Convention Insider (Conventions.net)

In a press release today, the Republican National Convention which is to be held in Minneapolis in September 2008, has launched their own version of Convention Insider.

(Saint Paul, Minn.) – The 2008 Republican National Convention today launched CONVENTION iNSIDER – an interactive, online forum where visitors to www.GOPConvention2008.com can pose questions about planning and progress in Minneapolis-Saint Paul. Questions can be submitted in the form of videos or text, and convention staff will respond in the format in which questions are received. As many relevant questions and answers as possible will be posted online, and the feature will serve as a running dialogue about the party’s 39th nominating convention, September 1-4, 2008.

“CONVENTION iNSIDER will offer people across the nation and around the world a behind-the-scenes perspective of our progress. By taking an active interest, asking questions, and sharing new ideas – visitors to our website can become participants in the planning process,” said convention President and Chief Executive Officer Maria Cino. “This web tool is an exciting expansion of our ongoing conversation – and I look forward to answering many of the questions personally.”

CONVENTION iNSIDER (www.GOPConvention2008.com/insider) will enable visitors to communicate with staff members, senior party leadership, and special guests of the 2008 Republican National Convention. The convention website will continue to evolve in the coming months as additional features and interactive capabilities are unveiled.

This virtual dialogue is one of many steps the 2008 Republican National Convention is taking to use fewer resources and host the greenest Republican convention in history in Minneapolis-Saint Paul. The Committee on Arrangements, in partnership with the MSP2008 Host Committee, is developing a paperless system to recruit and register an anticipated 8,000 volunteers. Convention planners will continue to use the internet and alternate ways of communication, rather than physical travel, to plan and discuss key aspects of the event. The convention’s green fact sheet can be viewed at http://www.GOPConvention2008.com/downloads/gopgreen_0907.pdf.

The 2008 Republican National Convention will be held at Saint Paul’s Xcel Energy Center from September 1-4, 2008. Approximately 45,000 delegates, alternate delegates, members of the media and other guests are expected to attend the convention. Minneapolis-Saint Paul is expected to receive an estimated $150-$160 million positive economic boost from the four-day event. For more information about the 2008 Republican National Convention, please visit our website at www.GOPConvention2008.com.

The thing is, they are in no position to compete with the likes of me and what I have in store here at the Convention Insider blog.  I’m sorry guys, but your not going to get the stage on this one.  Actually I wonder how much that gig pays, maybe they can sway me to come and blog for them for a while.

I was thinking today about convention security and what would happen given a situation like the tragedy at Virginia Tech.  With a large number of people in a tight area, you can imagine what would happen if a lone gunman with the right motivation could do in that type of situation.  Now that I have put the fear of the situation in your mind, what is it that we can do to insure the safety of people in our convention?  Again, I didn’t have to go far to find a vendor that can help in that regard.  Security Detection was called upon to perform security for Super Bowl XL and XLI which is pretty impressive given the number of people that attend those events.  Their website instills a little confidence which is nice.  They tell us:

Since the events of September 11, 2001, we have assembled the largest fleet of security metal detection equipment in the U.S. Businesses and groups around the country have contacted us for assistance, knowing that crowd safety and protection are of the utmost importance.

For our rental clients, we provide a professional security checkpoint for events of all sizes. We will rent as few as one and as many as 200 walkthrough metal detectors. Our services include delivery, setup, calibration, wiring, breakdown and removal of all equipment. We also provide on-site supervisors to ensure an event runs as seamlessly as possible.

More and more people are getting used to security at any event where the public gathers.  If you think they would be upset to have to go through a security checkpoint you may be mistaken.  It may show that you care a little bit and want to make their experience event better because it is safer.

If you have an event where you believe that you may need some extra added security beyond what the facility provides, and you should ask that question of any convention center or meeting facility, this is a cool vendor to check out.  I know that there are many other security vendors available, but as I always preach, we live in a Google world and this company was findable.  Make sure to check out the vendors and suppliers at the Conventions.net marketplace for more resources.  They have a list of vendors in this area.

I was there for a wedding of a worker and friend of my wife.  I didn’t know anyone and didn’t know if it was possible to have fun since I had left my golf clubs at home and I had nothing on the agenda that I could possibly see that was going to entertain me over the two days we intended to be having “fun” at the wedding.  The thing is, I had a wonderful time, and I think the reason was, we were at a resort. 

The resort we had gone to was the Daufuskie Island Resort and Breathe Spa on Daufuskie Island near Hilton Head and Savannah, Georgia.  It was amazing.  We had to arrive on the island via a water taxi or ferry(we got to see dolphins, or maybe they were porpoises), and were given a golf cart to to tour the island and see its amenities.  I was able to walk on the golf course, the beach, and check out the community.  I’m somewhat of a history buff, and was able to actually learn something from a golf pro about the history of Bloody Point, not just a cool sounding name of a place on the island, but also the name of the golf course where I was visiting that day. Let’s just say that the name wasn’t good news for the Indians that resided there in the 1700′s.  I was thinking Daufuskie Island would be a very cool place for a corporate retreat.  This lifted from their site about planning your next meeting:

Help your group escape its daily routine – to an environment where everyone can unwind and let creativity and ideas flow. At Daufuskie Island Resort & Breathe Spa, you can select from an impressive array of South Carolina meeting facilities – from intimate boardrooms to lavish outdoor venues. From the moment your group boards one of our yachts and cruises from Hilton Head Island – past some of the most beautiful scenery in the Southeast – distractions and stress seem to fade away. Large groups can literally take over the resort. Smaller groups can find the privacy they need to get their work done, yet enjoy the perfect environment for relaxation and recreation.

In case you thought I was making this up, I have proof and I’m standing on the 18th green, holding the flag!

If you are planning a corporate retreat or want to impress your next meeting attendees, try a resort.  Every town and every metropolitan city has a nearby resort, except maybe Cleveland.  Sorry Cleveland, I know you have the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and how cool would it be to have a corporate retreat there?

As much as I would love to be able to announce an exposition like that in the title, I made it up to prove a point.  For every facets of service or business or product or area of practice there is a trade show or convention of some sort.  I actually had to come up with Pet rock because of the fact that as I tried to come up with a bizarre title as I did I came up with actual events. 

I first thought of Toilet Paper World, and come to find out they have a janitorial supply trade show.  I thought of Used Tire Expo, but that fell under a greening convention about what to do with used tires.  I wanted to do a Fish Guts Galore Gathering but then thought that would certainly fall under a fertilizer company or cat food trade show.  The point of the exercise here is to show that for just about anything that a person can think of, there is a representing trade show, conference or convention. 

A friend was discussing that a client had an important trade show called “Concrete World” or “World of Concrete”, and to her client it was the cat’s meow, but in the mainstream it seems a little far fetched, but then I did some research.  World of Concrete is no miniscule event:

With more than 900,000 net sq. ft. of exhibits occupied by 1,739 exhibitors, and professional registrants of 91,628, World of Concrete 2007 was the largest show in its 33-year history! This year, WOC 2008 promises to bring you an even bigger and better show with all of the production equipment, handling tools, trucks, the latest technologies, 90-minute and 3-hour seminar programs, indoor & outdoor events & demonstrations, resources and valuable information for the concrete and masonry industry professionals.

My apologies to the WOC people as it seems that this is one of the largest shows in the world.  Who knew?  Now to research a little about that Pet Rock Expo…

Some of the things that event planners and conference planners are having to deal with as technology and the online experience becomes more mainstream is the fact that they must tout the face to face relationship.  Many of the attendees of events that I have spoken to always say the same thing, the networking experience is unparalleled when you can meet face to face.  This is not possible with today’s technology and must be sold to attendees as a reason to attend a conference or trade show.  To sit with someone and have that interaction or to stand in the hallway between sessions is invaluable to carrying on your business and to make new contacts and meet new prospects for your business.  I mentioned before that technology may be hurting the conference business.  I also discussed the fact the technology is allowing new ways of attending conferences and meetings aside from real life.  As yet I have found no way of imitating or replacing the good old hand shake as a way to meet people and do business.  This is by far still the best way of networking and truly getting to know a customer, a colleague or a friend ion business.  When planning your next event, make sure you sell this aspect of the experience.  It is the most valuable asset you have to offer in the area of social networking.

[photo courtesy of ASE.org]

Funny the things you think of in the middle of the night after eating spicy food, but this one nagged at me at 3:30 this morning.  What is an Expo?  I’m immediately drawn to the Montreal Expos, the baseball team that is now known as the Washington Nationals.  I never really knew then what they referred to when they called themselves the Expos. Come to find out they were named after the 1967 World’s Fair called Expo 67.  If you don’t continue reading you have at least learned something!   I noticed of course that this was the nickname of the more known word exposition, but I went ahead and decided to do my own research.

According to WordNet, expo is:

a collection of things (goods or works of art etc.) for public display.

it also appears by that page that expo is synonymous with the word exhibition.

Expo is also the name of a Swedish magazine that was founded in 1995 with the mission:

“to safeguard democracy and freedom of speech against racist, anti-Semitic and totalitarian tendencies throughout society.”

I’m not sure that covers anything to do with conventions or trade shows, but at least it has a noble calling.

A search of the blogosphere shows all of the usual suspects as it relates to blogging.  It would stand to reason that blog expos and podcast expo are first in the search results being that they update using blogs and podcasts on a regular basis.

What I really have found out about the word Expo is that every society has one, every industry touts one and it is a very overly broad term when describing an event.  I guess I already knew what an Expo was, but I will always relate to players of a baseball team!

All of the conferences, trade shows and meetings out there now have associated websites of their events.  Some of them have blogs and if not they have many pages related to speakers, sponsor pages, exhibitor pages, information related to travel and other information contained on a page.  if you intend to be a sponsor, exhibitor, or speaker, make sure you get your information in to the event planner early.  This is an important tip for the purposes of link love.  You get some great benefits on the back end of the sites for purposes of incoming links to your own business site.  The longer you wait to get your link on their site, the less you will benefit.  If the event planners have a blog associated with the event, make sure to comment on the site if they have enabled comments.  It only helps your business in the long run when the search engines spider over the event site.  Finally, if you are a sponsor or exhibitor or speaker, make sure the event planner has correctly added your links to each page.  Many companies pay big money for links on websites, since you are already putting this money into their pocket, make sure those links are correct and up early.

It seems that the new black these days is going “Green”.  Companies large and small and individuals as well are doing everything possible to make less of an impact on our environment and it’s catching on in many areas.  I was given a link on a company that is doing just that in spaceShare.com.  This from their homepage:

People travel to festivals and conferences to connect. Yet their travels are often uncoordinated, lonely and expensive. If you are planning a large event, how do you extend your welcome beyond the conference doors or festival gate?

We customize environmental networking tools for your event. SpaceShare web applications let attendees reach out to each other by submitting room and transportation preferences, then our software finds the right connections… Someone to share a flight, a room or a ride. A mentor, a discussion group, a friend.

People travel to conferences to network; to festivals to make friends. Make your event more environmentally friendly with carpooling, hotel roomshares and more. Cut costs for your attendees. Offer a great way to network and make new friends. Build community. Give attendees a few more reasons to come back next year.

Everyone is making an effort to be more Green.  People are starting to choose companies that are green friendly and green conscious.  If the trend continues, you too can be green friendly and use a service like the folks offer at spaceShare.  In fact they market directly to the event planners out there as can be found in their events planning page.  They go even further and think outside the box and tells us what other vendors and suppliers can help you make your event green.  I’m impressed with their forward thinking in this area and how they are focused at a solution.  Good on you guys and keep up the good work.

[hat tip Tara Hunt via Twitter]

For those that do not have any clue what the title of this post means, perhaps a small lesson is warranted.  We all know what real life is, and if that one is a difficult concept, I am sorry you are in that not so happy place, but what is Second Life?  Second Life is a virtual world or a world where you live online.  I’ll let that sink in for a minute.

Second Life was born in San Francisco and its founders are at Linden Research, Inc.  Wikipedia defines it for us:

Second Life is an Internet-based virtual world launched in 2003, developed by Linden Research, Inc (commonly referred to as Linden Lab), which came to international attention via mainstream news media in late 2006 and early 2007.^[4][5] A downloadable client program called the Second Life Viewer enables its users, called “Residents“, to interact with each other through motional avatars, providing an advanced level of a social network service combined with general aspects of a metaverse. Residents can explore, meet other Residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, create and trade items (virtual property) and services from one another.

Their own website gives us the elevator pitch and describes Second Life as:

Second Life is a 3D online digital world imagined and created by its residents.

Now that you have a complete understanding of Second Life (tongue planted firmly in cheek), what does that have to do with conventions you might ask?  I had my first experience with Second Life at a convention.  Not in the traditional sense of attending an event either. I was an attendee of the convention in the privacy and comfort of my own home. The people of BlogHer allowed participants to listen in on speakers like Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Presidential hopeful John Edwards, in the comfort of their homes via the virtual world known as Second Life.  I myself, or actually my “avatar” sat in a large meeting room and could actually watch the live stream of the event.  It was an amazing experience and one that many conventions should consider when holding an event.  If you are an event planner and you want to open your doors to more people all over the world, invite them into the virtual world by using programs such as Second Life.  It would set your convention or event apart from any of your competitors. 

Sponsors can be given another place to set up their booths and show their brand, but in a virtual world not just on the convention floor, but digitally.  It is a great seller for those trying to gather sponsors.  The costs are minimal and the benefits are long lasting and can be a great place to show sponsors, vendors and suppliers that your event is forward thinking and a part of the real world and virtual world.  If is estimated that most people will have a virtual avatar by the year 2011. At the time of this writing there were more than 40,000 residents in Second Life living on the other side of the computer screen.  Mine actually has all its hair, is not overweight and is not undertall.  To get ahead of your competition, plan your event for the virtual world.

I was recently contacted by someone that is producing a movie about blogging, wanting me to stop by their booth at the Blog World & New Media Expo to be interviewed.  They are going to have a booth at the show and are paying for that booth in a unique way that I haven’t seen before now.  They are selling links on their blog, and promoting companies that purchase a link for $100.00.  A very unique way of paying for a booth at the convention.  I loved the ideas behind the benefits of being a sponsor:

[1] two 200 word min reviews
[2] your domain name on two Scion tC?s
[3] permanent link of Blogging the Movie.com/Car
[4] be part of the 1st FREE car giveaway in blogging history
[5] publicity from the media hype that the movie will generate

This is a different way of procuring a booth at a convention and obviously will not work for everyone, but if you are a small guy that needs to gain publicity and wants to get into the convention as an exhibitor it certainly is a cool way to do it.  What is even more cool is he is getting a car for his sister as part of the deal!

The other car will go to my little sister Prany currently goes to UCR. She is need of a car to commute back and forth. She will drive the car at college for 4 years. which will bring good media hype as it will also be part of the movie.

I’ll be following along, and perhaps in November, if the money is raised, I’ll take a picture of the booth at the convention and post about it here.  Good luck to them on their unique way of funding their exhibitor booth at the convention!