The BusyEvent Blog

When you come to a fork in the road, take it.  #eventprofs #assnchat #tradeshows

Yogi Bera . . . we surely miss quotes like these not because of their statement, but because of their power to get us to think.

Which is exactly what happened . . . I started thinking about the state of the events industry and the fork in the road where we find ourselves today.

But not for long because hey, it’s Father’s Day and you know . . . I had relaxing to do . . . until I found Mike McCurry’s (@mccurrym) Tweet about leadership and his link to Michael Hyatt’s “20 Questions” article.

And as I read through those questions, I started thinking about our role in all of this . . . in essence, what do leader’s do when there’s a “fork” in the road?

Over the next several weeks, David and I will attempt to provide our perspective on these 20 questions and hopefully add to the conversation about where we want to take the events industry and where it’s going to end up without us.

Here then, “Michael Hyatt’s 20 Questions to Ask Other Leaders”

1. Can you name a person who has had a tremendous impact on you as a leader? Maybe some one who has been a mentor to you? Why and how did this person impact your life?
2. What are the most important decisions you make as a leader of your organization?
3. As an organization gets larger there can be a tendency for the “institution” to dampen the “inspiration.” How do you keep this from happening?
4. How do you encourage creative thinking within your organization?
5. Where do the great ideas come from in your organization?
6. Which is most important to your organization—mission, core values or vision?
7. How do you or other leaders in your organization communicate the “core values”?
8. How do you encourage others in your organization to communicate the “core values”?
9. Do you set aside specific times to cast vision to your employees and other leaders?
10. How do you ensure the your organization and its activities are aligned with your “core values”?
11. How do you help a new employee understand the culture of your organization?
12. When faced with two equally-qualified candidates, how do you determine whom to hire?
13. What is one characteristic that you believe every leader should possess?
14. What is the biggest challenge facing leaders today?
15. What is one mistake you witness leaders making more frequently than others?
16. What is the one behavior or trait that you have seen derail more leaders’ careers?
17. Can you explain the impact, if any, that social networking and Web 2.0 has made on your organization or you personally?
18. What are a few resources you would recommend to someone looking to gain insight into becoming a better leader?
19. What advice would you give someone going into a leadership position for the first time?
20. What are you doing to ensure you continue to grow and develop as a leader?

Where’s the Value in Conferences?
#eventprofs #assnchat #tradeshows

NOW is the time that the events industry, and those that are tired of the traditional and inefficient ways of doing things, have been waiting for.

What two things have your clients been asking you for – and what are you doing to deliver?

To find out what we’re doing at BusyEvent . . . Click Here!

think what we’re doing matters and that’s always nice.

Thanks Stephen!

Tradeshows . . . Where Good Leads (no longer have to) Go To Die. Almost a year ago we wrote a series of articles on the challenges that tradeshow attendees face: Tradeshows, Where Good Leads go to Die (Part 1 & Part 2), our version of a Jerry Maguire document.  Taken as a whole, it outlines the problems in the tradeshow and events industry and describes a set of solutions.

So today, as part of the solution, we are launching BeLinker, a proprietary software and integrated hardware system designed to improve audience response, face-to-face social networking, lead management and data-based revenue creation for events.

What is BeLinker and the BusyEvent Event Bookmarking software platform?  Among other things it solves the “We don’t do trade shows because there’s no value in them” problem, for exhibitors.  Everyday, we talk with event managers, vendors sponsors, speakers and attendees discussing the good, the bad and the ugly about their events.  One of the core issues we discuss is the pressure for a return on investment in the expo or booth area.

In any economy, participation in an expo is dependent upon the amount of qualified leads a vendor received for their time, money and efforts. But simply agreeing to invest in a show is only half the battle because traditional lead management only produces a list of who was “scanned”; a list of a list, if you will.  It can’t produce a list of truly ‘qualified leads’.

The follow up on these lists can be daunting and is typically done by placing those new leads into the sales pipeline for eBlasting or even worse “dialing for dollars” phone calls made by the newest sales trainees or more expensively, top sales talent.

After a busy show, attendees get pounded with junk mail and emails and phone calls thanking them for stopping by and ‘pitching’ the product or service.  As a result, little list qualification occurs and they simply become part of the database going forward.  Solving that problem is what generated the lead management component of BeLinker (PDF Download).

And now the story that started it all… Years ago, we attended one of the tradeshows about tradeshows. We happened across one of the dozen or so ‘event management’ companies (translation – event registration software), ate the candy, took a brochure out of guilt, and thanked them for their time.  We learned a lot from that experience.  We were two people in a show full of several thousand attendees. We came, we saw, we talked and then we left . . . For us, that was that.

And that’s when the emails and the phone calls and the invitations started coming.  “We’re having a webinar!”, “We’re doing a luncheon in your town!”, “We’re offering new modules that we’ve stacked on top of the other ones… it’s all shiny and new and you MUST BE THERE to see it!!!”

Since we were relatively unimpressed with what we saw and were already well into the development of the BusyEvent Event Management Platform, we opted-out and took this one-time experience as a good dose of what not to do.  Our event management clients were telling us what they wanted, didn’t like, wished they could have and we had already been building tools like this for over a decade as one-off software. The time was right for us to build an event platform.

But the lunch invitations kept coming.  Even as we were launching Version 1 of BusyEvent and made no secret to who we were, nobody at the “we’ll invite you to a luncheon and show you our stuff” company had any tools or information to know if we were a qualified lead or not – so we’re still on the list today.

Last week, we received another email (the 4th in a period of 6 months) about another lunch and demo of their tools and that’s when we sat down and started doing some math.  What did this one unqualified lead cost them and how many unqualified thousands more are rattling around in their system?

If they had just been able to sift through the thousands of contacts they gathered at the event we attended to find the 50-100 good and qualifiable leads it would have been more useful to them.  What they do with the other 900 is up to them . . . so, here’s what we do:

1. First, everyone doesn’t get a color glossy brochure that will sooner-than-later find its way into a landfill.  Instead, had that original event had the BeLinkers (PDF Download) in use, every contact could be filtered and the qualified leads would get more attention.
2. Then, we track who downloaded our PDF brochure, clicked on the link to our site, blog, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc… and expressed ANY follow-on interest.
3. By self-identifying as ‘interested’ each of those more-qualified leads would get a call from us about the real actions that occurred (we met, we talked, you clicked a link, etc…) and as appropriate, those qualified-leads would continue through the sales funnel until a more expensive contact, such as a meeting, a lunch, or demo, etc…made sense.
4. The others would all get an invite to a webinar, links to downloads and perhaps a quick 3 question survey about what they’re interested in.  And they’d remain in the ‘more qualifications needed’ list.

Before Event Bookmarking, Sales and Marketing would have no way to measure a successful show other than the number of contacts they gathered – qualified or not, “just get me names”.  Those really aren’t leads, but rather, names on a list.  Then inside sales is incentivized to get people to come to the luncheon no matter what their level of interest.  This occurs over and over until nobody knows where the leads came from or what money is best spent on Marketing.  It’s the “brute force approach” and we believe that budgets will never be there for that, ever again.

What you’ll see by watching the 5-minute LIVE BeLinker Presentation is what we’ll address for every attendee; the actual measurement of ROI and the identification of which contacts are worth spending time and money on and converting into leads.

That’s why . . . rather than continuing to be part of the problem, we’re offering part of the solution.

What is BeLinker and the Event Bookmarking Software Platform?

Among other things, BeLinker solves the “We don’t do trade shows because there’s no value in them” problem, for exhibitors.

It’s a software and purpose-built hardware platform that combines Lead Management with Audience Response, Face-to-Face Social Networking and an online information source to extend a 3-5 day event into a 365 day year-round connection between attendees, vendors, speakers, sponsors and event managers.

So, feel free to download our ‘Green Friendly’ brochure and call us to discuss how to cut the cost of event management in half while getting quality event information as it happens.

As more and more people utilize BusyEvent Express, it’s always valuable to gain their experience and learn about our tools from someone else’s perspective.

One of the things we’re learning quickly is that crowd sourcing is a great way to “learn what sucks so you can know what’s good” (thanks Beavis).

This past week, Marc DeWalle from the NCStartUp Blog (Twitter) began using Express and his experience pointed to an issue we had with how Paypal was returning payment clearances.

Things were working the way they were supposed to, but sometimes the information presented was confusing ticket purchaser (you can read more by reading “That’s What Beta Means“).  So, with Marc’s help, we were able to get things fixed quickly and now we’ve got a better product because of it.

You can read more about what happened and also the national program that Marc is putting together to support startups at his blog: The North Carolina Startup Blog, part of the nationwide Springstage network of startups.

Thanks Marc!!!

An Example of How to Integrate Twitter, Into an Event

As an events management company, we are focused on making every BusyEvent as ROI-rich as possible.

The question our event producer and meeting planner clients always ask is “What can BusyEvent do to help me communicate more effectively with every participant in a meaningful and targeted way and in real time?”

Which is, in essence, the same question event participants (attendees, sponsors, vendors and speakers) have been asking, “How can I be part of the conversation, meet the people I need to meet and get from the event what I’m looking for?”

As part of our Event Bookmarking system, we are including a Twitter-capability that provides everyone with the ability to efficiently and quickly communicate with each other and doing so without changing their innate behaviors.

Imagine, if you will, the following scenario:

During online registration, registrants are asked for their Twitter name (not their password) and are given the option to “follow” the event’s Twitter account.  The opt-in capability gives registrants the control they need and the BusyEvent registration system handles all of the requests seamlessly through the Twitter API.

Pre-event, organizers heavily promote “Follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/NAMEOFEVENT”.  They send out “here’s who just registered” messages, “here’s who’s been added to speak”, “special discounts for the first 100 people to Tweet us with [[message]]”, “only 5 rooms left at the event price of $xxx at the [[hotel]]”, “be sure to complete your PURLs”, etc…

Once onsite, the “follow us on Twitter” message is EVERYWHERE; on the check in kiosk screens, on the schedule section of every badge, on the event staff shirts and the ‘swag bags’, on the sponsor signage, etc….

By integrating Twitter, we create a private communiations channel that secures the conversation to the approved group.  In this private channel, people can blast messages to anyone ‘following and being followed’ in the approved group in an ongoing conversation.  And, this private channel isn’t restricted to people attending the event; it can also extend to the virtual participant.

For those that can’t attend, but want to keep up with the event and were approved to do so, we can integrate the Twitter stream with a live video stream to provide a ‘you are there’ experience (we saw this at DEMO using Facebook’s real-time chat feature).  In the future, virtual attendance could be a revenue stream, as well.

For those that are attending and want to participate in a casual way, we can integrate Twitter with the BusyEvent Digital Signage System, and sniff the Tweets in this private channel, projecting those messages and that conversation broadly for attendees to view.

By Tweeting things like “checkin on Level 3 is still open”, “open bar from 7-8pm sponsored by [[name of sponsor]]”, “keynote by [[speaker]] is starting in the Grand Ballroom”, event managers are able to effectively and quickly communicate with every participant in a way that improves the overall event, in real-time.

To comunicate with each participant, Twitter can be integrated with the BusyEvent Communications Profile System to micro-target certain sub-groups of people, or even individuals, for highly personalized messaging like “Come to Booth 123 for more information on our e-waste program” targeted at CIO’s,  or, “Mr. Jones, your boss is trying to find you!”

The opportunities are endless and the above examples are just a few ways that organizers can integrate  Twitter into the BusyEvent system pre and during the event.

Once the event concludes, and to extend the effectiveness of the event into a person’s “real life”, Tweets can be sent to remind participants to visit their PURLs (where attendees can go to download presentations, see who ‘bookmarked’ them, learn more about the people they met, etc…. ), lost-and-found information, targeted sponsors/speaker messaging based on the sessions the person attended (not that they were signed up for, but those they actually attended), etc…

If it gets to be too much, the participant simply ‘opts-out’ and obviously, over time, the messaging from the producer diminishes until they spin up their event for the next year.

The best part of all is that now the organizers can be included in the conversation and take actions immediately, rather than waiting for things to bubble over, causing them to be in reactionary mode.
Plus, the organizers also are able to more evenly deploy their resources and proactively communicate what’s going on.

In all, Twitter is becoming a permanent element of the way we run events and combined with the BusyEvent Communications Tools, is an invaluable and cost-effective channel to connect event attendees, get them involved in the event, improve their overall experience and create a real-time communications channel for organizers.

We’re Hiring a web designer to Zen Garden our event management application.

Our goal is to show off the flexibility of the visual design flexibility of the BusyEvent event management platform.

You won’t have many constraints, you can make it look like whatever you want, as long as it’s something we can show to clients. This should be a lot of fun, and a good chance to stretch your creative muscles.

We’ll give you 3 static HTML pages that duplicate dynamic pages the BusyEvent Meeting Manager Event Management system creates, along with the css files for them.  You will create a new style sheet and image folder that dramatically redesigns those pages.

If you’re interested, send a brief overview of your experience along with links to at least 3 or more live sites you designed and wrote the CSS for to hireme@pmgstl.com.

All of the layouts should be done in CSS, and a strong preference will be given to designers that use clean, standards-compliant code.

On the other hand, we believe in getting things done, so we’re not going to worry about perfect code if your awesome design work required a few ugly hacks to make it work.

Include your pricing and a rough timeline in your proposal.

Danielle, on LinkedIn, asked a really good question about the use of technology at events.

Here’s her question:
I am a student . . . studying Event Management. For one of my classes, we have a project where we have to plan an event and all of the technology for it. My main focus as of now is on the pre-event technology: websites, blogs, registration, etc. I would love to hear from people who have experience in planning events as to what kinds of things are involved with technology before the event takes place. If you have anything you would like to share about technology during or post event, that could be helpful as well.

Our response:
Hi there Danielle. Great topic and at the risk of being totally self-promotional (sorry about that folks), I’d invite you to visit our two blogs:
1 – Events industry focused discussions: http://busyevent.blogspot.com
2 – Company focused discussions: http://www.busyevent.com/blog

I think, as a general industry trend, pre-event is where most of the technology lives. From onsite registration to communications like our BusyEvent Express and Meeting Manager system, with add-on ‘community’ tools like EventVue. So far, the focus has really been about creating buzz, getting people to the event and then “good luck!”, has seemed to be the attitude.

It’s our opinion that what’s lacking is at-event and also post-event use of technology to enhance the experience for every attendee (sponsor, speaker, vendor, registrant) as well as the event producer.

Tools like Event Bookmarking that link people, products and information together, while onsite and PURL pages that provide an ongoing event community post-event, are critical to the success of an event.  Another onsite tool we’ve used with great success is Wiffiti which allows text-to-screen messaging and Eye-Fi instant photo/video transfer.

Additionally, the use of environmentally friendly tools and techniques are just reaching acceptance – save the paper, save the world – is just one example.

Would be happy to discuss this further, please reach out through our web site and best of luck.

Building the “THING” . . . It’s a lot of fun and we’re about ready to share it with the world . . . which is why we’re so excited.

Event management systems are generally built around solid, stable core code that has been tested over and over from every angle by all kinds of people. At least, that’s the way we’ve built BusyEvent.Today, our Chief Architect, Director of Systems Development and all around good guy ran into my office and declared “WE’RE BUILDING THE THING!”. And from what I hear, that’s a pretty rare thing since most systems like ours are built incrementally, not by gigantic leaps and bounds ahead in thinking and capabilities.

With our investors fully behind what we’re doing, they’re encouraging us to continue pursuing our vision of what event management systems can be and so, “WE’VE BEEN BUILDING THE THING!”

This THING-building started in early 2008 when we began concepting and bringing to life our vision of what a better event on-site experience should be; one that is rich with opportunities, interaction, networking and information.

Since then, we’ve devoted a significant amount of time and effort to planning, concepting, preparing for and starting to code ‘The THING’ . . . and now, we’re almost ready to roll out the public beta.

So, what is this “THING”? It’s a software module that plug-and-plays with BusyEvent’s Core Platform enabling immediate and pertinent interaction between people, information and products.

• See a product you’re interested in? Bookmark it and review on your PURL.
• Meet a really interesting attendee or see a really good speaker and want to follow up? Bookmark them and review on your PURL.
• How about a product or if you’re a vendor, a lead? Using the Event Bookmarking system you’ll be able to view the product, see the person, download product PDFs and link to web sites and learn as much as you care to about the product – all from one place, your PURL.
  • And for the vendor . . . see which are the most target rich people you’ve met by observing which links they’re clicking on your PURL. . . and then tailor your follow up conversation to match their interests. Paper Brochures? . . . blech!  Leave them at the office and save the trees for making air.

By the end of March, we’re going to make our “THING” available for private beta testing to about 100 people.  If you’re interested in helping us bring the THING to market, send an email to THING@BusyEvent.com .

Max Levchin, Paypal co-founder is a good person to listen to and learn from.  Recently, he’s been discussing the lessons of Web 1 and how Web 2 is repeating them.

To his mind, the current crop of Silicon Valley (read: Me Too Social Network) companies are “ . . . too constrained by Web 2.0 conventions: status updating, comments, friend lists, fans, gradient icons, and feeds.“  As you would expect, we completely agree.

Why?  Becauase it’s our opinion that as stand-alones, Social Networks don’t matter or more accurately, few of them matter because there’s so much ‘copy catting’ going on.

The level of innovation isn’t there. Instead, it seems most are focused on writing BigCashOut2 instead of something novel or unique. And who can blame them? Take your average 20, 30, 40, 50 entrpreneurially spirited individual, throw all sorts of VC at their latest Facebook/Mobile/Photosharing mashup and for certain, nearly anyone would jump at it.

The missing piece, at least in our opinion, is that virtual doesn’t matter much. It’s simply the vehicle for a better type of interaction. That belief in innovation is at the core of the BusyEvent platform and the Event Bookmarking system.

Example, yesterday we met with someone we would have NEVER met or connected with (geographic challenges) without the social mesh.  With it, we were able to connect and meet when her travels brought her to St. Louis.

The point is, that Max is right.  It’s the in person connections that matter and further, it’s the ability to meet in real life and leverage that back to your social mesh that matters most.  Companies that can foster your online life, help you leverage that on site and then allow you to bring that back to a deeper and enhanced online relationship will succeed.  People like meeting people and business is done face-to-face.

Innovation isn’t dead, and our daily focus needs  to make sure that it doesn’t get smothered under a bunch of ‘me too’ pillows.

Lest we forget the lessons of Web 1 (it’s NOT about the technology), we’re doomed to repeat them.  Good on you Max and thanks for the reminder to not repeat our past mistakes.