Author Archive

Michelle Issing

The conference that you have spent months planning went off without a hitch - your attendees, sponsors and exhibitors all left happy and the goals of the conference were accomplished. But now what? To get the most out of your conference start thinking about it not as just a three or four day event, but as a year-long event – continually engaging your audience. Here are some great ways you can utilize technology to easily and effectively communicate with your attendees, potential attendees, exhibitors and sponsors to keep your conference going year-round.

Podcasting

Podcasting is fast becoming one of the most popular ways to distribute electronic media. Any form of electronic recording (video or audio) can be turned into a podcast for distribution over the Internet and can be replayed on a computer or MP3 player.

Conference sessions can be recorded and offered as downloads from the conference website. This can be a valuable resource to attendees and a great way to let those that did not attend the conference see what they missed. Try “releasing” one session podcast a month or take one of the longer keynote presentations and break it up into smaller sections to create a podcast series.

Other podcasting ideas include recording conference attendee testimonials or “teasers” for next year’s conference. If you already have speakers confirmed for next years event have them record a short segment about what they plan to speak on. As a sponsor benefit, offer sponsorships of podcasts to increase sponsor visibility throughout the year.

Online Communities

One of the most beneficial parts of attending a conference is networking and sharing ideas – so why limit that experience to just the conference? There are several technology tools that you can easily set up to give this experience to your attendees year-round. The newest and most robust is a blog – the next generation of online discussion forums.

A conference blog offers a central location for interested parties to post messages that become on-going online conversations on many different topics. Individual discussion threads can be categorized by topic and date. Blog topics can parallel conference development activities such as venue selection, conference schedule, general session speakers as well as breakout session topics. This makes for a tremendous vehicle to attract interested individuals to your organization and conference.

Targeted eNewsletters

eNewlsetters are a great way to market an upcoming conference to your potential attendees, but why should everyone get the same one? If you have been able to track session attendance during past conferences or capture demographic information about an attendee during registration, you already have a goldmine of information. Use that information to create a segmented mailing list and create specific eNewletters just for them. This can be articles of interest, current events or even just a list of the upcoming conference sessions that they may be interested in.

Need help with any of the items above or developing a 12-month marketing plan? Contact Designing Events at info@designingevents.com or 866-867-1933.

Michelle Issing

Hurricane. Terrorist attack. Avian flu outbreak. Staff strike. Missing attendees. Is your heart beating fast yet? Meeting planners today have more worst case scenarios that need to be planned for than in the past. September 11th completely changed our idea of risk management and the Avian flu was not something that meeting planners considered a year ago. This past May, two attendees at a conference in California went missing during a Saturday tour trip. Luckily, that story had a happy ending, but what if it didn’t? You don’t need to have a plan for each and every situation that might arise, but some thought and planning can help reduce your risk and help things run smoothly if a situation arises.

Make a Plan

The first step is to draft a risk management plan, including planning for risks such as natural disasters, accidents, technology situations (ie. power outage) and human-caused risks (ie. speaker is a no-show). Risks specific to the destination, venue, attendees and program should also be included. The plan should outline responses to different situations, the responsibilities of staff members, facility staff and hired security and how media will be managed. Your risk management plan should be reviewed and revised yearly and as new possible risks arise.

How to Minimize Your Risk

The three best tools to minimize your risk are a site inspection, the contract and insurance.

Site Inspection

During your site inspection, it is important to find out what type of emergency plan the venue has – including evacuation plans, what type of training their staff has and the type of emergency equipment that is on site. In the case of a health emergency, find out which staff members have CPR/First Aid training and how they can be quickly identified. To avoid an allergy related emergency, be sure that the food will be labeled on buffets and breaks.

Contracts

All contracts – including those with speakers and performers – should include Force majeure clauses – that is, what will happen should a situation arise that is beyond the control of either party. This should include things such as strikes, wars, threats or acts of terrorism, weather, travel advisories or disease outbreaks. Also include a catch all provision that will cover anything else that was not listed.

Insurance

It is important to understand your commercial general liability coverage for each event. If you are going to have anything held off site, be sure that you are covered if you are temporarily off business premises. Also find out if there are any exclusions in the policy such as physical activities or alcohol use. It may not be worth it for every event to pay for event cancellation insurance, so think each event through carefully to determine what is best for you.

Do you need help with your risk management plan? Contact Designing Events at info@designingevents.com or 866-867-1933.

Michelle Issing

For many meeting planners, technology is all about helping us perform our jobs more efficiently – from online registration systems, printing name badges, tracking attendees and managing budgets. Sometimes it may be easy to forget that technology plays a very important role in an attendee’s experience. Below are some ways technology can improve that experience.

Wow - That Was a Great Presentation!
In today’s world of instant information, near constant Internet access and ever-changing technology, attendees are beginning to expect more than just a single speaker reading off of PowerPoint slides. Technology makes it easy to really jazz up your presentations and begin to truly engage your audience. PowerPoint can easily be combined with Flash animations, embedded audio and video and other cool features that can really enhance a presentation.

Wait – Don’t Go!
It does not matter how great the presentations are if the attendees don’t attend. Keeping attendees in the meeting environment is always a challenge for planners, especially with the distraction of PDAs and cell phones. Setting up an Internet café outside of meeting rooms that provides Internet access between sessions will encourage attendees to stick around.

Giveaways – Yes Please!
With the PhRMA code and the new California Marketing Compliance Law (CMCL) restricting what giveaways are appropriate, wowing attendees with expensive giveaways are a thing of the past. One giveaway that has recently become popular is a USB flash drive imprinted with a company or conference logo. Information about the company or conference can be saved on the drive for attendees to access later. Attendees can easily use the drive for other purposes.

That Would Have Been Cool…
Technology is wonderful when it works, but if something goes wrong it can leave a bad impression of the presenter and the conference. Every failure can’t be avoided, but you should take steps to ensure that they are few and far between. Be sure that you have full IT support throughout the entire conference in the meeting spaces, Internet cafes and the exhibit hall.

The Next Best Thing
Technology is always changing and attendees will not always be impressed with technology that was new yesterday. Don’t wait until you have seen something at several conferences before trying it. To keep your conference fresh and innovative – push the envelope!

Michelle Issing

Todays’ discussion about the value of meetings and conferences moves to a new plane. Instead of focusing only on the Return on Investment (ROI), Executives are beginning to focus on Return on Objective (ROO). Our opinion… measuring the true value of meetings and conferences often requires that you use a combination of both.

ROI typically expresses the worth of a meeting or conferences in monetary terms – the number of dollars gained or lost as a result of the meeting or conferences after you account for all associated expenses. ROO, on the other hand, measures whether the objectives of a meeting or conferences have been met, such as whether sales representatives can recall the selling points of a product six months or a year after a sales training meeting.

Since the goals for hosting meetings and conferences typically expand far beyond monetary reasons alone, simply looking at the financial aspect of your meeting is incomplete when measuring value.

We highly recommend that senior staff determine very specific objectives and get the buy in from all key players within your organization at the beginning of your planning process. Your overall goal then, and a means to measure the success of the meeting or conference, should directly relate to comparing the results found through financial reports, surveys, growth, and much more. Event managers need to be able to provide credible data supporting the value of the meeting or conference.

When determining how you are going to measure the results of your conferences or meeting, understand that the answer is not one size fits all. For some client’s, we find that ROI is the best measurement means, for others, it’s ROO and still others it is a combination of both.

One of the most important aspects of our job as conferences and meetings planners is to help our client’s determine how they will measure the success of their meeting or conference. At the very beginning of the meeting or conference planning process, we sit down with our clients and work with them to figure out what they want to accomplish during the conference or meeting and how to best measure that. It’s imperative to take this first step in order to effectively determine how successful your meeting turns out to be in the end.