via Flickr by Karen Eliot

There has been an interesting discussion on Focus regarding the role of social integration within the virtual platforms. As social media and networking is an integral part of an overal virtual events strategy, including marketing, audience engagement, and event promotion, I wanted to higlight some of the key points mentioned that should be part of your checklist.

Note: Unless indicated, comments are based on my experience going into various platforms and are not indicative of any one platform’s pros/cons:

1. Registration: To date, most of the platforms require a separate registration form and then ask for your Linkedin, Facebook, and/or Twitter login information after you’ve registered. Oftentimes, this is a multi-step process. Points to consider:

Axel Shultze, CEO of Social Media Academy (@AxelS): “We use http://xeesm.com as a bridge between the virtual event platform – in our case On24 – and the social web.”

- Does your platform directly allow people to register using Facebook connect or other social network login?

- If not, do you have a third-party application that can bridge this?

Joerg Rathenberg, VP of Marketing, Unsifair (@jrathenberg): “On the microsite or landing page you have the ability for registrants to forwad the link to their communities using the integrated social media icons as well as email. You can also use twitter and FB icons to increase your followership from here.”

- After registering, can registrants share this with their friends and followers via social media or email?

- If so, can I append a conference/event hashtag to the message?

2. Friends & Family: If you allow the virtual event platform to connect to your social networks, the benefit of this is to evaluate your social graph to determine which of your connections are registered for the event, attend the event in real-time, and/or who might be interested in that event. Taking this a step further, based on your profile, and eventually the types of individuals you connect with online, the platform should then provide you with matches of prospective individuals with whom you should connect. This increases your networking opportunities accordingly.

- Do you have the ability to provide recommended matches based on my profile?

- Can you see which of my connections are registered/attending the event?

- Can you identify which of my contacts may be most interested in this event and send them a personal invitation from me to attend this event?

3. Consistent Social Presence: From my perspective, the social media integration seems to be inconsistent throughout the event. For example, the Twitter stream may be available in the lounge area but doesn’t appear in the exhibit hall or when you’re viewing a presentation. Furthermore, most of the platforms have two different areas for a general chat within the event, usually the Lounge, and for Twitter conversations – separate widget. There must be a way to integrate the two so two separate conversations aren’t happening around the same show.

Dennis Shiao, Director of Product Marketing, INXPO (@dshiao): “This level of integration is the deepest and involves the virtual event platform making calls to the social network’s API. The benefits are twofold: it creates a more seamless user experience for attendees (as they remain within the virtual environnment) and, it allows the platform to capture and track per-attendee activity with social networks.”

Francis Bacon, Director, More Conference: “The focus for us is creating an online space in which delegates can interact with each other, but sometimes delegates want to use Twitter to keep their followers (who are usualyl non-delegates) informed about the event they are attending.”

- Can the Twitter stream be viewed throughout the whole environment, such as during presentations?

- Can people have their comments in a group discussion automatically post to Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook?

- Will a hashtag automatically be appended to the status updates?

- What type of insight can I get from the social conversations?

4. Social Media Analytics: I highlighted some key points in my previous post regarding measurements and analytics, so I will highlight some key points related to social conversations. 

Joerg Rathenberg: “Dedicated Social media reports summarize social media activity by attendee and let you drill down to the content of the individual messages.”

- Can you provide overview reporting regarding the social activity by attendees on various social networks?

- Can you provide insight into the key conversations and trends from the conference?

- Can you pinpoint individuals or influencers I should follow up with based on their social activity?

5. Level of Social Media Integration: While all platforms state they have social media integration, the ”integration” may just be a link to an outside page or full integration. As Dennis highlighted in his response on Focus, there are three types of integration:

“A) Barebones, “non integrated”: Users click on hyperlinks and are then taken outside of the virtual event platform to a URL hosted by the social network…

“B) Social media widgets, “somewhat integrated”: Widgets are lightweight pieces of code that can be inserted into a virtual event platform to invoke social features – the code references operations hosted by the social network service…

“C) Full integration via Application Programming Interfaces (API): see above. ”

- Ask the platform provider what level of integration they are providing?

- How easily is it to “turn” on the features – click a check box or custom development required?

- Are these base features (included in the platform) or an additional cost?

Other Posts in the Series

1. Virtual Event Vendor Checklist Part 1: Event Support & Experience

2. Virtual Event Vendor Checklist Part 2: Planning Tools

3. Virtual Event Vendor Checklist Part 3: Engagement & Experience

4. Virtual Event vendor Checklist Part 4: Metrics and Analysis

via Flickr by Karen Eliot

With any new initiative, the ability to tie results to objectives is instrumental for receiving continued stakeholder support for the initiative. While many vendors tout their capabilities to provide detailed statistics, the question is how to go beyond raw data to actionable data. Furthermore, how easily can I take this data to develop the right reports and analysis for my stakeholders.

This includes insight into the intent of conversations – not just content, lead scoring capabilities, and integration with customer relationship databases. Questions to ask:

1. What type of data do you capture?

2. Can you provide me with industry-specific stats to benchmark my event statistics against?

3. How do I access this information? Online portal?

4. Can I customize the reports? Are these exportable to Word/Mac documents (e.g. Powerpoint slides or excel)?

5. I don’t have time to read all the booth chats and one-on-one chats that my staff engaged in. Do you have a way for me to easily qualify chats via keywords, intent or other type of analysis?

6. You can track people’s activity throughout my virtual event. Is there a way to “heat map” what path people took throughout my event? Note – to my knowledge, none of the providers provide this capability, though this information would be useful for improving the design and experience to drive people where you want them.

7. Is there a way for me to do A/B testing of ads and messages within the virtual event? Note: Again, I am unaware of this functionality. From a marketing perspective, I want to determine which messages resonate best for subsequent virtual events.

8. What lead scoring capabilities are there? How can I update my criteria from event to event?

9. Do you have integration with CRM systems? If so, which ones? And I mean this should be more than the “import excel” sheet functionality.

10. After the virtual event has concluded, do you have email notifications to let me know when people visit my event and/or booth? Or do I have to go back to the portal to find new visitors?

11. If I am doing multiple campaigns within a virtual environment, is there a way for me to determine the effectiveness of each campaign against my business objectives? Compare one campaign against another?

What other questions are your stakeholders asking you about virtual?

Previous Virtual Event Vendor Checklists:

1. Virtual Event Vendor Checklist Part 1: Event Support & Experience

2. Virtual Event Vendor Checklist Part 2: Planning Tools

3. Virtual Event Vendor Checklist Part 3:Engagement & Experience

Virtual events emerged as a technology for meeting professionals and event marketers to consider during the recession. Until now, most of the media coverage and research has been focused on how corporations and publishers have implemented this technology for their respective objectives. A new report, “Association Virtual Conferences: The State of the Sector,” was published in January 2011 that provides the first look into the current use and potential use of virtual conferences within the association and non-profit space.

The report is published by Tagoras, which helps organizations to leverage online learning to grow revenues and engage customers. After reviewing the review, three things emerged for me: generating revenue is a focus; growth within in the association’s space is still nascent; and whether or not virtual conferences will lead to perpetual environments.

“Simply throwing up a virtual platform and attempting to replicate what happens in a place-based event – many of which are not particularly engaging or effective from a learning standpoint – is a recipe for failure. There will be a learning curve as both association educators and association learners grapple with how best to take advantage of virtual platforms, but I have little doubt that they will play an important role in association education in the coming years.” – Jeff Cobb, co-founder of Tagoras

Generating Revenue Is a Focus

Motivation for Virtual Conference (courtesy of Tagoras)

The report provides interesting stats that highlight that virtual conferences are no longer a novelty for associations and non-profits. While driving audiences to the virtual conference may not be an issue for those who have done virtual conferences, the question of generating revenue from virtual conferences is ever present.

The business models range from charging virtual attendees similar prices as for physical conferences, to incorporating exhibiting and sponsorship opportunities to virtual conferences. At this juncture, many are looking to the physical world analogy to develop revenue opportunities for virtual conferences. I argue that this analogy may inhibit creativity to create experiences that are truly unique to online audiences; thereby discovering new ways to monetize the online conference.

Rather, organizers will be challenged to drive traffic to specific sponsors, deliver better insights into online conversations, and better match exhibitor with potential customers:  

“For many exhibitors, however, the different type of interaction that occurs in a virtual booth can feel less productive, and the nature of the environment also increases the likelihood of attendees ignoring exhibits altogether. On the other hand, virtual exhibit halls do offer exhibitors a new opportunity for exposure, and because virtual conference platforms are database-driven applications at their core, there is the potential for collecting valuable data about prospective customers. Whether these benefits outweigh the challenges for most exhibitors remains to be seen.”

Virtual Has Room to Grow

According to the report, the authors state that the rate of adoption of virtual conference will triple in the next 12 months:

“In a survey conducted from November 18 to December 23, 2010, 349 nonprofit membership organizations responded to a question about whether their organization currently delivers any form of instruction via computer, including a virtual conference. Only 8.6 percent, or 30 organizations, indicated having already offered a virtual conference.

While the percentage of organizations that have already embraced virtual conferences is relatively small, association use of this format appears poised to grow significantly in the coming year—among a subset of 257 organizations, 11.7 percent have offered a virtual conference, and 23.7 percent indicated that they plan to implement one within the coming 12 months. In other words, use of virtual conferences among this group may triple in the coming year.”

While the “rate of adoption” will triple within the next 12 months to 35.4%, nearly two-thirds of associations (64.6%) have no plans to incorporate virtual conferences. From my perspective, this indicates that 1) more education is required about the benefits of virtual, 2) associations have no intention of going virtual or 3) associations are still struggling to recover from the recession and virtual is not part of the equation at this time.

Perpetual Environments: Pro or Con?

While not highlighted as a challenge to date within the report, there was indication of how associations may leverage the virtual environment for ongoing activities with their audiences, leading to perpetual environments. I anticipate this to be an ongoing issue that many organizations – both associations and corporations – will face. Organizations that have already developed communities via social media or on their own website are now creating an additional “community” through the virtual environment.

“Representatives from two other associations are working on ways to attract people back into their virtual environment for activities throughout the year. ‘Once it’s built, it’s just there,’ said one of these interviewees, ‘and it’s very inexpensive to host it for a full year.’”

While inexpensive to host the content after the initial event, continuing the virtual conference as a perpetual environment or community presents additional considerations such as proper staffing to oversee the environment, consistency and integration with existing communities, alignment with corporate objectives, and more.

According to Jeff Cobb, co-founder of Tagoras, “Perpetual environments appear to be an emerging trend among some of the early adopters in the corporate world – IBM, for instance – but I have so far spoken to only one association that is seriously considering it. That said, I think it makes a great deal of sense for organizations that hold multiple place-based events and/or Webcasts throughout the year.  A perpetual virtual environment has the potential to become a valuable extension of their bricks and mortar infrastructure – or, for the increasing number of associations that operate virtually, it can become their main infrastructure. I don’t expect to see associations rush to embrace this option, but it has enough common sense to it that I would be surprised if something along these lines did not emerge over time.”

Conclusions: Achieving Full Potential of Virtual

While written for an association-based audience, the report provides useful information for organizations regarding virtual conferences from the typical features of a virtual conference to varying case uses. In addition to the number of graphs on areas about (include the items), the report provides lessons learned from early adopters and 20 top tips about virtual events.

When asked about the role of virtual conferences for learning, Cobb responded, “The most obvious is that they have the potential to increase access to education. As we point out in the report, most associations reach well under a majority of their members through place-based events. Virtual events increase the possibilities for reaching and delivering value to members who may currently be under served.”

And that is the full potential of going virtual.

via Flickr by Karen Eliot

A common thought is that the existing physical event team can “add” virtual as an additional responsibility. But in a recent post, Dannette Veale of Cisco refuted this approach, advocating that a virtual team be in place to manage your virtual event. Another misconception is that your virtual event vendor will provide the necessary tools to smoothly proceed with your event.

Also, don’t estimate the amount of collaboration that will take place. Have a systematic approach to capture these conversations, collaborations and decisions is key to minimizing misunderstandings and mistakes for your event. Consider using a centralized location for this. If the vendor doesn’t have an intranet/extranet, consider using something like Google Docs (share documents) or PBWiki (share docs and track changes with wiki functionality).

In the second in a series of posts, here are questions to consider when working with your vendor:

1.  
   1. 1. Do you have a handbook outlining all the steps for planning my event?
   2. 2. What is the typical timeline and milestones that I need to be aware of for this event?
   3. 3. Do you have a project timeline that we can mark our progress against?
   4. 4. What is the process for collaborating and documenting changes/decisions for the virtual event?
   5. 5. Is there a central place for our respective teams to collaborate?
   6. 6. I have never done a virtual event before. What are the key differences between planning a similar event virtually versus in person?
   7. 7. What team are you putting in place to help me with my virtual event? What are their roles and responsibilities?
   8. 8. What is the ideal virtual team that I should have in place? What are the roles and responsibilities for each person?

Other Posts In the Series:

1. Virtual Event Vendor Checklist Part 1: Event Support & Experience

Following previous interviews with key virtual event vendors, I interviewed Dannette Veale, Virtual & Social Technology Strategist, Global Sales Experience (GSX) of Cisco, to get an end-user perspective about virtual events and what technology innovations we can anticipate. Now a member of the Cisco Global Sales Experience team, Dannette previously produced the global Cisco Live and Networkers conferences as hybrid events. She will be speaking at the Virtual Edge Summit on future trends for virtual and hybrid events on January 12, 2011 from 2:15 – 3:00 pm.

In Part 1, we discussed virtual events, the pros and cons of being an innovator, and how Cisco leveraged several technologies for the Cisco Live hybrid events. In part 2, to be published next week, Dannette shared her predictions for events in 2011. Hint: it’s about mobility. Please leave any questions you have for Dannette in the comments.

How are virtual events being leveraged within Cisco?

Cisco leverages virtual in many ways.  We have flagship events like Cisco Live, which is annual user event with several points around the world, and Partner Summit event, which is our single point of activity for partner communities. And there are internal events, like the Strategic Leadership Offsite (SLO) and GSX (Global Sales Experience). We see virtual as a way to most cost-effectively take event activities to a mass audience.

For majority, Partner Summit and Cisco Live events around the globe, are physical events that are hybrid to extend the activity to a worldwide audience. There is some unique programming for virtual audiences. We don’t clone or repeat everything at physical event. We look at what will translate to the virtual and opportunities to create an experience that can’t be done at the physical event.

For example, keynotes are always presented at Cisco Live and taken to virtual audience. Virtual provides a unique or intimate experience for a post keynote chat session. Keynote speaker goes into a room to have a dialogue with the audience for questions that came up during the keynote. We leverage a space that the speaker can do an intimate chat with 10K people on site in Las Vegas and 30k+ people attending virtually.

That is where we see how virtual offers opportunities that you can’t facilitate at the  physical.And some in the physical won’t translate well into virtual. We have a technical solutions clinic on site at Cisco Live for attendees to visit on an ad hoc basis to work with Cisco support regarding deployment issues. In the technical solutions clinic the primary source for sharing information is a white board, this format is difficult to translate virtually. Therefore we have a modified version for virtual that we call the Ask the Expert Center, providing this on a schedule basis versus intervals. When you have 10-15K onsite, there will be plenty of foot traffic to the technical solutions clinic. In the virtual environment, the open-ended aspect doesn’t work as well and virtual attendees respond better with scheduled activities, such as ask-the-expert activities.

You’re incorporating several innovative technologies, such as augmented reality and QR codes. What are your recommendations for others considering using technology for their events? Pros and cons?

We haven’t rolled out some of the technology you mentioned. We had augmented reality (AR) featured at Cisco Live Europe 2010 with keynote speaker, Prof. Bruce Thomas, and used some AR tools on stage to demo power. But we haven’t done what I feel we can do to integrate this on the tradeshow floor.

We also haven’t done a lot with QR codes, and I have blogged a lot about how to leverage it for an event. Rather, we’ve leveraged more social tools like geo-location with Foursquare and DoubleDutch (white-labeled) for Cisco events.  We’ve also used Ustream with Facebook and Twitter. 

While we haven’t done much for events yet, we can push the envelope with AR and I would love to see a on site and virtual blended scavenger hunt leveraging QR codes, but not at this time.

What are the pros or cons of doing this?

Pro is that we were first – a trailblazer for virtual event opportunities in general. Use that as the specific pro and con for technology.

As an early adopter, we can have a much more dynamic effect on the evolution of that industry and technology offer. There is something to be said about partnering with the companies on these technologies to evangelize the business prospect regarding what we need from these technologies. The earlier we participate on this, the more influence we can have on their long-term road maps.

Con is that sometimes things don’t work. Once we’ve done it and publicized, we have to be ok with saying that it didn’t work. For example I have some blogs about gaming implementation for CiscoLive 2010. Some goals that were on the scope couldn’t’ be realized within the timeframe of deployment. We had to be ok with saying that we didn’t meet all the objectives and met 50% of them, while pursuing the other later. That can be perceived as a con – I don’t personally see this as a con and think it’s about being a good thought leader in the space. 

Dannette Veale’s Bio

As the virtual and social technology strategist for Cisco’s Global Sales Experience (GSX), Dannette Veale lives and breathes new media. Prior to her role on the GSX team Dannette lead the creation and drove the strategy for the award winning Cisco Live and Networkers virtual program. Dannette has also managed global online and virtual programs for a variety of Cisco groups; most notably emerging markets. When she’s not evangelizing the use of virtual environments to extend the reach of an event and broaden the overall audience demographic participating, you’ll find Dannette engaged in such varied hobbies as producing streaming media, designing Web sites, or watching classic films such as Blade Runner. Outside of her daily immersion in the bleeding edge of collaborative media, Dannette’s also been known to partake in such real world activities as gardening, baking, and knitting;while watching cyberpunk anime, of course.

by kevin033 via flickr

A few weeks ago, Dennis Shiao of It’s All Virtual queried me on my top predictions for virtual events in 2011. And then this same question appeared on Focus, a network for business professionals to respond and answer to critical business questions. Based on my responses to these, here is a summary of my top three predictions for the virtual events industry.

Market Consolidation Ahead

While there are several known players in the market – 6Connex, Inxpo, On24 and Unisfair – there has been a proliferation of new players and those who have gained mindshare in the industry, such as Expos2, Imaste, Stream57, VisualMente, Ubivent, and others. While this is great for the customer – more choice and usually a decrease in price – I believe this will lead to some players being bought by larger organizations, merging to bring together complimentary strengths, or even some disappearing from the industry all together. No matter how, we will begin to see some consolidation within the industry.

Build Me a Better Playground

I believe the industry players remaining on the landscape will begin building out an ecosystem of services to plug-and-play on the platforms. While each provider has an “open API” the question is at what point will the providers a) begin developing apps to harvest the potential of the data and platforms. This includes connecting to Salesforce or truly automating the marketing aspect of virtual. And b) promote a developer community to build third-party apps for its customers. I envision the latter being more of an end of 2011/early 2012 development.

Simplified Web Experiences

 This may seem contradictory to point 2, but I think we’re going to see a move away from the current way we experience virtual events – a login to enter a space with different rooms, like an auditorium, lounge, etc. Rather, I think we will see a return to a “website-like” experience. Everything is on a single page with a window for live streaming video and different widgets for engagement, games and other applications can be added or deleted as needed. And with an OpenID model, I can move freely to and from these “virtual events” without re-entering my login/password. Look for someone like Facebook to move more into this space in 2011.

Do you agree or disagree? What are you top predictions?

I recently presented a webinar on “Dispelling the 5 Myths of Going Virtual.” My presentation slides are included below and an archived version of the webinar will be available on the MPI website shortly. Free to MPI webinars, the on-demand will be available for $20.  The webinar covered these top myths, accompanying case studies and relevant industry stats:

1. Virtual Will Cannibalize My Audience: Case study of American Payroll Association

2. Virtual Will Cannibalize My Exhibitors/Sponsors: Case study of GE Healthcare

3. Co$t$ Too Much: Case study of IMTS

4. Only for the Technically Savvy: Look at technology pace of technology adoption

5. Not as Good as F2F: Case study of CiscoLive Virtual

6. BONUS Myth: No One is Doing It

I have the pleasure of presenting two webinars for the MPI: Dispelling the Myths about “Going Virtual” on November 17 and Making Virtual Profitable: Steal These Business Ideason December 9, 2010. Free to MPI members, the webinars are $20 for non members. If you can’t make it to the live webinar, they will also be available on-demand and I will post the slides after each webinar. Hope you can join me and please forward me any questions or comments.

Dispelling the Myths about “Going Virtual”

WHEN: Wednesday, November 17^th, 11am – 12pm CDT

WHAT: The recent economic situation has provided a catalyst for companies to look at cost-effective alternatives to scheduling and executing face-to-face meetings and events.  This situation combined with reduced travel and marketing budgets, has given rise to virtual events. A successful virtual strategy reduces costs, increases productivity, extends reach, provides rich data intelligence, and benefits the environment. Yet, meeting professionals are hesitant to incorporate virtual elements into their meetings and event portfolios. Leveraging real-world case studies, this session will dispel several myths about “going virtual”.  Get answers to your theories like:

• Virtual will cannibalize my physical audience.
• Virtual will be a costly element for me to include in my budget.
• Virtual will only be used by my most technically savvy members.
• Virtual is only for larger corporations.

Making Virtual Profitable: Steal These Business Ideas

WHEN: Thursday, December 9^th, 11am – 12pm CDT

WHAT: According to FutureWatch 2010, 12% of meeting professionals are expecting virtual meetings to be a continuing trend.  The question meeting professionals have now is how do they create a virtual strategy that serves their audience’s educational and networking needs while expanding their own revenue opportunities. This session with explore four business models for virtual options:

• Freemium Registration: Free registration for basic content vs. charging for premium content

• Exhibitor Driven: Tiered programs and services for exhibitors

• Sponsorship: Advertising and brand awareness associated with the virtual component

• Hybrid Opportunities: Prizes, games and sponsorships that span the physical and virtual event.

 As I believe virtual events will (if not already) become a more integral part of a company’s communications strategy, I will reach out to vendors and practitioners in the industry to share their thoughts for the weekly PRMM Interview leading up to the Virtual Edge Summit in January 2011. This week, I reached out to my former company to get a sense of how virtual events differ from webinars and where the industry is going. Mike Westcott, VP of Marketing with INXPO, shares his thoughts.

 Mike Westcott oversees INXPO’s branding and marketing as Vice President of Marketing. Westcott has helped drive growth and innovation throughout his career as a leader at numerous global marketing organizations and agencies. He was most recently responsible for community strategy and marketing innovation with media company, Red7 Media, where he ran the Event Marketing Institute. He has been instrumental in helping to shape the dialogue in the brand and experiential marketing industry for over twenty years through his writing, workshops and thought leadership.

Can you provide a quick overview of InXpo?
INXPO is the first and leading provider of virtual business solutions. These solutions help organizations improve their business performance by transforming the web from pages and links to events and destinations where people go to connect, collaborate, learn and do business.

Many marketers currently leverage webinars as part of their lead generation programs. How are virtual events different from webinars?
In an era when content and education are an increasingly important part of marketing and communication, webinars are a proven means of broadcasting content to an online audience.

Virtual events combine webcasting of content with online conversation, peer-to-peer connection and collaboration tools and social media to help people connect much like they do at physical events. While virtual events don’t replace the face to face connection we experience at a physical event, they are fast becoming a critical addition to extend the content, conversation and collaboration of physical conferences and tradeshows. This combination, called Hybrid events are the way to go for smart organizations that seek to make the most of their communication and content investments.

Compared to a webinar, a virtual event is more costly and takes more time. Can you elaborate on the type of scenarios where a virtual event would be better than a webinar?
Virtual events are better than webinars in three scenarios
1. Hybrid events: when you want to extend an existing event investment
2. Revenue generating events: when you want to turn content and conversation into commerce by connecting a number of sponsors and prospects around shared interests
3. Education: when you want to engage your audience more deeply in educational content with collaborative activities, breakout sessions, surveys, gaming and other training tactics.

What are top 2-3 benefits of using virtual events for marketers?
1. Lower cost and shorter time frames than traditional events for lead generation and communication
2. Extending existing event and content investments
3. Online community building potential

There seems to be a lot of developments with virtual events. Where do you see the industry going?

Virtual community environments are quickly becoming the real payoff as they provide a real destination for content management and delivery, meetings and learning for corporations, associations as well as media companies who are realizing that content is not king, community is king. And content is the catalyst that brings people together.

As part of the PRMM Interview series, I am interviewing thought leaders in PR, marketing, social media, and virtual events to hear about innovations, trends and technologies impacting our industry. This week, I asked virtual events vetaran, John Grosshandler is Director of Virtual Engagement with Maritz, to provide insight on the evolution of virtual events, challenges facing the industry and future trends. Here is a brief bio (Note: I was previously employed by Inxpo):

 In 2004, John launched a first of its kind virtual trade show called eComXpo which became the highest-grossing, longest-running virtual trade show ever held.  In 2005, after initially being their first customer, John joined InXpo, the virtual event platform provider that powered eComXpo.   While there, he was the Virtual Event Strategist on hundreds of virtual events for associations (e.g. HIMSS, National Association of Realtors), corporations (e.g. Cisco, ATT) and publishers (e.g. UBM, Ziff Davis).  While at InXpo, John authored the virtual event industry’s first Best Practices Guide.  In his role at Maritz, John is responsible for their virtual event offerings, including supporting their channel partner Freeman.

Tell me a little bit about yourself and how you got into virtual events?

My background has been in sales and marketing roles for cutting edge technology solutions.  After a successful 8 year run at a software firm pre/during/post the tech bubble, I had the opportunity  to start my own business.  In 2004, I launched a start-up around the idea of a virtual trade show aimed at eCommerce marketers.  While there had been a number of attempts at virtual trade shows before mine, most of them were quite boring and I thought a business could be built around a more engaging type of virtual event. 

How has the industry changed since you’ve started?

The evolution in this space has been extraordinary on many fronts.  First has been the realization that the technology is only one component of a successful event, and that you need to spend at least as much time on the strategy, content and marketing.   As a result, agencies like Maritz, Freeman and others are building practices to help event organizers put on higher quality events with less effort.  Another evolution has been around the types of events held.  From 2004-2008, almost all the action was publishers putting on virtual trade shows to replace lost revenue from their declining print ad sales and subscriber base.  In 2009, you started to see associations more effectively creating hybrid extensions to their physical conventions.   2009 is also when more and more corporations starting leveraging virtual for a variety of events, ranging from sales meetings to user groups. A welcome change has been the technology platforms themselves, which increasingly have very robust functionality and can handle ever-increasing numbers of virtual attendees.  Finally, there’s less talk these days about purely virtual events, and more about hybrid and blended events which I believe is the future.

Adoption of virtual events & meetings technology has increased significantly due to the recession. What challenges do you see for mainstream adoption of this technology?

Although the adoption has increased significantly, we’re still only scratching the surface.  One report suggests the virtual event space will grow to $18 billion in five years, so we’re still in the “early adopter” phase.  To cross the chasm to mass adoption, I think three things need to happen a) the technology needs to become more self-service and less expensive; b) virtual event platforms need to be effectively ported to mobile devices and c) events funded by virtual exhibitors need to deliver more value to those sponsors.

2011 is just around the corner and it’s the time of year for future predictions. What do you see happening for the industry in 2011?

I see 2011 as the “Year of the Hybrid”.  The idea that more and more physical events will have virtual extensions, either as pre, during or post the physical event.  Whether those virtual extensions are focused on driving more attendees to the physical event, or helping you reach others who weren’t able to make it to the physical event, these extensions are the “killer app” for virtual technology.

Any additional thoughts that you would like to share?

An exciting new use of the technology allows corporations to create virtual extensions to their physical trade show booths.  Even if the show organizer doesn’t have a virtual extension to the event as a whole, top tier sponsors are realizing that their own virtual extension can help build buzz, drive attendance to their physical booth and provide a more effective follow-up mechanism for booth visitors, as well as those that didn’t make it to the physical event.

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