Four years ago, CompTIA contacted Interactive Meeting Technology/SocialPoint to help them deliver their first online event. The goal was to deliver an online, educational event to at least 100 attendees and have them remain online for at least two sessions.
CompTIA had nearly 1,000 registrants and over 300 attendees that first year. Four years later, their attendee numbers have skyrocketed to well over 4,000.
This is how we did it, through a strong collaboration between us, the vendor, and an engaged and motivated client team.
We live in the participation economy. We have phones in our pockets that are one tap, click or voice request away from finding anything that we want to know on the Internet.
When I look around, I still see events struggling to integrate and use technology to tap into the power of their attendees to create content and conversations. So, why are we still stuffing people in chairs in rows quietly for hours on end in our events? Why are we still using the lecture model?
Today, senior leaders have a unique opportunity to use events as a transformative tool for their organizations. More specifically, they have the opportunity ask hard questions, tackle unsolved problems and use events as a tool for collaboration.
Over several years of creating interactive digital games for event producers and trade show marketers, we’ve evolved our business model towards configurable digital trade show games, because it provides far greater value to our clients, and makes both of our lives easier.
We used to do mostly custom programming, creating one-off solutions that required weeks if not months of work, 5-figure budgets, and a lot of late nights and weekends. After years of stress, we realized that we could change the way we serve clients by building a game platform where choices and customization was done via a simple interface, not programming.
People come to meetings and conferences for lots and lots of reasons. Here is my list of 20 reasons people come to conferences – in no particular order:
Learn best practices
Learn new skills – How to’s
Learn about new trends
See a vision of the future
Listen to a “Star” speaker
Earn continuing education credits
Get new ideas
Try new concepts
Listen to industry experts
Gain inspiration – from networking with peers in the industry
Meet new people
Re-connect with old friends
Share war stories (stories of difficult challenges overcome)
Share your experiences
Meet with like-minded people
Become re-energized as you become part of the larger whole
Discuss common problems
Realize that you are not alone with your thoughts and opinions
Meet with several suppliers or customers in one place
Had to go – the meeting was mandatory
Why do I think this list is important?
I like to look for “hidden” insights that might help me change my perspective and challenge me to think differently. If I can learn something new that changes my perspective – then I might be able to come up with better recommendations, new solutions, etc.
For example, once this list was assembled, the following words jumped out at me: Try, Share, Meet and Discuss. To me, these are action words used by people that like to engage in dialogue at conferences. They are not the words of people that want to sit and be entertained for 8 hours.
