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When used properly, high-tech networking can increase the quantity and quality of professional connections. But to accomplish this, you’ll need an ‘Extreme Networking’ technology strategy — which starts weeks before and culminates in the face-to-face event.
Helping grow a participant’s professional network is a sure-fire way to increase loyalty. Last month, we explored how to do this with low-tech networking strategies. Here, we look at a tech-based “Extreme Networking” strategy. Note that this will necessarily vary from group to group, depending on where your members live their online lives.
Rather than try to do everything, it’s best to choose a few of the following 11 high-tech options and spend the bulk of your time building adoption and engagement – if you do, pretty soon you’ll attain the enlightened state of Extreme Networking.
1. Collect IDs
Use optional fields in event-registration and membership-renewal forms to ask attendees for their blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter URLs. Explain the benefits of providing this information, and share your privacy policy.
2. Create event pages
Encourage attendees to RSVP via LinkedIn and Facebook event pages; updates and posts to these then will display in each person’s network stream. Provide fresh content that will encourage people to participate.
3. Use crowdsourcing
Online polling is a great way to engage your audience before the meeting. It also establishes a conduit for valuable input and a forum for attendees to meet one another.
4. Compare to connect
Some event-specific solutions allow attendees to compare their existing social networks against your registration list – and reaching out in advance to people you already know is an Extreme Networking best practice. Solutions that allow you to send a LinkedIn message, write on a person’s Facebook wall, or Direct Message Twitter followers are also very powerful.
5. Host Webinars and interviews
Schedule Webinars by conference speakers or locals from the event city who can give tips on restaurants and attractions. A pre-event Blogtalkradio series for speakers and Disney-lovers was a big hit for one association, whose attendees connected via Internet radio and text-messaging during the show.
6. Play matchmaker
Some solutions allow attendees to complete professional profiles and personal itineraries. Participants then use keywords and demographics to search for those with similar interests and schedule a time to meet. Some systems take this further and provide customized recommendations of people, sessions, or products.
7. Deploy PURLs
Powerful new solutions on the high-tech scene are personal Web pages (or PURLs) that aggregate links to session handouts, archives, exhibits visited, and attendees connected with. Oftentimes a proprietary device is used, although lead-retrieval and mobile-based solutions are quickly being adopted.
8. Monitor the hashtag
Some of the best connections come from watching others ask intelligent questions or provide insight on Twitter. Pick a unique hashtag (say, #pcma10), and ask attendees to use this when tweeting about the meeting.
9. Organize a “Tweetup” for Twitter-using attendees.
10. Game on!
Location-based apps with gaming components, such as Foursquare and Gowalla, help increase networking and connections. Encourage your hotels and local attractions to play along, and consider giving out awards to top connectors.
11. Share photos
Sites like Flickr allow attendees to deepen their relationships by sharing digital snapshots – and memories. For real-time memory-making, create a “Twitterfountain” that displays tweets and pics from the event as it’s happening.
Adoption Is Key
Too often, new technology isn’t utilized by enough participants to deliver desired results. Communication, education, and community management are the three pillars of success of encouraging adoption. As such, consider hosting a networking best practices Webinar before your meeting to teach attendees how to maximize their use of Twitter and take advantage of the power of the second degree on LinkedIn.
Reprinted with permission of Convene, the magazine of the Professional Convention Management Association. © 2009 pcma.org
You don’t need a helmet, knee or elbow pads to be an Extreme Networker. Heck you don’t even need to be on Twitter or Facebook (but they’ve been known to help). You just need to jump in and work it baby. Work “Extreme Networking,” that is.
One of the huge differentiators that make live events far superior to virtual is the relationships that are developed and grown in person. That’s where the ultimate trust is realized. For example, I might be impressed with your thought leadership through your online actions or maybe even a phone call together. But if I was considering hiring you, I’m not making that final call until after I look you in the eyes and press some flesh.
Strong relationships forged by face-to-face give you a significant advantage no matter what side of the table you sit on unless you are buying or selling lower priced commodities.
Meeting organizers need to do everything they can to accelerate and increase the networking power of their live events. For most, it’s the greatest reason for attending and for coming back next year. To realize that competitive advantage, connecting your attendees and members needs to be part of your culture. You need to take a no-holds-barred approach to Extreme Networking.
With that in mind, Jeff and I wrote a couple of articles in PCMA’s Convene on tactics for taking your conference networking to new levels. In the January column, Is Your Networking Working? we discussed how conference design and low tech approaches can help spawn more networking. Here’s a recap of the 15 ways to provide more structured networking at your next meeting.
1. Secure volunteer greeters and connectors for each session.
2. Ask speakers to weave a networking activity into their sessions.
3. Take a page from Apple retail stores’ Genius Bars, and secure industry veterans or influencers and staff expert bars.
4. Designate special sections in the hotel’s restaurants for conference guests. Encourage the hotel to seat individual attendees with a group or another party of one from your conference.
5. Rope off special sections in meeting rooms for preferred seating.
6. Hold early-morning coffee klatches.
7. Design a Breakout Café.
8. Plan a table-storming session.
9. Schedule book clubs.
10. Program an “unmeeting” session. Attendees enter a room, put one issue they want to discuss on a sticky note, and post it on a board. Attendees separate into topic-based discussion groups.
11. Hold peer-to-peer roundtable discussions.
12. Create speed-networking sessions. Allot three-minute slots for attendees to meet one-on-one and exchange business cards.
13. Add a team-building or community-service project to your agenda.
14. Use name tents for each attendee at a table.
15. Use meeting room setups that help encourage networking.
What do you think of the recommendations listed? Are there others that you would add?
If you are a regular subscriber to PCMA’s Convene, the February issue should be hitting your desk in the next few days. In that issue we continue the networking theme, but made it all about using technology to help. Be on the lookout.
Parts of this post were reprinted with permission of Convene, the magazine of the Professional Convention Management Association. © 2009 pcma.org
So you’ve decided you want to help facilitate the attendee communication at your next event.
You’ve set a goal to increase your onsite attendee engagement with each other and the speakers during the event. And your goals include listening and responding in real time, when appropriate, as well.
Yet, you’re not sure where to begin or which tools to use.
Let’s consider one of the most popular backchannel tools today: Twitter.
Why has Twitter become so popular as a backchannel tool?
- Free
- Ease of use
- Short learning curve
- Fast
- Searchable
- Feels personable because thumbnail photos of those tweeting displayed
- Ability to attach pictures, documents, links
- Accessibility from smart phones and laptops
- Ability to facilitate ongoing relationships among audience members long after the meeting has ended
Here are 16 criteria to consider when choosing your conference backchannel communication tool so that it becomes as popular as Twitter with your attendees.
Adoption Rate
1. Popular
What online communication tools are the most popular today?
2. Setup
Is it easy or hard to setup? Can a new user sign on and setup an account quickly?
3. User-friendly
How easy is it for your attendees to use? What level of technical knowledge or skill do your attendees need to have to use it? Is it intuitive or do your attendees need training on it?
4. Learning Curve
What’s the learning curve for using it? Is it easy or steep?
5. Mobility
Can people use it on their mobile devices in addition to laptops?
Price/Value/ROI
6. Costs
What are the costs of using this tool? Is it free or fee-based? If free, will users be bombarded by advertisements and spam if used?
7. Archived
Do you want the communication to be archived or temporary? If you use Twitter, the information is typically kept for about two weeks. You can visit http://wthashtag.com immediately following the event and print the transcript for the event. This is great data to understand the adoption rate, value and ROI of the conference backchannel.
8. Displayed publicly
Will displaying the backchannel publicly extend the conference’s messages to a broader audience? Does a public backchannel increase the ROI and/or any potential risks?
9. History/References
What backchannel tools have other conferences used? Does the backchannel tool have any references or case studies?
10. Customized
Can you customize the look of the tool with an event logo? Can you change the settings for font size, color, style, etc?
Functionality
11. Character Limit
Does the tool limit the number of characters per comment or can attendees write their thoughts in long form? Is a character limit good for your audience?
12. Identified or Anonymous
Can the users be anonymous or do they have to identify themselves with a name, photo or other means in order to comment? There is a higher risk of negative or inappropriate comments from anonymous users.
13. Standalone
Do you want the backchannel to be a standalone, private communication tool or do you want it part of a public service like Twitter that can reach far beyond your conference walls?
14. Software or Web-enabled
Does it require a download of special software or is it web-enabled?
15. Monitored or Real-Time
Do you want the ability to monitor and approve comments before they enter the backchannel? Or are you open to real-time comments.
16. Attachments
Can users attach pictures and links to additional sources easily? Or is it rich text enabled only.
These are just a few questions to consider as you choose your backchannel tool for your next event.
What other criteria should be considered when choosing a backchannel tool? What are some of your experiences with the backchannel?
This is the last in my series for TweetsGiving 2009, a global celebration that seeks to change the world through the power of gratitude. I will return to my normal topics about associations, education, meetings and events, and social media on November 30, 2009.
Thanksgiving looks two directions at once.
It looks to the world: shopping for the family meal, retrieving visitors or being a visitor, receiving “Black Friday – shop tomorrow!” messages and deciding whether to comply, savoring time off work, and in many instances, dealing with the onset of holiday angst.
Offering thanks and gratitude this Thanksgiving.
And it looks to the heavenly: glimpses of our being interwoven with those who give to us and those who depend on our gifts, signs of unearned grace, lives connecting as if drawn together by a higher power.
Somehow, at the center of our gratitude and our delight, or our seasonal despair, is a Love far beyond anything we see or control. We cannot define it, measure it, or bar our door to it. That Love simply exists, and it graces our lives no matter what we do.
Last Saturday night, for example, as my parents, family and friends gathered to celebrate my parents’ 50 Wedding Anniversary, I sat at the “children’s table” away from the commotion with the Gen-Y generation. I was warmed by the roaring laughter of friends and family celebrating this occasion. I marveled at this gift: a kitchen where everyone felt safe, three generations in a circle, love in full bloom, those honoring their elders.
Yes, I can trace the years of my parents nursing and guiding as well as many family relatives doing their part. But I also see the mystery of a goodness that comes from a belief in a Divine Love, not from parenting. When my sister and I built snow castles and took well-worn sledding paths down a neighborhood hill several decades ago, I’m sure our parents had no idea where we would go or where our futures would lead. That flight passed through the heavens and returned to earth on wings of the Love, not theirs or mine.
In these challenging times, I hope for two things.
First, I hope that you glimpse such goodness coming toward you. And that you will know it as a higher power’s doing, not yours. For if this goodness is of Love , so to speak, then it is reliable and durable.
Second, despite the politicization of faith and the many ways every festival is turned to commercial advantage, I hope that nations trapped in war, famine, poverty and worsening inequality will remember their first Thanksgiving Day, when a harsh winter of despair turned to hope because unexpected friends showed up with food.
The first Beatitude still prevails: we are blessed, not when we have enough food on today’s table or enough credit for tomorrow’s shopping, but when we know our need of each other, faith and the Divine.
Happy Thanksgiving Day to you and yours!
Please join me in this global celebration of thanks and gratefulness. I hope you’ll visit the TweetsGiving site to learn more, and to bring your grateful heart to the party by sharing your gratitude, and giving in honor of that for which you’re most thankful.
For the next few days, I’m participating in TweetsGiving 2009, a global celebration that seeks to change the world through the power of gratitude. I will return to my normal topics about associations, education, meetings and events, and social media on in a few days. Please indulge me with this post about gratitude.
When I travel, I will leave behind a spacious office with several computers, high-speed Internet access, several desks and comfortable chairs. I will settle into “portable office” mode.
Portable office on the go.
My workspace will be my lap, as I sit in two airports. Sometimes, my workspace is a professional office with ample computers, printers, cubicles and phones. Sometimes, it is the table in my dining room, a table at Starbucks, or the porch swing on my front porch. Or maybe it’s the desk in my den.
And, you know something, it was fine. It was enough. I got my work done. In fact, looking back at the years of work, I remember most fondly the times I had to make do: sharing office space with several others, turning a closet into a small office, typing elbows-in on airplanes, working at restaurant tables, scouting out plugs and telephone jacks in hotels, finding quiet corners in busy airports, even using pen and paper.
I don’t want to over-dramatize such making-do. Compared with what famine and war victims are enduring, it is nothing. My point is that enough is indeed enough, or as my friend would say, “Enough is as good as a feast.”
Enough is as good as a feast.
That is a hard lesson to learn. Many of us are raised in a world of “more,” where wants become necessities, minimums are unacceptable, and our goal isn’t to avoid excess, but to find a secure place to store excess. Entire industries exist for the purposes of creating a demand for more, managing more, protecting more, proclaiming more, and justifying more.
This is a dilemma for people. Chasing more requires us to ignore giving wealth away to those in need. Hunting treasures keeps us from dying to self. Hording keeps us from enjoying the gift of giving.
Ancient texts talk about a wandering generation receiving manna in the wilderness with explicit instructions that: enough is enough. Take only what is needed for the day. The one exception was the sixth day, when they could take an extra day’s worth, so that they could observe rest on the next day. The point of the extra amount wasn’t to accumulate more, but to make sure they had enough for the seventh day, their special day to remember who they were.
By making the leap from enough to more, and then working 24/7 to achieve it, we enter into that spiritual amnesia which loses true identity and sees self in possessions, accomplishments and worldly status.
It would be better for us if we were content with enough and set aside time to rest, rejuvenate, consider those in need and give when we have more than enough.
Today, let’s help those in need get “Enough as good as a feast.”
Please join me in this global celebration of thanks and gratefulness. I hope you’ll visit the TweetsGiving site to learn more, and to bring your grateful heart to the party by sharing your gratitude, and giving in honor of that for which you’re most thankful.
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