Skift Take
By now you should know we don't like traditional form of events. By traditional we mean: High Control - High Environmental Impact - Low Technology - Low Innovation. News is we are not the only one in love with new, innovative concepts. We set the trend, now the market is loving whatever we have been pushing in the past.
Photo by Jill Greenseth via Flickr
Bad news is that if you don’t understand new trends, you are going to be out of the market soon. Bad news is also that if you partially understand what follows, trying to adapt it to whatever old, traditional scheme of executing events, you are going to be out even faster.
There is good news though. If you understand the new spark of revolutionary, user generated, highly technological trends and implement them correctly you are going to be ahead of the game. Far ahead.
Let’s get down to business then and remember to handle with care:
1. Virtual Tradeshows
We are not the biggest fans of trade shows. We are sure there are a lot of Circus fans out there, but would you do business in a Circus. Feel free to do so. The culture of shouting to other people to capture their attention with loudness and noise, it’s indeed a thing that belongs to the 1960’s.
Virtual Tradeshows rationalize the concept substantially. Having arenas where companies measure is still indeed a juicy concept, and having them controlled under a virtual environment is the way to go.
We have witnessed great, one to one, intimate environments that stimulate great trade and business. Way to go.
2. Flash Mobs
The power of word of mouth is scaring and fascinating at the time. The idea of harnessing word of mouth has been around forever, but it is more a way to sell pretentious books rather than a proved business technique. The idea to virally leverage on events like these is more real now thanks to tools such as Facebook or twitter. Make sure you handle with extreme care.
3. Meetups
Although we are fans of Meetup.com we are not referring just to events on that particular platform. There is a trend in establishing monthly or fortnightly user generated events which leverage on existing online communities.
Meetup.com is the most prominent example, but you will find that in Facebook or twitter and among a great number of Nings. Opportunities are either in starting a meetup which follows or anticipates your main event or in driving and attracting sponsorships to existing ones.
4. Pecha Kucha
We have been talking about this creative approach for a while now and here in London it appears to be the trend of the month. Good to know we have readers that make stuff happen.
The format has been around for ages but we exposed it lately to our readership, sparking a new series of implementations. As we have already noted distortions and pretentious mixes of the above with traditional conferences, make sure you understand the format very well and that your target is actually responsive. Otherwise it will look like the last choo choo of a derailing train.
5. Unconference
There is a dark side in some event planners. There is a huge dark side in some of them. When numbers of attendance are going down, some planners would sell their relatives to make money. The abuses of the unconference concept are similar to those spam emails trying to sell magical pills.
We started writing about user generated conferences such as Barcamps two years ago. We participated in the community sharing best practices. People loved it and attendance was great. The traditional model of conferences was then transferred to these incredibly powerful concepts. Disaster.
We witnessed example of trade shows with an unconference within it. This is like mixing fish with cheese, or like Seth Godin would say, serving a Meatball Sundae. We sincerely hope planners will understand before perpetrating the killing of one of the most revolutionary concepts of events.
6. Concerts
Yeah you read correct. If you don’t understand the power of live music now, you are missing out on one of the biggest opportunities for the event industry of the last 15 years. Whatever is going on with the music industry, one thing is for sure, live gigs are becoming the most valuable way to consume music.
No CD, no cassettes anymore. If you experienced the Michael Jackson concert effect lately which was initially scheduled for 10 nights and only one week after increased to 50, you can do the math for your business.
7. Live tweeting
Live tweeting refers to the practice of tweeting information live from an event you are attending. That is becoming an event in itself. With people participating from around. Events are now tagged using hashtags such as #sxsw or #ted and people use tags whenever they witness something worth tweeting from the event.
The echo online is impressive. We had the chance to participate to a number of events in this format and we developed strong and long lasting relationships. How to leverage that? Tons of ways.
8. Burning Man
What is Burning Man? Very tough to explain apparently, but hey twitter is tough to explain as well. We love the concept and its implementation. This is extremely powerful and definitely worth following for developments and applications in other formats as well.
9. Virtual Speed Dating and Networking
The concepts are very powerful offline. So whether you work with dating or networking events, you may want to transfer that online as well. The benefits are outstanding also in terms of managing a digital service which can bring in additional streams of revenue.
10. Social networking nights for professionals
They are originated from Professional Social Networking websites such as Linkedin or Xing. They are becoming extremely powerful networking events and they are carried as Meetups, although not necessarily nested into a topic. In London we have great examples such as EYP which gathers extremely talented professionals networking in one room. It is key if you choose to run these events, to be relevant to the age of your chosen target group or to one specific industry.
