-7pmPST and on Thursdays 12-1pmEST/9-10amPST/7-8amGMT starting on May 3, 2011.
Got questions? Here are some answers.
What is #eventprofs?
#eventprofs was founded in February 2009 on Twitter by Lara McCulloch-Carter. The #eventprofs chats were one of the earliest Twitter chats—find out more by reading Lara’s history of #eventprofs.
Who will be moderating the chats?
Twenty(!) members of the #eventprofs community have each committed to moderating a chat every 6-7 weeks. Our current volunteers are:
Please thank these sterling volunteers at every opportunity! I have volunteered to act as a moderator manager, working to keep the chats scheduled as regularly as possible.
How are chat topics chosen?
Anyone can suggest and vote on possible topics for #eventprofs chats at our new AllOurIdeas page. We urge you to do so! The more suggestions, and the more votes, the better our chat topics will be. Moderators will occasionally use their discretion to choose chat subjects, particularly when there are topical events or issues to discuss.
How do I know what chat topics are scheduled?
There are two ways to stay informed about upcoming #eventprofs chats:
This week has seen three articles published on crowdsourcing in the events industry. Crowdsourcing events is hot! Here are comments from someone <shameless brag> who has been crowdsourcing conferences since 1992.
Are We Thinking What I’m Thinking?
The longest and most detailed article is Are We Thinking What I’m Thinking? by Barbara Palmer. It appears in the September issue of PCMA Convene magazine. I, of course, love this article because I feature extensively in it. (And, all the photos are mine!) Massive kudos to Barbara for quoting me accurately and clearly conveying my crowdsourcing philosophy, perhaps the most radical approach described, that of using crowdsourcing to determine sessions at the event.
Barbara also interviewed Sam Smith, who, together with Ray Hansen, organized last week’s Event Camp Twin Cities (at which I ran a couple of sessions). ECTC used crowdsourcing very successfully at the session design level by reaching out to the #eventprofs community, asking for suggestions for novel session formats and content, and then creating a conference program that incorporated many cutting-edge ideas. One of the refreshing strengths of Event Camp Twin Cities was its overt philosophy. “We are trying new stuff here, and probably some of it won’t work.” The result was a truly innovative conference, full of enlightening experiments (with very few failures, as it turned out).
The 2011 GMIC conference
Next, Barbara asked Elizabeth Henderson about her ongoing work on the design of the 2011 Green Meeting Industry Council Sustainable Meetings Conference. Elizabeth is concentrating on creating crowdsourced event design teams with members drawn from a variety of backgrounds and viewpoints. This is another way to use crowdsourcing at the pre-event level that helps to avoid a groupthink mentality.
What meeting professionals think
Finally, Barbara quotes various meeting professionals’ views on crowdsourcing, around the theme of the role of the expert compared to the role of the crowd. In this section, the viewpoints expressed downplay the value of the crowd’s input. This is the crowdsourcing as a minor fad point of view. The possibility of influencing session topics and content is mentioned. But the description of crowdsourcing’s value for “entry and exit music, entertainment options, ways to green an event, reception themes, and party-venue options” implies relegating its importance to the relatively superficial.
And the final two comments—”I suggest that event professionals crowdsource topics, content ideas, and suggestions – and steer clear of crowdsourcing speakers and actual sessions” and “Crowds can tell you what they want…But an expert can say, ‘You are going to need to know this'”—revert to the old worldview of novice attendees being guided by wise non-attendee experts. Such a worldview ignores the reality that conference audiences invariably contain a healthy mixture of novices and veterans.
The Good and the Evil of Crowdsourcing Conference Content
The second article is Michelle Bruno’s The Good and the Evil of Crowdsourcing Conference Contentfrom the Trade Show News Network. Michelle starts by saying “Event organizations that crowdsource conference content are learning there is a right way and a wrong way to solicit community feedback.” This formulation is unfortunate for two reasons. First, as we’ve seen above, there are a number of ways to approach crowdsourcing an event, and it’s simplistic to say that any of them are right or wrong. Second, the article offers no evidence that any particular approach is better or worse, except for the gut instincts or opinions of the people Michelle quotes.
The 2010 PCMA Education Conference
First, Michelle describes Mike McCurry’s work on developing peer networking sessions for the 2010 PCMA Education Conference held in June. Since the event is over, it’s a shame that there are no follow-up comments as to the effectiveness of Mike’s pre-event crowdsourced topic selection. Perhaps this information exists but is unpublished.
South By Southwest
Next up is South By Southwest’s crowdsourcing of 30% of their conference sessions. I tend to agree with Jeff Hurt (quoted in the Convene article) that for a conference of this size, the process SXSW uses becomes a popularity contest rather than participatory crowdsourcing. This is because there’s no significant pre-selection communication between attendees and/or the folks offering the sessions. So we end up with what is basically online voting on thousands of suggestions.
NTEN
According to Michelle’s article, the same kind of process is used by the Nonprofit Technology Network, which points out that it takes about 90 minutes to vote on every one of the 400+ sessions suggested for their 2011 conference. It’s unreasonable to expect more than a small fraction of attendees to expend this kind of effort, so the question then arises: How representative of all attendees are the responses NTEN gets?
The article continues with comments by Chris Bucchere about using (what he calls) crowdsourcing in a very different way from the above examples. He says “Using your community to ‘spec’ work for you is an ‘evil’ way to crowdsource.” This declaration ignores the common thread in all the above uses of the term: namely that crowdsourcing is also a win for participants because they get the sessions & formats they want. Chris’s idea of using crowdsourcing seems to be about building community/brands via contests with incentives for the winners. Perhaps this is an effective strategy for “anyone who wants to leverage the power of the social web to build a brand”, but it’s hardly new; advertising contests go back to at least the 1920s (e.g. Ivory Soap) and it’s a stretch to relabel them crowdsourcing, even if we’re using a social media platform for them now.
In closing
In closing, Michelle says “On the other hand, there is such a thing as giving the community so much power that they begin to make specific demands that may or may not be in keeping with the goals of the conference or the organization.” This brings up the issue of control at events, something that I’ve written about before. In 20 years of using crowdsourcing at events, I’ve never experienced an instance where a majority of participants made unreasonable demands. On the contrary, on every occasion when something unexpected (to me) has emerged from good group process, it’s turned out to be an accurate and useful way to improve the conference.
How web video powers global communication
The final article isn’t, in fact, an article, it’s a just-released video of a 19-minute TED talk by Chris Anderson entitled How web video powers global communication. In it, Chris describes what he terms Crowd Accelerated Innovation: “a self-fueling cycle of learning that could be as significant as the invention of print”. Chris argues that the rapidly increasing availability of web video is drastically speeding up the ability of people all over the world to focus on and improve the best-of-breed sharing they discover on their screens.
In a sense, web video becomes a tool for effectively crowdsourcing experience and experiments. Chris believes that this new medium has the potential to revolutionize learning and the development of new ideas and their implementation. But he cautions “…to tap into its power, organizations will need to embrace radical openness.” I think there’s a certain degree of hype in his presentation, but it’s well worth watching.
So, there you have a variety of ways in which crowdsourcing is entering and affecting the world of events. Which ways, if any, speak to you?
How can we better support event professionals? was the topic of a fascinating August 5, 2010 #eventprofs chat (archive), moderated by the “Queen of EIR“, Jenise Fryatt. The chat was noteworthy for its energy around two initiatives that emerged during our hour together:
An online resource for answering event industry questions
An online resource for matching volunteer mentors and mentees
Responding to the energy, I registered the domain www.eventprofsanswers.com during the chat and set up a skeleton website. As you can read in the archive, many chat participants were enthusiastic about this action and asked how they could help move these initiatives forward.
Since the chat, I’ve had offline discussions about developing the website. Most correspondents have been positive, though a minority has expressed some reservations.
So, how can we better support event professionals?
Here are some of my conclusions and questions arising from the discussion so far
I think it’s important to have the widest possible initial discussion before proceeding further. We need to find out what other #eventprofs think and hear from professional association members and the associations themselves.
I’m not aware of significant attempts to use online technologies to address the two initiatives, other than the ad hoc use of Tweeted questions using the #eventprofs and allied hashtags. Perhaps there are existing resources we’re not aware of?
There seems to be evidence that some event professionals, especially perhaps those who entered the industry through non-conventional paths (like me), would appreciate a central online location for posting questions and finding appropriate mentors (either online or face-to-face). How easy has it been for you to get your events-related questions answered? What has your experience been with the availability of and satisfaction with existing industry mentoring programs?
I have already received a number of individual and association chapter offers of support (thank you, everyone!) If you would like these initiatives to be implemented in some fashion, what are you willing to contribute to making this happen?
Do you have suggestions for additional online initiatives that would address event professionals’ needs?
I want to make it clear that I am personally completely open to the process and the organizational structure used to implement these initiatives. Perhaps an online resource would be run by a group of volunteers, perhaps it could become part of an existing professional association’s online presence and services, or perhaps it would remain an independent presence that is formally supported by an association’s staff. What do you think?
Lots of questions! I believe the professional events community, would like to know your responses. Either comment below or write me privately if you prefer. I look forward to everyone’s input!
[Written in 2010, I’m keeping this post up because it includes many suggestions that are just as relevant today.]
Having agreed to moderate an #eventprofs chat this evening, I thought I’d whip up a short, anonymous survey on #eventprofs’ life-work balance. I received 21 responses in the ten hours the survey was open, and here are the results:
1. How many days in a week do you normally work?
2. How many hours in a day do you normally work?
3. How many hours in a day do you spend traveling to work?
4. How do you feel about the amount of time you spend at work?
5. Do you ever miss out any quality time with your family or your friends because of pressure of work?
6. Does your organization offer any of the following options for work/life balance? Are there options you would like your organization to offer?
Other comments:
7. On a scale from 1 (extremely poor) to 10 (extremely satisfied), how would you rate your current work-life balance?
8. Please add any additional comments about your work-life balance here.
So those are the results of my informal poll on #eventprofs life-work balance.
What issues make it hard for event professionals to maintain a healthy work-life balance? What has helped you or others ? Feel free to add your own comments!
At our events, what should be the mix between content versus conversation?
A few days ago during an #eventprofs chat, I tweeted Cory Doctorow’s remark (made in 2006 in a boing-boing post): Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about. This inspired a variety of comments from such #eventprofs luminaries as @JeffHurt @MichaelMcCurry @lyksumlikrish @JaredGoldberg @camerontoth and @samuelsmith.
Here’s the point I was trying to make.
Sure, we need to have content at our events – something to talk about. But content is everywhere—I don’t need to go to an event to get content! If I never left my office again (now there’s a thought), as long as I paid my internet provider’s bill each month, I could choose, receive, and absorb content for the rest of my life.
And what a miserable life that would be.
I need connection, engagement, and conversation to make my life meaningful. And, in my experience, so does most of the human race.
Content these days is ubiquitous. Face-to-face events are the places for powerful, life-changing connection and engagement. That’s why we need to make them the best possible environments for conversation we can. And when we do, our conversations will naturally encompass the content that is meaningful for us.
(Part two of my reflections on EventCamp 2010, held February 6th in New York City. Part One here.)
Image kindly provided by Sofia Negron Photography
As at every good conference, it was the people who made EventCamp 2010 most memorable. I can confirm that #eventprofs are just as cool face-to-face as online! To be warmly accepted in New York City by members of a virtual community that I joined just ten weeks ago, and to enjoy curiosity and interest about my book and Conferences That Work from members of the professional events industry for many years was a great experience for me.
I made and strengthened many relationships at EC10, and I learned some interesting things. Hopefully some will be new to you as well. Here’s a summary:
Paul Salinger: 1) Oracle runs thousands of events every year. Oracle’s European face-to-face meeting attendance was falling. Making them hybrid events (f2f events with a simultaneous remote audience) has turned this around. 2) But Paul is not a fan of the current generation of commercial virtual event platforms.
Twitter is being used successfully to drive retail sales to physical venues (e.g. “first 100 people to whisper “puppy” at our New York store get a free cupcake”).
In a similar vein, Jeff Hurt kindly explained to me how FourSquare is being used to cross-market between businesses that are close to each other (“check in at this hotel and get a free drink at the neighborhood bar tonight”).
How to price attendance at virtual events compared to the price for traditional attendees? No agreement at EC10 – one person had successfully charged the same (~200 people, half present half remote) which surprised most people. Someone suggested trying a contribution model.
Robert Swanwick recommended posting video clips of conference presenters online before the event starts, giving participants an advance look so they can better choose the sessions they attend.
Tools for event streaming: Robert mentioned Procaster for stream editing and his product twebevent [Jan 2013 update: alas, twebevent is no more] which is available in a free version.
Jeff Hurt gave everyone a Post-It note and asked us to “write what you want to learn in this session”. He had the notes read out, while simultaneously grouping them into similar themes. Then Jeff facilitated a session discussion and exploration of these themes, while skillfully weaving in his own comments and thoughts. This was a simple and effective technique for letting groups effectively explore the issues they want to explore.
Have an “MC of remote audience” who monitors the back-channel (usually a hashtagged Twitter feed) for audience questions and comments and communicates them to the local audience.
Find out who your brand champions are (specific customers who are enthusiastic evangelists for your products/services), stay in close touch with them, and be real nice to them!
Google “social media releases” to find out about how to write them – they’re not the same as traditional press releases. You can build social media releases on pitchengine or prweb.
What’s the most common technical problem for hybrid events? Not enough Internet bandwidth! Mary Ann Pierce told us that for several thousand people, she supplied dedicated 100MB service!
Here’s a great idea of Jeff Hurt’s to help to keep a balance between the needs of face-to-face and remote audiences during a session. Periodically, have the f2f audience hold five-minute discussions in small groups, while the speaker interacts directly with the remote audience!
Remember that the typical attention span of an attendee at a session is about ten minutes. Consider switching your mode of interaction frequently to hold attendee interest.
Don’t just stream events. Record the stream and make it available on demand. A lot more people will watch it that way.
That’s my list. If you were at EC10, feel free to add yours!
(This is the first of two posts about EventCamp 2010. This one contains my first impressions; tomorrow I’ll write about what I learned there.)
EC10 – you had to be there…
Yesterday I attended EventCamp 2010 (#ec10) in New York City. It was a remarkable one-day conference organized by a colorful group of folks who coalesced around the #eventprofs hashtag on Twitter. In one year, their online connection generated enough energy to fuel the hard work needed to put together and run a successful face-to-face and simultaneous online conference for progressive event professionals from all over the U.S. A big shoutout to Christina Coster, Jessica Levin, Mike McCurry, Mike McAllen, their volunteers, and all the other folks involved for all their hard work putting EventCamp 2010 together.
About EC10
EC10 was a hybrid conference. While I’ve used the term hybrid to refer to conferences that are a mixture of peer conference and traditional conference, the #eventprofs crew use it to describe a conference that’s both face-to-face and online. Some 70 of us came to NYC, with an unknown (to me currently) number virtually. Since even I can’t be in two places at once, I couldn’t experience what it was like for the remote audience. But I’m very interested in reports from members of the #eventprofs community who attended online.
One really cool thing that the EC10 organizers did was to stream live interviews with each session’s leaders right after the session ended. This gave the remote audience exclusive extra content, with even the opportunity to ask questions directly afterward. (Remote questions were also answered during the sessions). It was like TV award ceremonies, where the cameras go backstage and the TV viewers get content that the physical audience doesn’t. The interviewer was the remarkable Emelie Barta, who I’d recommend to anyone needing smart media-savvy company promotion. While I’m handing out kudos, all of us owe a big vote of thanks to Core Staging who donated their time and equipment to make it happen for both the live and virtual conference.
I meet the #eventprofs behind the avatars
When I walked through the door of the charming Roger Smith Hotel, I had never met a single member of #eventprofs face-to-face. That changed in the next few hours. I fell into conversation with #eventprofs luminaries at Lily’s Bar, and later 22 of us took cabs for a meal at Piolas. Those little Twitter avatars I’d seen over the last few months were replaced by real live people. What fascinated me was how the spirit that I had felt in our online conversations came right through face-to-face. And no longer was our conversation restricted to 140-character tweets and blog posts.
I was really surprised by the professional diversity of the folks I met at EC10. Convention center managers, trade show presenters, hotel sales managers, social media consultants, trade booth designers, association staff, marketing professionals of every stripe, show service vendors, eco-event organizers, event management gurus, and the list goes on. I didn’t meet anyone who was a direct competitor of anyone else. Everyone had their own niche, servicing a unique set of needs. Perhaps this is a reflection of the fact that the events industry is HUGE ($100B per year), but it was cool to learn more about the field from every person I spoke to.
The EC10 program
We had a full day of sessions on Saturday from 8:30 a.m. – 5 p.m. The program had several sets of simultaneous sessions; I chose sessions on creating a hybrid event, integrating social media on-site, creating an online conference community, and balancing the needs of face-to-face and remote audiences. The latter was my favorite, run by the skillful Jeff Hurt. Jeff showed himself to be a master of finding out the group’s needs and then leading a focused discussion that uncovered many useful insights. (And he even ended on time!) I also enjoyed Samuel J. Smith‘s fishbowl (a favorite group technique of mine) on the on-site integration of social media. But every session contained nuggets of useful ideas and information.
A few negatives
For me, there were only a few minor negatives to the event.
I was disappointed that the conference program ended up having no free time slots for alternative sessions proposed by several conference attendees. I offered a couple of sessions related to Conferences That Work, but with worthy pre-announced sessions filling all the time we had, I didn’t get a chance to lead a session. (OTOH, there was widespread interest in my book, and I sold many copies, making my suitcase a lot lighter on the return journey to Vermont.)
The hotel’s wifi connection often buckled under the strain of live streaming and the highly connected attendees, which led to somewhat unpredictable Internet connectivity.
The clever unannounced lunchtime entertainment was entertaining, but took away time I would have preferred to spend on our energetic mid-day conversations.
Deirdre Breakenridge’s closing general session was, for me, the weakest. While a knowledgeable and likable speaker, she didn’t ask the audience what we wanted to hear about and gave a prepared talk that didn’t really grab my interest. It was noticeable that, unlike other sessions, the #ec10 Twitter stream reflected very little of what she said.
After a high-energy but very enjoyable day, many of us retired to Lily’s once more. From there, we walked a block to Connolly’s where I greatly enjoyed dinner with Karen Levine, Jenise Fryatt (the famous @lyksumlikrish – my favorite Twitter name), and Traci Browne. And then I staggered off to bed…