If the Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco looks familiar, it might be because this hotel is in more movies than any other American hotel!

While the outside of the Westin St. Francis is pure Hollywood, the inside is pure vintage.  Tall ceilings, huge elevators covered with brass and carved wood, staircases that just stepped out of a Bette Davis movie. . . Walking into the Westin St. Francis Hotel is like walking into a time machine.  Where else can you find a pink marble staircase?

Make no mistake, though; the venue might appear to be a blast from the past, but it’s one of the most technologically up-to-date venues you’ll ever see.

Each meeting room that I saw was HUGE, and fully equipped with enough electrical outlets for the huge masses of conference participants when I was there.  The building’s WiFi was easily connected and the signals were strong and reliable.  This is of vital importance for almost any kind of conference, convention, trade show, meetup, reunion, wedding, etc.

San Francisco’s famous cable cars stop right outside the door of the Westin St. Francis.  Fisherman’s Wharf and Chinatown are within easy walking distance, too.

Reservations: (800) Westin 1 | General Inquiries: (415) 397-7000 | Meetings, Banquets, &Weddings : (415) 774-0126 | General Sales: (415) 774-0112 | Fax: (415) 774-0124

In case you haven’t heard, people love to watch television.  More and more people are beginning to watch television online.  With services like Hulu, Boxee and other online Internet companies providing services for people to use their computers as television sets, it is becoming commonplace that everyone knows about television alternatives.  This is not more proven than YouTube.  YouTube is actually the second most visited web site on the planet, right behind Google itself which just happens to own YouTube.

I wrote the title as such because everyone likes to research a show before attending.  Not only do they want to see a web site with all of the information and schedules, and listed speakers and other pages, but they love to see what it is like before putting their hard earned money towards a ticket.  Obviously, one way for them to do research is to find out if anyone has done any interviews, any video essays, or any other information on YouTube and other video sharing sites.  This gives them an idea of what to expect at the show or event. 

The other thing that is being done is live streaming the event for non-attendees to get a taste of the action on the show floor and in the conference rooms.  This is being done more and more and I am continuing to hear from organizers and meeting planners and event planners that this is a scary proposition as it relates to giving away the cow for free.  This is a red herring.  Many know that there is nothing like a face-to-face meeting with businesses and customers and friends.  Showing the live stream only makes those that are not in attendance that much more likely to want to attend the event in the coming year.  Putting on your event and giving a taste through live streaming is a great way to give the non-attendee a melancholy feeling of wanting to attend as they see how much fun it is for all their friends and colleagues. Don’t be afraid of video.  It can make the difference and set you above your competition.

Photo via fotographix.ca

Tags: Video, Live Streaming, Photos, Conference, Conventions, Trade Shows

As a convention organizer and the one in charge of speakers of an event that is pretty large with more than 350 speakers, it was enlightening to find out how many people are Mac vs. PC.  What I mean by that is the computer of choice for the speakers more in line with the corporate world and Microsoft’s PC community, or are they cutting edge and more of a Mac community. This was the question that came across my mind recently when asking how the audio visual vendors would be helping our speakers ready for the presentation of their sessions.

What is BYOD you might ask?  I am planning on making up some t-shirts for sale to organizers that have this problem.  It is the little wire that goes from a Mac to a PC version of a slide projector or the projector that allows presenters to you their power points.  It is called a "dongle".  I could make a fortune selling these at large events that have both PC presenters, but especially Mac presenters.  Most if not all audio/visual projectors have a hook up for a PC but not for a Mac. 

I myself do a lot of presenting and I make sure that I prepare for all facets.  I put my presentation on a thumb drive, I put it on my desktop, and I also make sure I have brought my own dongle.  I make sure my presentation works both in a PPT and in Keynote, which is the slide show of those that use a Mac.  Are you a mac or a PC?  Did you bring your own dongle?

Tags: Mac vs. PC, technology, Trade Shows, Conventions, Speakers, Audio/Visuals

In case you have not figured it out I am in full on Convention Planning Mode.  CPM I know has so many more meanings, but for me right now it means that I am pulling out hair with both hands and I am running out of hair.  It has been making me not have the proper time here to be posting on a regular basis and for that I apologize.  In case you have not been reading this blog, I should fill you in.  I am the conference director and social media director for an event that is in its third year.  It is growing and getting bigger each year and we are on track to be nearly double in size this year with exhibitors, attendees, sponsors and of course headaches.

The show is called BlogWorld & New Media Expo.  I would be remiss in my duties if I didn’t invite you all to come and be a part of the show.  For you event planners and meeting planners or if you are a trade show or convention organizer it is a must attend to learn about social media, blogging and all the other tools to help you market your event.

The problem I am having is with the 11 different tracks, the 4 sessions per track and three days of sessions.  We are now over the 300 speaker mark and I am running around and feeling like I am nailing Jello to a tree.  This is where I am curious about speaker management software.  What is being used out there by experts?  We at BlogWorld & New media Expo have the tech world at our fingertips and we are still going crazy with issues of back end mayhem and craziness.  My boss who is a chairman of a chapter of the IAEE said I am suffering from "First Show Face".  I think I called it something else.  I am curious, what if anything are you using for your project management tool?  Do you use a software to make your life easier?  If you don’t know what I am talking about you probably look like I do right now.

Tags: Trade Shows, Conventions, Event Planning, Conference Planning, Las Vegas, Speakers

by Guest Contributor – Peter LoCascio

Most sales and marketing people have very different personalities. Depending on corporate culture and management style, the important functions they manage can either work well together or be very challenging.  This is especially so for the Exhibits Trade Show Manager, who is responsible for successful trade show exhibit planning, execution, and measuring results.  In many corporations, the trade show exhibit program is considered a marketing support function and usually reports to either a marketing, marketing communications, or advertising manager.

The distinctive personalities of marketing and sales people when faced with everyday business situations reveals the difference between the two. Those dynamics often dramatically show themselves when people are faced with the tasks of trade show planning and successfully executing exhibit functions on the show floor. Simply stated, marketing people tend to be more strategic, conservative and long-term thinkers.

Sales people, on the other hand, are often considered more tactical, short-term thinkers who are action-oriented and impatient with any esoteric concepts that fail to deliver immediate sales results. It is critical during the formative planning stages of any major trade show that the Trade Show Exhibits Manager understands and carefully empathizes with both sides of these dynamics and seeks to find common ground in establishing fully supported exhibit goals and objectives. Once a coordinated plan is established and documented in the form of a pre-show briefing memo, the trade show exhibit manager must pay close attention and be ready to adjust to any tactical or strategic variances while striving to attain the stated show goals and objectives.

Peter LoCascio

www.tradeshowconsultants.com

Perhaps this is the male perspective and being a male I apologize immediately if this is not for you.  I wonder if it is all about getting the phone number. It seems to me that when I attend events and i walk by a booth and give a wave or a hello to the person behind the table, they immediately begin to reel in the sale.  They want the number. Close the info so we can spam them later.

If this is the way we are getting "leads", perhaps it is time to rethink our law of attraction. I feel like I am more a number when all the person at the show wants is my badge to get my info scanned into their system. I understand.  It is about getting a return on investment, (there is that phrase again) and really we are attending as exhibitors to get leads, but it has to be a little more personal than that.

This is what I have been teaching and preaching about social media. It is not always about the page videw or the email address so you can ge that subscriber to broadcast your message to them. I have so many dummy mail addresses for this that I am sure I have clogged the Internet with traffic to nowhere.  I am not even happy about admitting to that, but when I give an email address and I get 30 emails in 30 days all asking me to buy your stuff or to click your junk I get a little pessimistic.  Its not about the number of people you scan but about the number of people you actually connect with.  I know its tough to tell your boss you "connected well" when they are asking for your list of email addresses or contacts made.  Perhaps now is the time to help me preach this doctrine.  Just subscribe to the blog here and let me know… oh wait, we really don’t send spam messages here.

Tags: Exhibits, Trade Shows, Booths, Sales, Leads

I have been talking quite a bit lately with people about the things I receive at Trade Shows.  The things I find most useful I have talked about here a few times, like the lip balm giveaway. I have been also reading about "green giveaways" as this seems to be the wave of the future.  Jenn over at Trade Show Blog has a post about The Greenest Trade Show.

This made me think of the number of events I have been to this year and how "green" they have been.  I tend to bring home lots of giveaways, and they usually don’t make it far out of my bag before the are commandeered by my kids for their own purposes.  I have seen many gifts turned into warriors, ninjas victims and even saw a mouse pad turned into home plate.  This is how I can use the giveaways I get that I don’t really need.  I have been actually getting a number of bags that we are using now to carry groceries in and that is pretty cool given I have a full tribe of people to feed here at home.

I recently received a hip flask at an event and that was somewhat perplexing given I don’t drink, and that is not the best item to give your four year old to carry to school or around the neighborhood or heaven forbid like I caught yesterday taking it to church for a "water bottle".  Are your giveaways "green?"  Can they be recycled or reused?  Do you ask your exhibitors to be more green in what they do for giveaways?  I see inserts going into gift bags that I know won’t make it past the hotel trash can.  I am curious what you are doing.

Photo via King’s College

Tags: Green, eco-friendly conventions, trade show giveaways, swag

The most used phrase these days for attendees and exhibitors and sponsors and for those organizing events, conventions and trade shows seems to be "Return on Investment" or the acronym ROI.  I hear it in every conversation of business these days in this economy.  I want to have that tattooed somewhere like my forehead to remind everyone what the "bottom line" really means.

The folks over at Adler Displays has a really good and quick look at ROI and what it means for trade shows.  One point I wanted to highlight from their article is this:

And because clients tend to need several different "touch points" before buying (seeing a magazine ad, hearing a colleague speak of your product or service, receiving a sales call, etc.), it’s tough to tell where the sale actually came from.

This is a great distinction from the normal cost per acquisition figures we discuss.  I often wrestle with the thought of where a client came from or where a sale was closed.  Did this happen on the show floor?  Did it happen at a party the night before the event?  Is this a contact and sale that was developed over many shows and many discussions and emails or other communications?  I like their idea of sitting down with the sakes team and determining some information.

Photo via Examiner.com

Tags: ROI, Return on Investment, Sales Leads, Conventions, Trade Shows, Events, Meetings

As I indicated earlier I was in Seattle for a conference that is one of the top tech conferences with many geeky types in attendance.  As we geek types do on a regular basis, we spend time on Twitter.  We not only spend time on Twitter we speak to each other often times not only in the same room but sitting at the same table.  In this case, Twitter was going at its usual pace and people were talking between each other in the conference area.  That will set the stage for what was happening.

While the presentation went forward, the speaker, I believe one of the first times he had ever been on stage, began to speed up and then began to lose the crowd.  He was speaking of a topic that was very technical and something that many could not grasp.  He was getting some momentum and began to get passionate and speak faster. Then Twitter exploded, and even my own statement about this speaker needing to be the guy that does my homework.

The organizer at the time saw immediately the comments coming across on Twitter and slowly walked to the stage and refocused the  speaker, asked a question and made him slow down.  He told the speaker to breathe and to throttle it back.  The crowd became refocused and we all settled in to learn some really cool stuff the speaker had to say.  Twitter had saved the day without making a scene or embarrassing the speaker or all of the negative that could have come out of the situation.

Tags: Twitter, Speakers, Conference, Conventions, Presentations

I was at a recent conference in Seattle called "Gnomedex" a technology and conference for geeky technical types.  No I am not considered one of those but I enjoy hanging out with those that make me smarter and this was no exception.  I learned quite a bit of information just sitting and listening to the speakers and talking to people in the hallway.  One of these smarter than I types was Scott Porad.  Scott is the CTO of the popular websites I Can Has Cheezburger?  (the picture here I made at their site) and Failblog.org.  Scott wrote a recent post recapping his own experience at Gnomedex and it was revealing about how we as attendees perceive the value of the face-to-face meetings.  The highlights I would like to talk about are Scott’s perception of meetings:

In my view, there are two reasons to attend an industry conference, regardless of industry:

1. To gain some practical skills or information.  For example, attending a training or sales conference.
2. To develop relationships with industry peers.

And finally he finishes with:

I’ve come to understand in a more personal way the age-old axiom that “it’s not what you know, but who you know”.  At a certain point, business is not a meritocracy–there are lots of smart people with good ideas.  It’s the relationships you have, and the ability to enlist others to support you, that separates the good ideas from the successful ideas.

Most companies don’t encourage their employees to attend industry conferences.  I would encourage you to make an effort to do so, even if you have to pay your own way.  The connections made at events like Gnomedex are worth every penny of the price of admission.

This goes a long way to telling me what some industry professionals are saying when they decide to go to an event and what they are getting out of that event which we need to pay most attention to from a return on investment standpoint.  It is about the relationships made at events.  I have been following Scott for a little while in social networks and reading his blog.  I have not had the connection until we were able to shake hands and actually meet.  This is the biggest return on my investment for being in Seattle and the time and place most of us discount in the long run.  I on the other hand need to garner these relationships and i will continue to attend conferences until they come up with a better way to meet, shake hands, and say hello to a new friend.

Tags: Scott Porad, Conferences, Gnomedex, Seattle, Travel, Conference Costs