Event Success through New Tools and Technologies
Our 2nd Annual Core Conversation at SXSW on Events and Technology (#EventTech) was a great success.
The strength of the session is the interactive format, so there are no slides to share. Rather, my colleague Loic LeMeur ( @loic) and I guided the discussion, and welcomed tons of questions and great ideas from an enthusiastic audience of event producers, sponsors and technologists.
Some highlights:
“The role of technology is a huge opportunity, and a huge challenge, for all our events.”
—Brian Duggan
Here is a good write up from BizBash on our session:
…and a Storify from Tonia Ries with some of her highlights:
And after the session, I sat down with some new friends from European Television, (Laurens Vreekamp & Michiel Rovers) to fill in between the lines via a video interview:
And in closing I’ll just share:
“These days it’s about the juxtaposition of offline and online—how that fits together. We don’t have all the answers—we are at the very beginning.”
—Brian Duggan
Twitter for Events
With new technologies developing every day, events are becoming more
complicated. I was delighted to address that difficulty, and present
my thoughts around “Twitter for Events: From Training Wheels to
NASCAR” at a Corporate Event Marketing Association briefing held at
Twitter Headquarters in San Francisco last week.
The presentation covered a range of topics, including:
1. How Twitter and other technologies have changed our Events more
radically than we yet realize.
2. How events will play a more crucial role in our businesses going
forward, as a proving ground where we can build the necessary muscles
for real time marketing. (Think Oreos at last week’s Super Bowl.)
3. As the boundaries of time and space around Events blur, it offers
more opportunities for Events to provide fuel for the Content
Marketing “engines” within our organizations, which will result in
increased relevance for Events, and for Event Marketers.
To get a more in depth look at the topics, you can browse my slides
from the presentation on Slideshare.
I’ve also shared a few quotes from the event, both mine and some of my
colleagues from Twitter, over at ConferenceBites. Enjoy!
Save The Date!
Technology is changing the event world and we are all scrambling to keep up.
If you produce events, sponsor events, or offer new technologies that can improve the event experience, I want you to join us for an important dialog taking place at SXSW on March 9th.
I will be hosting, along with Loic LeMeur, founder of LeWeb, an interactive core conversation on Event Success Through New Tools & Technologies. We especially want to invite the Community of Event Producers, Event Sponsors and Technologists to participate with us in the discussion.
Events have changed. The challenges involved with marketing them, sponsoring them, or simply figuring out which to attend, have been transformed. New technologies are rewriting the rules and we are all playing catch up.
At our second annual interactive core conversation we seek to explore best practices, case studies and new tools for succeeding with live events. We will once again bring together top event producers, sponsors and technologists in a conversation about how these new tools can increase the success of our events, both for those that put them on, and for those that attend.
Read the full description of the panel on the SXSW website.
Last year’s inaugural discussion included participants like Robert Scoble, IAB, Lanyrd, Reed Exhibitions, The Gates Foundation and many others, sharing perspectives on topics like event programming, networking, live-streaming and better supporting both sponsors and attendees. You can see our full 2012 write up here
Last year’s inaugural discussion included fresh perspectives on topics like event programming, onsite networking, live-streaming and better supporting both sponsors & attendees (see our write up here) from participants like Robert Scoble, IAB, Lanyrd, Reed Exhibitions, SponsorHub, The Gates Foundation and many others.
We hope you can join us in March in person. But either way, let us know of your interest in the comments below or email me at brian@buildingalliances.com and we can add you to our list of business leaders interested in being part of this conversation as it unfolds both online and at leading events like SXSW.
Thanks, and we look forward to the continued dialog!
The Best of Social Media Strategy
Social media is unquestionably important in any business strategy. The best practices of social media are still under debate, with the best minds in active discussion. These tips are the best of September and October’s conferences.
“You must ask questions instead of just making statements or it’s going to be you and a bunch of crickets.”
~Steve Green, NetUpNow; Social Media Week
“Having the right people following you is more important than the number of people following you.”
~Andrew Barber, Fake Shore Drive; Social Media Week
“Integrate social into your business don’t integrate your business into Facebook.”
~Pam Moore, CEO Marketing Nuts; iSummit
“Your customers tell better stories than you. They use better words and carry more credibility.”
~Nick Kellet, listly; IMS Conference
“Recognize that no one really knows this space. We’re all learning, we’re all making mistakes.”
~Shiv Singh, Pepsico; IMS Conference
“You start slow and build your way to the top, can’t expect 10,000 followers the first day.”
~Paul Adams, Facebook; Pivot Conference
“Just because thousands of people are at your party, doesn’t mean they had a good time. It’s not just about volume.”
~ as tweeted by Ji Lee; Advertising Week
“If you throw enough nerds at a problem, they’ll solve it.”
~ Chris Hardwick, Nerdist; Advertising Week
“You can no longer buy attention, you have to earn it.”
~ David Jones, Havas; Advertising Week
When in the course of human events…
I’m at a point in my life where I am thinking about what is really important.
As I try to sort out everything that is coming at me , I realize I need better filters to separate out the signal from the noise. Honing in on the truly meaningful is one of those filters.
I’ve been thinking about events in this context. Given that I make my living supporting events and those that sponsor them or make new tools to improve them, I am paying attention to what is important in the world of Events. I’ve come to 3 conclusions:
1. Events are meaningful.
Sounds obvious to say out loud but I think it’s good to recognize the important role Events play in bringing people, ideas & experiences together. Whether as an engine of business in the B2B space or an engine of fun and entertainment on the consumer side, Events are making a difference in people’s lives.
2. Events are even more meaningful today.
As we become a more and more online world, our hunger for in-person connection seems to be growing. For all the information we can access and the “connections” we can make online, the power of in-person relationships remains unsurpassed.
3. Events stand at the threshold of being something extra-ordinarily different than they have ever been.
Twitter and other social tools have already radically changed events, shattering their usual boundaries of time and space, in ways we have barely begun to recognize. Events are becoming a hybrid of online and in-person interaction that allows us to combine the powerful aspects of both.
I read recently that we “use events to mark everything from the birth of a child to the birth of a country” which I think gets to core of it. Events matter, as they always have and always will. That still leaves quite a bit of filtering for me to do as I try to hone in on what’s most important–but helps me recognize I’m at least on the right playing field!
In a reader
