Convention Insider (Conventions.net)

It is one of the new catch phrases of the year, “How Do I Make My Business Hyper-Local?”  It is often asked and rarely understood.  Businesses everywhere are going global with their reach as they branch out to areas only now offered as a result of the Internet and Social Media.  They are finding new ways to reach the masses and finding ways to cats a wider net to garner more customers.  This is a great new phenomena that is taking hold and will be a new way of doing business for years to come.  Is this a good thing?  I think it is a great thing, but not at the cost of dealing with the customers in your own backyard.  Are you losing the customers in your backyard?

So many times we are seeing that conventions are growing at leaps and bounds as a result of their newly found reach using tactics that allow them to market to a whole new audience.  They love to talk about getting attendees now from other places in the world and from across the globe, but what they are failing to understand is that they are also forgetting the people right there in their own backyard.  The Internet not only allows you to have a greater reach, it also allows you to drill down within the local communities to find those attendees, exhibitors, sponsors, and others right in your own backyard.  Take some time to research not only that customer on the other side of the world that you can now communicate with, but find that customer right on your own street that has been there the whole time.  You will increase your reach even farther just but seeing what is right in front of you.

I have been thinking for a while about convention and trade show leaders.  The people that lead us up the hill in this time of economic troubles.  The ones that make us feel good about where we are in the industry.  Those that are our though leaders and those that have companies that they are keeping on the path to success.

I have been thinking about what makes a good leader and what do the conferences, conventions or trade shows that are successful have in common?  I think the answer is simple and obvious, they have good leadership.  Last night on Twitter this conversation came about about companies that work well and what they have in common.  It also talked about the traits of the leaders of those companies that were successful.  Some of the traits of the leaders were:

• Passion
• Vision
• Fearlessness
• Determination

Those may sound like things we all have but in some leaders that exude these traits.  The funny thing is that if you ask each of us about what we think of when we think of a good leader and what traits we find important, each of us would have a different answer.  It does seem that we all wont to follow those that inspire us to be followers.  Some leaders have a confidence that we want to follow. It makes me think of what are the traits I want to see in a leader.  I have talked about events that fail and have been talking about events that are struggling but those that are winning the struggle and the battles are those with good leadership.  What are the things you look for in your event leadership?

Photo via Hamed Saber

I was reading through an article by Rachel Wimberly over at TSNN.com about a Denver convention of teachers and their use of Wifi.  The event I am speaking of is at the Colorado Convention Center in my part of the world.  The convention is the International Society for Technology In Education or ISTE.  The article references Smart City a company that we have featured on here before and a company that is well known in the Wifi space for conventions and trade shows. I think that what we see in a convention like ITSE is going to be the wave of the future for conferences.  What TSNN writes is:

Of the 18,000 attendees who showed up for the event, 16,500 of them were online at any given time. Donella Evoniuk, ISTE’s senior director of conference services, said the event has offered free Wi-Fi since 2001, and they have worked with Smart City for several years to ensure the attendees’ demand to be online is met.

I am in the world of social media so it may be that the events that I mostly attend and the ones I am invited to speak at may be more technically minded and may involve more attendees online, but I do think this is a trend that will continue in all conferences and trade shows.  The article goes on to state:

Smart City has worked with ISTE on several shows, but Evoniuk said when a preshow survey indicated more than 80 percent of attendees intended to bring their laptops to the show, as well as 50 percent planned to bring both a cell phone and a laptop to the event, they knew demand was going to be unusually high. On top of that, ISTE promoted active back channel communications through live Twitter feeds and the ISTE 2010 Blog Roll, she added.

This is only going to be more of the norm.  I am constantly wondering what the “connectivity” is going to be like when I attend events.  With the new social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook having the success that they are and the participation we are seeing in the realm of those social sites, we can assume that everyone wants to be connected.  There are plenty of new technologies that are being developed for conference and convention attendees in mind that are integrating connectivity in the wifi space that we will see become more prevalent at conventions as well.  The article seems to make it sound as if this is a new idea, but in reality, this is slowly becoming the norm.

I was reading Rachel Wimberly over at Trade Show Network News about the latest in the meetings industry.  A study was done by the Professional Conventions Management Association, American Express, and the PMCA Education Foundation where they surveyed 505 professional meeting planners.  The results revealed that their was in an increase of 15% more meetings booked in 2010 from 2009 and 24% more meeting booked for 2011 over 2010.  It seems that we are climbing out of the economic hardships that the meeting industry has see over the last few years.  This seems to be a trend in other industries as well.

Deborah Sexton was quoted in the article as stating:

“While it’s been a difficult 18 months for our industry, I’m encouraged to see both actual business, as well as business sentiment improving,” said Deborah Sexton, PCMA’s president and CEO. “There continues to be caution in budgets and cost controls, which is to be expected, but if we can stay on this positive trend path there are certainly brighter days ahead for meetings.”

It appears that their is still caution going forward with the meeting industry and companies are not booking at places such as resorts and cruise ships like they once did in previous years.  This is not surprising as the industry begins to creep out of its shell.  Hotels saw the most increase of bookings in the meeting industry as they are a safe investment for any companies out there.  They tend to see the benefits first when a change occurs.

I am going to be attending a virtual convention and conference.  I know before you take me out back and beat the stuffing out of me, let me explain why I am attending this virtual conference.  The conference I am attending is called Engage CSR 2010.  The conference is a social responsibility conference and I am covering the event for another client.  I am excited for the experience as I am not sure what to expect.  I have actually attended a virtual conference in another event that took place in the Linden Labs world called Second Life.  This is something different however and I will go into this one with an open mind and open eyes.

The conference itself is being put on by InXpo, Inc., and you can actually go and register for the event yourself at their registration page.  PR Newswire is putting on the event in the area of Corporate Social Responsibility.  The event is offering the following online:

We’ll explore these topics and more at PR Newswire’s first Virtual Conference and Expo. Attend webinars, network with conference attendees, and visit various sponsor booths right from your desktop. And best of all it’s FREE!

I am very interested to see how we can network with other attendees, visit the sponsor booths and all right from the comfort of your office from the desktop or laptop.  This as we all know is what we champion as something that cannot be replaced in the real world.  I have been send a training video and a pdf of what we can expect.  I will report my experience this week, and let everyone know how the event turned out and my review of he system.

I spent most of yesterday out in the beauty of the wild, and some of it was even outdoors and not in the minivan with the kids as we celebrated Father’s Day in Estes Park, Colorado.  I took the shot here as we headed home from a day in the sun and fun.  As we drove along Colorado Highway 7 and at the base of Rocky Mountain National Park and the ever omniscient Long’s Peak I noticed a few conference centers on the route. The highway we were traveling on goes right through the heart of Roosevelt National Park and has breathtaking views.

There are many great locations for corporate retreats and places to get away from the normal grind of convention centers and hotels and regular meeting venues in big cities.  Places like Estes Park, Colorado thrive on summer vacation tourism and the shops and restaurants have their busy season and down time.  They are also finding a way to bring people in to have meetings and corporate retreats.

The Estes Park Conference Center we drove by had a sign out front for a quilting convention and I was not as quick on the draw for getting that picture but you can go to their site and see all they have to offer.  If you have an opportunity to help out a small mountain town like those in and around Estes Park, tell them Jim sent you.  In any case, try to have your next meeting in a place of beauty!

This is a question every conference, trade show, meeting and convention planner needs to ask themselves when getting ready to make that pitch to a prospective sponsor.  Why do they want to give you money to be a part of your show?  If the answer is not obvious, perhaps you need to be prepared to make it more obvious.

Many companies out there are hurting right now in this economy so they are beginning to tighten the belts of the budgets in the marketing and sales area and your convention may be the first place they want to cut.  Are they making a mistake? Probably, if they have the opportunity to make a sale or two by being a sponsor of your event.  You need to provide them with the information about quality leads, about why their brand needs to be aligned with your event and the return on their sponsorship investment.  If you can provide a good reason why they should be sponsoring your event then it should be an easy enough sale.

When going to the sales call, map out why each particular sponsor should be a part of your event.  Make it easy for them to understand and make sure you provide all the information they need to sell it on their end.  If you can make it easy for them to sell, your sale will be much easier.  I have found a number of sponsors for events just because I have made it easy for them to get approval to spend the money.  If you make it an easy job for all, then we all want the easy job to be on our plate.

If you would like to be a sponsor here on our blog or on the Conventions.net site I can provide many reasons for you to want to be a part of our sites.  Contact me.

[photo via fifa4fans.de]

If the answer to this is no, you are missing out on a great opportunity to promote, publicize or market your event, trade show or convention. Flickr makes it possible to store your photographs online and they allow you to actually share those photos with the people that matter to you.  You can share your photos on your blog, or even on the Facebook page that seems not to get enough attention from you.  Flickr is also a database that can be searched for people that are perhaps looking for information related to your event.

Flickr allows you to upload photos that can then be tagged and labeled.  If you have an annual event and want people to see photographs from other years or if you want to make those photographs part of your sales pitch or sales brochure, it makes it easy to store them for future use.

In addition to being able to share your own photos, you can actually have other account holders’ photos fed via RSS directly onto your site as they tag those photos with your hashtag.  Hashtags are more than just a way for people to follow your event online, they are a way to identify your event in social networking sites like Flickr.  If you have not yet signed up for an account on Flickr I suggest you gt one and in addition to signing up for a free account today, I would also recommend that you sign up for a Pro account.  This will give you a little more flexibility in your use of the system.

I am headed out to Chicago this weekend to speak at a social media industry event.  I was curious what is going on in the Chicago area and their recent news about law changes and the McCormick Place Conventions Center.  I saw a news item flash across Twitter and tracked down a story on the Meetings Industry Megasite about the latest in the law changes in Chicago.  The legislature had passed a law making the convention industry more competitive in Chicago and the Governor let it sit on his desk until he was forced to make a decision.  The bill was vetoed and later last week, the legislature voted to overturn the veto.  The law was passed and now Chicago is more competitive as a result.  I think the economy is making a number of the convention centers and other to take a look at the bottom line and searching ways to be more competitive.

There were many associations that had threatened to move their events from Chicago because the center was not competitive and in response to that they needed to make some changes.  Some of the listed changes that were made include:

• Establishes new labor work rules that reduce crew sizes and require less overtime pay.

• Expands exhibitor rights, allowing customers to do their own work, regardless of booth size.

• Appoints a trustee—Reilly—to oversee McCormick Place operations during an 18-month transition period and choose a private manager for the facility.

• Restructures MPEA’s capital debt, which will allow it to further lower costs for customers.

• Allows shows to select outside electrical and foodservice contractors.

• Calls for auditing contracts to ensure savings are passed on to customers.

I think these are some areas that will be looked at by a number of facilities and certainly other convention and visitor bureaus are going to be watching closely at how the new law changes put into place in Chicago are going to change their own proposals.  This is also going to help the third party vendors and suppliers to compete in a market where they may have been locked out.

The Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex is a multipurpose venue so diverse, it would take several pages to describe its capabilities.  With over 220,000 square feet of exhibition space, a 19,000-seat arena, a 3,000 seat concert hall, 74 meeting rooms, 1,000 seat theater, 2 ballrooms, a high tech medical forum center, and 770 guest rooms, there is little this venue CAN’T handle!

Add to all of this ample covered parking and audio-visual facilities complete with distance learning capabilities, what more could  your convention/conference/retreat/trade show/meeting possibly need?

The Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex is easily accessible, too; it’s only ten minutes from the airport, and its downtown Birmingham location makes it easy to drive to, as well.  The venue is convenient to most of the city’s attractions, and all hotel reservations booked with Hotels Convention Center are guaranteed to be the lowest group rates in the market.

This is an outstanding venue.  Outstanding.  The Exhibition Hall can accommodate over a thousand booths, and electricity, water, telephones, internet, and compressed air are available at 30-foot intervals.  Your trade show will be perfection.

The acoustics in the theater and concert hall are so perfect that little voice magnification is necessary.

The venue adjoins the Sheraton Birmingham Hotel, which can accommodate both small and large groups and offers many convenient services including a health club, indoor pool, and video rentals.

The Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex is located at 2100 Richard Arrington Jr. Blvd. North in Birmingham, 35203.

Telephone:  205-458-8400