Archive for » October, 2009 «
Are you thinking about adding a virtual experience for your customers or members?
Perhaps you are considering adding a virtual component to your next conference or event?
Ian McGonnigal, Executive Director, Program Strategy at George P Johnson defines a virtual event as “… a gathering of individuals who meet through a computer-generated environment at a prearranged time in order to acquire knowledge, share information, interact with each other and engage in activities of common interest.“
Are you considering intergrating a virtual experience in your current offerings?
So whether you’re looking to create a virtual event or integrate a virtual experience into your current offerings, here are eight types of virtual experiences for your consideration:
1. Hybrid Event
A mix of face-to-face and virtual experiences usually running simultaneously which may include overlapping content and interactive elements to two different audiences, those present within the four walls of the face-to-face event and virtual attendees.
2. Internet Radio Show Or Interview
Also known as web radio, net radio, streaming radio and e-radio, Internet Radio is an audio broadcasting service transmitted via the Internet. Some Internet radios providers like blogtalkradio, offer social media platform integration, free recordings and podcasting applications.
3. Live Streaming
A continuous stream of data, usually video or other media, sent in compressed form over the Internet and displayed by the viewer in real time. The receiver uses a player, which is a special program that uncompresses and sends video data to the display and audio data to the speakers. Many Internet browsers have built in streaming players. Some conference organizers are creating hybrid events and live stream aspects of the face-to-face conference to virtual attendees. Livestream, Qik and UStream are examples of free or low-cost live streaming. There are a wealth of high-end live streaming companies as well (like Midori Connolly’s Pulse Staging & Events or Carrie & Mike McAllen’s Grass Shack Events & Media). Livestream, Ustream and Twebevent integrate live streaming with other social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook for real time chat.
4. Online Conference
An online platform that integrates webinars, streaming video and audio, discussion boards with RSS, file libraries and vendor showrooms. Often the online conference follows a similar format as a face-to-face conference, with attendees participating in real time or on-demand recordings. Some conference organizers are offering an online conference in association with their face-to-face event. Some conference organizers offer online conference social communities as an extension of a face-to-face event that may or may not include some of the online conference features like webinars, streaming video and audio. iCohere is an examples of a platform that provides online conferences. CrowdVine, NFi Studios’ MemberFuse, Omnipress’ Conference 2.0, Pathable, and Social Collective are examples of online conference communities.
5. Podcast
An audio broadcast that has been converted to digital, such as an MP3 file or other audio file format for playback in a digital music player and downloaded from the Internet. For some of the best meetings and event podcasts, check out Mike McAllen’s McCallen’s MeetingsPodcast.
6. Teleconferences
A conference of people who are in different locations that is made possible by the use of telecommunications equipment. It can be supported through telephone, computer, telegraph, radio and closed-circuit television. It is sometimes referred to as audio conferencing, telephone conferencing and phone conferencing.
7. Virtual Meeting
A live event or meeting held using a virtual platform, custom built or hosted in a 3D or 2D virtual world. InExpo, InXpo, On24, SecondLife’s Virtualis Convention Center, and Unisfair are a few of the companies providing real-time virtual events and meetings.
8. Webinars
Short for Web-based seminar, a webinar is a presentation, lecture, workshop or seminar that is transmitted over the Web. The information is streamed, live or on-demand, broadcasting the message usually from one source to multiple users simultaneously. Most Webinars, also called Virtual Seminars, offer interactive features with the ability to give, receive and discuss information. Some differentiate Webcasts from Webinars since Webcasts only offer one way data transmission from the presenter to the attendee.
I know there are others. What other types of virtual experiences would you add to this list?
Do you hear the thunder coming over the mountain?
You know, the roar of uncertainty and the rumble of disruptive innovation marching towards the association and event world.
What roar you ask? Or perhaps you say, “It’s just not true,” as you listen with deaf ears. Well, consider the following.
Umair Haque, Director of the Havas Media Lab, has an interesting post, The New (New) Mediaconomy, on Harvard Business Publishing recently.
He talks about the clash of traditional media and the Internet and says that asking, “Can media survive the www?” is the wrong question.
Haque compares today’s media to soda pop and wine. He says, “… there are two kinds of goods: wine and soda. Soda is low quality communication: thin information, low-quality information, and just plain disinformation. Wine is high-quality communication: analysis, debate, and knowledge.”
He proceeds to label most blogs as cola: pedestrian, prosaic, humdrum and uninspired. The problem, as he defines it, is that traditional media has done nothing but rehash the same cola, instead of providing higher-quality, thought-provoking, multi-layered fine wines. You see, people are willing to pay more for fine wines with multiple textures, a variety of notes, degrees of intensity and an assortment of tactile sensations from tannin to prickle. Most people aren’t willing to pay much to digest cheap traditional sugary colas.
What are your providing to your customers, members and event attendees: cheap cola or fine wine?
For me, this sounds a lot like today’s associations and conferences.
Many associations have focused on their annual conference, meetings and education as their largest source of non-dues revenue. Association leaders and conference organizers have spent long hours producing status quo programs, services and content to attract members and event attendees. These leaders display an entitlement syndrome that paying-dues members are also expected to pay to attend conference and to receive content. Traditional thinking is that the association is underwriting the costs to provide members with that content and therefore the member should at a minimum pay for those costs. (Event organizers, can you say, “Plus, plus, plus?” For non-event organizers, think of labor, service charges, local taxes and rent added to the delivery fees.)
These associations have relied on making the same money from meeting attendees that they’ve always made and have been happy with less than stellar attendee conference evaluations. A 70% conference smile rate from registrants is perfectly acceptable to them and a good reason to provide the same experience and quality at the next event. The last thing these leaders were interested in was creating authentic value for a member or attendee.
Year after year, these conference organizers have repeated the same conference format, securing the same industry speakers (who are typically now writing their own blogs and sharing content online and through their own webinars), with little thought given to upgrading the attendee’s experience, changing the traditional conference format or providing fresh, fine-wine type content. The content is often generic, bland and can be found on your local mobile phone, free by visiting the speakers’ website or blog.
Some speakers change their presentations regularly yet are they offering attendees an opportunity to analyze and debate that content with them, and with each other? Or is the content just bottle-fed to attendees, a drip at a time, as attendees sit passively in large ballrooms, in a zombie-like states thinking, “This tastes all too familiar like yesterday’s cheap cola? Fizzy, sacchariny sweet, cotton-candy fluff.” Some are even remembering the old Wendy’s commercial, “Where’s the beef?” Some turn to using social media to describe their distaste for the meal being offered.
However, some of those attendees and members are beginning to see associations and conference organizers as yesterday’s monopolists of the only content and experience providers available at that time. These organizations and conference providers are now facing disruptive innovation: online free content, quality unconferences with low registration fees and the ability for people to create their own online tribes (community).
Haque challenges readers to think about it from the opposing view as well. The reason organizations are having trouble making money is because they’ve spent so long producing ordinary, dull, insipid weak cola as well as an undefined cheap experience to go with it too.
Haque ends with this, “Media’s just the canary in the mine. Over the next decade, every industry will undergo a similar transition from locked down and closed to blown wide open.”
Think about it? When was the last time you returned from an annual conference, a three day event or 90-minute webinar where you were drunk with new knowledge, high on the adrenalin of healthy debate and discussion, and wanting to purchase more of that organization’s fine wine.
Association leaders, board members and conference organizers, are you producing bland sugary-sweet cola, or crafting and cultivating fine wines?
So, what say you? Let’s hear your thoughts, questions or comments.
Hybrid meetings and blended event experiences are the buzz of many organizations this year.
But, are they as important as some say or is it just hype? (Get ready, this is a long post. Stay with me, it’s has some interesting research though!)
Along with the buzz, you’ve probably also heard several reasons not to integrate virtual experiences into your face-to-face meeting. Here are some of the naysayer’s mantras:
- Adding live streaming or virtual attendance will cannibalize our onsite attendance.
- Virtual experiences do not promote networking and learning.
- It costs too much to add a virtual element to our annual conference.
- There are too many distractions for people attending virtual events.
- You can’t control the audience when they attend virtually and therefore the value drops.
- Virtual attendees start chatting with each other and don’t pay attention to the presenter. It’s just like they’re passing notes.
- The back channel is rude and disrespectful, and promoting it is a fail. It can be highjacked by spammers and inappropriate talk.
Whether it’s hype, buzz, concerns or complaints, here are four reasons, from recent studies, that show the positive impact on learning by adding virtual experiences to your face-to-face meeting or events.
Online learning of polylogues creates hyper time and increased learning.
- A 2009 Department of Education study shows that adults in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction. (Holy Kaw Batman. That can’t be true!)
- Giving virtual attendees control of their interactions with each other, the media and the content enhances learning. (That’s right, go ahead and lose control of your attendees. They’ll learn more without you in the way!)
- Online learning is superior to face-to-face instruction. (Wow, the U.S. Department of Education said that!)
- Source: U.S. Department of Education, Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies
- Research published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication shows that online a polylogue (multiple people talking with each other simultaneously) is better than a monologue (speaker presentation) or dialogue (turn-taking interactions).
- In face-to-face presentations, words follow words, paragraphs follow paragraphs, people’s thought patterns follow a single, one-way linear medium—the presenter’s speech–, which discourages flexible, open-ended, multidirectional and multidimensional thought.
- Face-to-face presentations demand that an attendee follow an authoritarian, straight-line, fixed point of view and the medium can become stronger than its content.
- Attendee engagement during a face-to-face presentation demands turn-taking interaction, a dialogue, where the process of taking turns may become more important than the message and comments may be out of snyc as a result of waiting for one’s turn. (We’ve all been there where we’re dying to add a comment, ask a question or ask for clarification. By the time we get called on to speak, we’ve forgotten what we were going to say or it’s no longer relevant to the discussion.)
- Virtual experiences where attendees can control their conversations and participate in polylogues of words and images increase learning and retention. (Ok, here’s the proof that chats, like Twitter chats are better than monologues or dialogues.)
- Source: Comparing How Students Collaborate to Learn About the Self and Relationships in a Real-Time Non-Turn-Taking Online and Turn-Taking Face-to-Face Environment
- Supersynchrony, as Dr. Davis Fougler calls it, allows attendees to control of level of synchrony with parallel interactions, which magnifies learning opportunities and retention.
- In face-to-face presentations, the majority of the interactions are between the presenters and the attendees, basically one-way and expert centric. Sometimes, presenters involve audience engagement yet conversations are still one-way dialogues between two people.
- Virtual experiences promote supersynchrony that creates hypertime, bending time so to speak, by allowing for additional data flow to the attendee and increased productivity. (There’s your new word for the week, supersynchrony.)
- Virtual or online presentations give attendees the ability to break and restore communication linearity. Participants can scroll back from the moment the statements was posted, while interacting presently in the here-and-now, resulting in several conversations happening all at the same time (which are archived for later use). (I know, go ahead and say that’s too much noise for you and you need to focus on one thing at a time. There’s a time and a place for that too.)
- Such hyper synchronous, multi-layered online interaction not only connects each participant in a web of discussion, it affords each participant time to respond during the online synchronous discussion and time to reflect and digest what was said in the archives. This increases interactivity, learning, retention and is a better than face-to-face learning. (For all those naysayers about Twitter chats, here’s the research to back it. Just because YOU don’t like it doesn’t mean that it’s that everyone doesn’t like it. Get out of the way and let your attendees interact with the content and each other.)
- Sources: Building Time Machines: Thinking about the future of interpersonal communication and International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, Volume 6, Number 2.
- Hybrid events, blending virtual and face-to-face actually drive face-to-face event attendance and purchases.
- In 2009, Cisco Live, Cisco’s annual customer conference, had 10,000 people at their face-to-face event and another 4,400 with virtual experiences.
- Along with traditional back channel chats during presentations, Cisco provided live group video chats after keynotes specifically for virtual attendees to ask experts, Cisco executives, and speakers questions and to provide more in-depth discussions. These tools also allowed smaller groups of virtual attendees to break off into private chats and return to the larger chat as needed.
- 80% of the virtual attendees said they are likely to purchase a product from Cisco.
- 34% said they were likely to attend the face-to-face event because of attending the virtual experience. (Who wouldn’t like a 34% increase in face-to-face registration!)
- They had 21,000 virtual sessions views, 74 blog posts written and 4,000 virtual booth visits.
- Source: Once You Go Hybrid You’ll Never Go Back
My takeaways from these studies:
- Allow attendees to pick their learning preferences. It’s fine if someone wants to use a computer during an event, follow the back channel or just passively listen. Respect all.
- Event organizers must begin to create more networked learning and less monologues in conferences. Start thinking about adding “social” elements to the face-to-face experience.
- Event organizers should see events within the larger context of a community ecosystem including virtual and face-to-face experiences.
- You can’t control learning whether at your face-to-face or virtual event and you never did.
- Adding a virtual element to your face-to-face event, can have a positive impact on attendance at the next event. See virtual experiences as marketing for future registration, not something that discounts the face-to-face experience.
So what say you? If you’re still with me and read all of this!
I admit it. I’m an information junkie.
["Hi, Jeff," the Information Junkie Anonymous crowd says in unison.]
I’m a life-long learner that loves to devour new information from a variety of resources. I guess that’s why education was one of my degrees in college. [Yes, one of them.]
I read a lot. I mean a whole lot. I read stuff about things that help me grow in my profession. And I read stuff that has nothing to do with my profession. That’s often how I get some of my best ideas is reading outside of my field of interests.
I'm an information junkie.
Before the Internet and before blogs, I had lots of magazines and publications in my home. If I was going to a bookstore, half of my purchases were magazines. I would scour bookstores and news stands for unusual or unknown magazines. I would purchase catalogs of magazines just to feed my voracious appetite.
I was known at work for tearing out magazine articles, copying them and sharing them with anyone that would listen. I would mail articles to friends and family. I kept three ring notebooks of favorite articles. Now, don’t think I’m like your neighbor that keeps a lot of clutter and never throws anything away. My parents taught me better than that. I’m actually just the opposite, slightly OCD when it comes to everything has a place and a place for everything.
All of my magazines and articles were organized and I could find specific articles quickly. I have a fairly sharp memory too. (Just ask my parents, co-workers and spouse. They’ll tell you it’s one of my assets but also gets me in trouble when I remind people of what they forgot.)
Then the Internet arrived. I subscribed to eNews and read magazines online. My email box filed incoming news into appropriate folders. I filled RSS feeds with favorite blogs and read online books when they first started appearing in the early 1990’s.
Today, I don’t purchase many magazines yet I keep my learning needs fulfilled by reading blogs. And, I read a lot of blogs too from a variety of sources. I read them on my laptop, my desktop and my iPhone. I tweet articles and email them to family and friends. I star them, put them in folders and favor them in Twitter.
I often get asked what are some of my favorite blogs so here they are: My.Alltop.Com/JeffHurt
My.Alltop.com/JeffHurt
This is just a handful of my favorites from one of my favorite websites: Alltop.
Check out my mix of association, elearning, event and meeting planning, nonprofit, and social media blogs. If your blog is not in MyAlltop, perhaps it’s because you haven’t registered your blog for Alltop yet.
And, you can create your own My.Alltop too.
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