@LindyDreyer
Yes, you SociaFish practice what you preach! Your event goals of reaching as many people as possible giving people lots of ways to talk about Buzz2009 are some great examples that other conference organizers should consider. What a great case study your conference will be once all the ripples are felt, recognized and considered.

In this case, our goals for the event meant reaching as many people as we possibly could, giving them lots of ways to talk about Buzz2009, and making the people in the room feel like they were an integral part of something much larger. Reading your post, I feel like we succeeded…not because we as organizers made it work, but because we tapped into the association community who made it work. Thanks for being a part of that!

Seeing the stream of consciousness of the group (via Hashtag blah blah “#conference20″.) was rather insightful. Rather, a SESSION BLOGGER should summarize live or after the session to the conference blog.

The moral of the story is that engagement before, during and after the conference gives legs to the learning and education, and extends the life of the conference. Call it a “living conference” or Conference 2.0.

*What if you could meet your fellow attendees before the conference, and engage the speaker?
*What if you when you showed up you were familiar with the people attending the same sessions as you?
*What if you could easily set appointments with exhibitors or sponsors?
*As a conference organizer, see a level of conference engagement before during and after the conference never seen before?

That’s Conference 2.0! The next step in conferences.

This results are a better experience for the attendee, speaker, exhibitors and conference organizers!

Tony Veroeven
@tony_omnpress

@Samueljsmith Fanstastic take-aways from the Buzz2009 Webinar. I like your point in number 2: By making the content easy to share you can create a powerful “word of mouth” campaign that delivers your secret sauce to thousands of “like-minded” people.

I attended the Buzz2009 webinar and moderated the #eventprofs chat, yesterday. I made these 4 observations for associations and event organizers:

1. Each event and association has a “secret sauce” or “magic” to it. By broadcasting the webinar for “free” you are bottling the magic of the event and giving everyone a taste of what must be happening onsite. Each time I see one of these webinars, it makes me want to attend the event in person.

2. By making the content easy to share you can create a powerful “word of mouth” campaign that delivers your secret sauce to thousands of “like-minded” people. I can’t imagine a simpler way to introduce thousands of new people to your event and organization than by having their friends share the “secret sauce” of your event. TED does this exceptionally well with its delayed release of presentations. Buzz2009 gave us a “live” taste. IMO, this would be especially powerful for associations that want to grow future membership OR grow attendance at an event.

3. Twitter and the backchannel allowed 5000 people to expand upon the ideas that were being presented on stage. These comments and thought streams were presented to the audience and on the screens of the virtual attendees. Plus, these comments are archived. Some people will read through these transcripts (or segments of them) to extract additional insights. It’s a powerful way to capture the thoughts of the audience.

4. Finally, the post-event chat format allowed us to continue to expand upon what we saw and learned. There were many different points of view that helped all of us capture additional take-aways from the presentation. Again, these ideas are archived as well. This small group discussion format could also work for face-to-face events.

Jeff, IMO, with today’s communication tools our reach and range for connecting with people is unbounded. There is no reason that our events should be constrained to the people onsite. We should be able to create an opportunity for all members to participate and engage in a global dialogue. The tools are there and #Buzz2009 has provided a blueprint for extending the onsite experience that other groups can follow.

Sam

twitter: @samueljsmith

Instead of trying to stretch out a meeting into our regular lives, should we not design a process of interaction within a community first? That interaction MUST be “virtual” for most of the year (that’s why we can only get together for an “annual” meeting). So let’s design a virtual process of collaboration, of “network learning” as you put it, and then design an occasional face-to-face experience to support/enhance/accelerate that ongoing process of virtual peer exchange.

The general mindset is still that the face-to-face meeting is the ONLY time we can learn from one another, but SM tools are finally getting to the point where we can learn from each other constantly. Instead of asking how to extend the life of a physical conference, I’d want to know what it looks like to hold a face-to-face meeting that supports a SM community!