The first blog for event planners
Just guest posted on 140Char about live twitting management.
Twitter is becoming a big part of events, I suggest you keep yourself up to date.
Link to How to use live twitting and tweets in events
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The horrible economic trends as well as the impressive movement of user generated events is challenging the traditional scheme of paid events.
If you charge for your events you may soon be in real trouble. If you charge a lot for your events you are probably already facing tough challenges.
The Economy
Pretty straight forward. There are not enough money to be spent on events as before. Companies buying tickets for your conferences are now hesitating on such expenditure. There is simply not the disposable income there used to be. As simple as that.
The Technology
Online meetings are now preferred to conferences. Linkedin/Xing is now preferred to your 3000£/$/€ networking event.
User Generated Events
Meetups, BarCamps, unconferences and the like are now offering free alternatives to your paid events. Getting together a location and asking people to pay for their drinks is now accepted. Nobody wants to mix any more with sponsors, stalls, banners and so forth. Meetups are run by users and most of them are not sponsored. The conventional infrastructure around events is shaking.
You cannot rely any more on scarcity.
I don’t have to wait for big exhibitions to come along in order to network with top professionals. It’s all coming to my city and for free, possibly on a monthly basis.
Now, how do you deal with that? How do you compete with free, zero, nada, niet, niente?
Innovate
You will soon realize that if you manage events conventionally, the demand will drop sensibly.
Few tips.
If you use social media and social networks, if you know what twitter is, if you integrate sponsors gently and wisely, you will definitely find new ways to engage and make a profit.
If you think this is not going to happen and you feel safe where you are, start reading another blog!
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Many people lately have been asking me to promote their events on social networks. My response to most of them is this post.
Social Media and social networks now offer great potential to cut costs on event promotions. Social media and social networks are just buzzwords to gain your attention.
Well now that I do have your attention I’ll tell you how to do it.
[Read more...]
Pixe…what??? You may be asking. This is part of a project started by Mithc Joel called Pixelated Conference Series, based on an idea by Future Now. Chris Brogan also supported it and now it’s my turn.
The project: A one day full online conference with videos from top speakers about a theme, namely BarCamps in my take. As my topic is user generated conferences, what more than users themselves talking about *camps?
Let’s see:
[Read more...]
Photo by: Jon Curnow
The results of a discussion on how to ensure that people who RSVP‘d yes at your free event do actually turn up.
The intrinsic value of free events
I love free events. What I love even more is free events with free drinks. It seems like I am not the only one. It is getting ridiculously awkward to actually pay to get in.
If you did your homework chances are that you can cover expenses and make a profit just relying on sponsors.
Last week I attended a Trade Show, a Meetup, a Twestival and a Barcamp.
In all of those I got free food and drinks, gadgets and I did the best networking ever.
The next time someone shows up and tells you you need to pay 1000£/$/€ to attend a conference or a networking event, bear in mind you are actually paying for the steering wheel of organizer’s SUV.
One problem
Now, from the organizer perspective, getting sponsors may be relatively easy if you have a good target audience. But making sure the audience actually attends the day of the event, that’s a whole different ballgame.
I noticed at one of the above events that 40+ attendees did not show up. That’s a pity because they excluded at least the same number of people, who eventually got together for a parallel event.
My problem
I’ll be soon organizing a free event. Don’t be curious. It will be on the barcamp concept, which we love so much, but I cannot disclose more than that.
The problem is we got space for 60 people and much bigger forecast demand. We want to make sure that those who RSVP Yes actually turn up.
On a first come basis
It doesn’t work, as simple as that. That’s what was used at the above event and the results were upsetting.
A twitter conversation
I decided to ask my supercool twitter pals about it and here’s the conversation
[Read more...]
