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 talked about it becoming convention season in the last post and that means it is back to setting up and tearing down your exhibit booth space.  If you are a small business it means probably getting the most bang for your buck in the area of a display that is easy to set up can be done with only one person and can be checked in as luggage when you travel.  I have been looking around recently at some of the display companies because I too will be needing to get a display booth that is for people on the move.

I spend about one week a month in the first six month of the season going to a couple of large shows and then a few small events and then a final large one before going in to work mode.  I am always looking for ease of use.  There are many companies out there that offer a portable display that is easy to set up and can make your company look professional and certainly won’t break the bank.  In today’s economy, the latter part of that equation is a must.  You can’t spend a whole bank account of your marketing budget only to not be able to recover that cost on the road.  I am actually in the market for a portable display that will fit nicely and look professional in the 10 x 10 booth space or in the corner of a small event.  Portable displays are a great asset and if you find a company that provide this service let me know I would love to speak to them.

I am not sure if that is the case for all of you, but when my kids head back to school, it means I need to gear up for my own convention season.  Many of my conventions in the social media world begin in the fall and run through to the beginning of summer again.  I am not sure if this is a trend in all of the convention world, but it seems to make sense that while we parents are freed from our kids being under foot during summer we get back into the swing of conventions.  My kids finally go back to school today and I for one am looking forward to freedom of herding them, keeping them entertained, and trying to make sure they are not playing in traffic.

My first convention I will be attending this year is in Vegas and in fact I will be an exhibitor and a speaker, and I am actually helping run a track about non-profits and causes in the social media world.  Stay tuned as I get ready for that to kick off and you will be hearing more about what I have in store for that show in Las Vegas in October.  I have some smaller events that I am going to be attending and some I will be speaking at and will report my progress as we get back into the swing of convention season.  In the meantime, parents be happy those kids are headed back to school!

Photo via Avolore

What is co-location of conferences?  We know that co-location is defined as:  “to locate together; especially : to place (two or more units) close together so as to share common facilities.”  This is provided by Merriam-Webster, but what does it actually mean to us in the conference world?  To me it has a few messages.

Spreading out costs: I think one of the main points in today’s economy is that it allows a conference to partner with another conference to share in the costs of the facility or other costs.  If you have two companies that might have somewhat differing agendas but might share the same attendees, they can both share in the cost of the rental of the facility or the other costs that might be associated with putting on the event.  This also means of course that you would have to also share in the revenue of the attendees tickets and perhaps some of the sponsors but that is to be expected when dealing with partners.

Markets Join Forces: Many companies join together for a common purpose.  This is not much different from conferences joining together for a common purpose.  It may be that a single conference does not have the amount of content to support a full conference but if they joined with another conference that might also be too small to support a full conference, together they could make a full conference agenda of speakers and exhibitors for a better conference experience.

Management is Distributed: In some cases the companies that are putting on the events are too small but if they joined forces they could spread out the amount of work necessary.  perhaps Company A wil be in charge of the front facing marketing promotion and sales, while company B is responsible to the back end management of registrations, exhibit booth set up, housing and speakers.  With two companies each taking on all of the responsibilities necessary it spreads out the work load making it easier to accomplish all that needs done.

These are just a few of the simple ideas behind why conferences are co-located.  I know that we are beginning to see more and more of this as economic factors make it necessary to join forces and allow for more people to participate in attending conferences as well as managing them.  Are you a co-located conference manager?  Why are you co-locating?  What are some of the downfalls of co-locating conferences?  Would love to hear your thoughts.

Let’s face it giving out shot glasses with your logo on it is a cool giveaway item perhaps unless you are an exhibit booth at the alcoholics are us convention.  You have to make sure the promotional item is an item that is memorable to the audience you are giving it to and it need to make some common sense to the people that take it home.  I am about to gear up for a large convention for people in the social media world.  I like to get something in their hands that can make an impact and something that they may also have a good use for and not something that ends up chewed up by the family dog and never identified with again. Yes, that is a true story actually, the person told me later something to the idea that, “my dog ate it.”  That was not my idea of a good promotional item.

My promotional items are business cards to the next time they think of me. If it is something they will use later, they will remember where they picked it up and hopefully it will have my name or company name associated with it.  I still remember an ice cream scoop my parents used for years that had a company logo on it.  I can never scoop ice cream without thinking about that corner store.  This year I am thinking of giving out lip balm with my logo on the side.  The convention is in Las Vegas and whenever I go to a show there, I always need lip balm due to the desert location of the event.  I need to match the product with the user and they in turn will hopefully look back and remember me!  Does anyone know where I might find a good promotion item company to use?  Next up a trade show display booth I must shop for!

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 talking to a friend yesterday about the idea behind a trade show manager that would wait up until the show date to cancel it and take the money and escape out the back way.  That sounds a little dramatic and perhaps it is just the movie of the week that is playing in my head when I imagine that actually happening but it could happen.  In fact in 1995 I remember a man organizing trade shows in Houston, Texas while sitting in his prison cell.  He would set up the event sell exhibit booth space and then cancel at the last minute and not give anyone their money back.  He would tell vendors and others that there was not adequate parking.  As I said, it should be the movie of the week.

Today, 15 years after the fact, the economy is struggling and people are having difficulty getting new businesses to work and flourish.  This is part of the other problem with trade shows, events and conferences that are failing and not getting off the ground.  There are not enough sponsors willing to fork over money for the events that are starting and the organizers have no financing to get a year under their belt and lastly, attendees cannot afford to attend.  It seems to be a vicious cycle and in among this craziness is people wanting to take advantage of others.

How do you protect yourself in a situation with new show organizers that have the opportunity to be a good event but must either cancel the event or have it be a failure when you show up and present your trade show best to very few attendees?  There must be ways for you to protect yourself from this.  I want to explore this more and would ask that anyone that has experience with this leave us a comment.  I would love to talk to some wily veterans that might have this knowledge and might know how to combat the problem.  If you have had this happen either as an organizer or an attendee or an exhibitor I would love to hear from you.  Let us in on what happened and how.  I am going to do some further research on this and run a series of information on Trade Show and Convention Fraud.  I might even throw in some of my own experience.  I think this is something that is very unfortunate and something we should all be aware of in this tight economy.

One of the things I do quite a bit is speak at conferences around the country.  I use speaking as a way to help promote my business because I am seen as an expert or a thought leader by presenting on topics within my industry. I try to help promote my speaking at events by sending out a number of messages on Twitter and letting my community on Facebook know where I will be speaking, and I generally try to get people to know where I will be and where they can find me.  It is good business to promote yourself through speaking.

What I don’t see often enough is speakers that promote the shows that they are asked to speak at on a large scale.  It is a win win situation when asked to speak at a conference.  You get the chance to be seen as the expert and the conference gets your content to provide to their attendees.  The latter part of that statement is the most important, the attendees to the event.  You can help the conference by getting people in the seats.  Many would argue that is is a responsibility to help the show organizer to get people to come to the show if you will be there speaking.  If you are not selling yourself and the conference you are not promoting well.

If you have a website advertise the upcoming show on space that tells your community about the conference.  When commenting on blogs about your topic, tell people where they can go to register for the event. Have a Slideshare account?  Make sure you upload your power point presentation.  All of this can help your presentation and help the event where you are speaking.  Bottom line is if you are asked to speak, do your part to help promote the conference to make it a success.  If the show is seen as a success and you helped make it work, you will be asked back for future conferences to be seen as the expert in your field.  It is good business.

Photo via Daveness_98

I recently attended a “hybrid convention” and I will talk more about that when I recap my attendance at the latest TS2 show in Boston.  The show as a great success and I want to absorb all that went on there but I wanted to quickly get the information out here on location based software.  Location based software or what is used in “geo-location” is all the rage in the mobile community and the geo-location community.  What is geo-location based software?  This is software that pinpoints your location using cell sites or global positioning sites.  I can locate where I am using my mobile phone.  This has lead to the software like what is being used now by the early adopters and the technology world.  What are the applications that are being used?  The two main applications are Gowalla and the one I am using called Foursquare.

Foursquare was recently mentioned at the TS2 show by Jim Rooney the head of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, someone that we have featured here before as a forward thinking leader in our industry.  Jim is responsible for helping run, along with his great staff of people, the Boston Convention Center.  He mentioned that he is looking into the location based applications as a new technology they are interested in implementing at the MCCA.  This can only mean that many of the leaders in the space are also looking to use the new software and its applications.  If you want to look into this as a way for you to make your convention or trade show better, we can help.

The catch to the title of this post is ironic.  I am attending some interviews of some key figures and players in the industry at the TS2 conference but I am not actually in Boston.  I am in the comfort of my own office from Colorado.  I did the same thing yesterday as the crew in the Boston Convention Center put together an online stream of the convention floor called #InZone.  That is the hashtag that is being used on Twitter and across the online world.  You can follow along with what is happening on Twitter and online if you choose.  The link for that may change and be inoperable but if you see it today you may still have time.

The online presence is being sponsored by the folks over at The Expo Group and my friend Dana Freker Doody is helping put that on.  It is how I heard of its existence.  She reached out to her community and told all of us that it existed. The other sponsors to the event include the MCCA, 3DMedia, Emilie Barta, CORT, IEP, and Digitell.  All of them put this together to make it a great experience.  I will talk about this more and perhaps even get an interview after the show is over with Dana Doody about the post show recap.