| Dave has been involved in the meetings industry for over 10 years, and in publishing for nearly 20. As both EVP for Conference Archives, and an active member of several industry related associations, he continues to find new ways to help meeting professionals understand and implement technology solutions. In addition to presenting at industry-related meetings, he also writes for many industry magazines, and is a contributing author of Professional Meeting Management, 5th edition. |
Filed under: Uncategorized David Angeletti @ 8:27 am on 19/12/07
Thanks to those of you who stopped by for the presentation in Las Vegas. If you missed it, I’m sorry you did! I’ve made the presentation available on the site here. I hope you’ll feel free to ask any questions as they arise.
Filed under: Uncategorized David Angeletti @ 9:45 am on 27/11/07
…you start letting people access your meeting content online!
All sorts of statistics start to pop up… some are not so alarming, others are downright insightful, and allow you to glean a lot more information about your brand recognition, and about those who are visiting your site for all the right reasons… your organizational knowledge!
As an example, more than 25,000 page views have been recorded from the 2007 Heart Rhythm Society’s Annual Meeting content through their Heart Rhythm OnDemand™ portal since May of this year… that’s 140 page view a day of specific content, not just your typical Internet surfer clicking through page after page.
Another example of the usefulness comes from examining who is visiting. And what I mean by who, is really where they’re coming from, whether that be a city, state or country. For many, it’s a humbling feeling to learn that people from over 100 countries have sought out content from their scientific meetings. For others, it’s intriguing to learn that those people represent more than 80 foreign languages as their native tongue.
What’s the point?
The point is that no matter what else you might do with your content online, please be sure to make an effort to track the traffic. Even if it’s only to know that your’re seeing a significant amount of traffic, this can tell you a lot (positively or negatively) about how you’re doing, and what people think of your content.
The point is that when done right, and with some attention to detail, you can build an online resource of renewable, sustainable knowledge for your constituents, and use it to keep them in your realm, and not lose them to competitive sites.
Filed under: Uncategorized David Angeletti @ 2:49 pm on 15/11/07
I’m not sure what the title means, but I guess what I’m angling toward here is that if you’ve already taken steps to have your meeting content recorded, don’t forget about the opportunities beyond the MP3 and CD sales (if that’s all you have planned).
It’s likely to be very worthwhile to make sure your education and communication or marketing departments are aware of what you have and in what format those recordings exist. It takes very little effort, even with the most modest of staffing levels, to create podcasts from those recordings that you can post on your own website.
Why do this? It’s your organizational knowledge. It’s a smart idea to guard some of it, but not all of it. What better, more compelling way to get non-attendees off the fence and call them to action than by presenting them with just a taste of the meetings they’re missing? Not that you want to necessarily be in their face about it, but call it an added value for members, or highlight of what was missed… anything to prompt some positive action toward getting them to your next meeting!
Most attendees we see when in an on-site sales capacity have a very good idea of what they “think” they would like to purchase, until they’re reminded of other offerings that are available. So, if you’ve missed the opportunity to inform them of those “other” options or offerings when you were on site, use your website and other forms of member communication to announce the availabilty of these items… don’t waste the opportunity.
Personally, I’m in the post-event blues phase of having completed another large society meeting, a high-stress environment regardless of whether you’re the society or a supplier, but it’s in this post-event haze that I’m reminded of things that just seem to pop up while on site.
For instance, there were a number of attendees asking whether a specific session was captured in both audio and visual forms. If you’re in the position to have the audio recording, and can still get the presentation materials from the speaker, there’s always a chance you can post-produce a specific enduring product to respond to that need (or want) represented by your attendees.
And don’t forget… if you’re attendees think there’s a need, your non-attendees are certainly going to be missing it as well! I would suspect that nine times out of 10, your education and marketing departments would be able to justify the efforts to keep things moving along these lines as well.
Filed under: Uncategorized David Angeletti @ 2:58 pm on 12/11/07
So how’s this for realistic ROI? As I mentioned earlier, I’m on site in New Orleans at the American Academy of Ophthalmology annual meeting, and today is the second day, actually second pre-conference day of the event.
Through today, we’ve received a number of inquiries with regard to content that was made available during last year’s conference, and whether it will continue to be available beyond this year’s event.
Of course, this offers a society an interesting opportunity to do the right thing, and the good news is that there really isn’t a bad answer.
On the one hand, you could opt to continue making the year-old content available online (even on a membership limited basis, it’s added value for the members, and represents more traffic to your branded sites); on the other hand, you could opt to allow people to purchase continued access and drive additional non-dues revenue to the society.
The bottom line is that your attendees are going to continue supporting your live meetings; there are so many benefits to attendees that thinking they won’t show because your content is available online is simply without justification.
They’ll come again next year. And those that did not come this year, had a reason. Those who won’t show next year, will also have a reason.
But… if you don’t make the attempt to capture your content and produce meaningful enduring products, you’ll never provide those who aren’t coming regardless of the circumstances with a reason for continuing to support the society.
Filed under: Uncategorized David Angeletti @ 12:59 pm on 15/11/07
So I’m sitting here at the Morial Convention Center in New Orleans during the American Academy of Ophthalmology annual meeting and seeing first hand how attendees have come to expect not only to be able to purchase or have access to conference content online, but to experience it in both a visual and aural manner.
Granted, this is a large medical meeting, and expectations are often higher at these meetings than at smaller events; however, that doesn’t mean that society meetings of any size should automatically discount the potential based on cost or on what they think their audiences desire.
Here at Morial, we have four points of sale that will scale down to two POS for the last few days, and will likely see over 20,000 people. This is the same type of traffic pattern we experienced in Orlando last week for the American Heart Association. But we’ve also performed similar contract work for groups numbering around 2,000 people, and even as low as 200 people.
The point I’m trying to make here is that until you’ve taken the steps, at least once, to get some form of rich-media product in front of your audience, you’ll never truly know how it will be received. Yes, there is risk. But you take a risk with each successive year in which you don’t offer something new too.
So far we’re close to mirroring last year’s success. It’s very early, though, the first day in fact, so I’m looking forward to seeing how we end up at the end of the conference.
What excites me, and other suppliers of the same types of service, is that there seems to be an immediate expectation from year to year that we will be here, offering synchronized audio and slide-based archives that can be accessed on the web. They’re not interested in audio-only CDs or even MP3 downloads. Sure, they’ll buy them if that’s all that is made available to them, but they won’t be nearly as satisfied until they can get their hands on the types of product that satiate their individual educational needs.
Filed under: Uncategorized David Angeletti @ 1:01 pm on 09/11/07
What are you waiting for?
You have the content… it’s the same material that appears on your annual meeting or specialty meeting products! It’s just sitting there, waiting to be plucked, aligned with other complimentary content, underwritten, produced, and distributed.
It really can be that simple.
Take a look at the Heart Rhythm Society as an example. Their annual meeting this Spring (held in early May) presented the content that drove three specific products; an all-encompassing audio-based DVD-ROM (with presentations in PDF format), a Highlights DVD-ROM (with synchronized audio and slides), and a specialty product for a specific educational track that was also synchronized.
But they didn’t stop there.
In fact, a scant 75 days after their meeting (and before most other societies have even distributed their main meeting CD-ROM products) the Heart Rhythm Society had already delivered nearly 12 enduring products to market… count ‘em… double-digits baby!
Granted, it takes a some serious resources to pull this off, but how much does it take to produce one or two other products off between the end of one annual conference, and the beginning of another? Realistically, if you’re working with a supplier who has helped to identify a means for you to efficiently work with your own content, allowing you to use more time to develop a sponsorship pipeline to help mitigate the production cost and actually realize a new source of revenue for your organization, I’d have to argue that it doesn’t take much…
That is, it doesn’t take much thought.
After all, this represents a VERY real means to increase ROI; and while it may mean crossing over departmental lines to get it done… with education and meetings, and perhaps even your IT department, can you really argue that it’s not worth the collective time spent if the bottom line improves?
In a time when executive management is constantly looking for those in middle management to help reduce spend, increase revenue, and raise the bar on membership retention, this could be one of the most easily achieved goals you can set for yourself, and your organization. In fact, new opportunities for sponsors to engage with your organization are likely already high on the priority list of your corporate relations department, so be that enabling body in the organization that makes a difference… Repurpose your content and get in the hands of those people who are looking for it!
Here’s another thought… while you’re pondering the incremental shift in your attendee base… What new information, what new means do you have to promote your keystone event of the year?
Yep… the same stuff, the content you’ve already paid for and had produced. So why not highlight a few sessions on the website for your upcoming event? Why not push out links to it in an email campaign? Why not host a webcast of it and invite the faculty back for a short but meaningful Q&A session to help build interest?
That’s just me though… I’m just saying…
Filed under: Uncategorized David Angeletti @ 2:05 pm on 09/11/07
Take a look at what as many as 70% of associations are doing with their conference content… producing/selling MP3 CD-ROMs, right? And why not?
They’ve been sustaining revenue streams for those societies just as tapes have before them. And besides, there is no cost (typically) to the association as the revenue is based on a royalty split with the vendor in most cases.
So where’s the problem?
Let me ask just a couple of questions, hypothetically of course…
How many of you have actually asked your attendees and members if they “want” this type of product?
Have you given them any other choices? (Don’t even think about including paper-based products)
So if members and attendees wanted some other option to be made available, what should it be? If you guessed “web access”, you’re right. Perhaps no other medium has driven the use of event-based content more than the web. It’s about immediacy, it’s about getting at what you want, when you want it in today’s instant economy.
Keep in mind, this doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice your return on investment completely. While there is certainly some level of investment to do this (e.g., staff time, cost of hosting, maybe even production fees), the amount of traffic you will now be able to track (I bet you have no idea of how well used all those MP3 CD-ROMs have been… and perhaps don’t care) that traffic too.
This is where it gets fun (okay, I’m a geek for thinking this way, but that’s just me)… now you can chart the popularity/prominence/importance of a particular session and/or presentation against the weight of other content delivered during your conference. Now you have a chance to share with the education department what things might have worked better than others. Now you have the opportunity to give your programming committees real live data to support whether they’re on the right track.
So the point to all of this is that by getting your content on the web FIRST, then delivering some other product (e.g., CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, Flash drive), you’ll have a better chance of realizing the impact of that product. Sure, money talks, but the impact will be felt much more resoundingly when you can show how can positively impact both the bottom line, and the vision and importance of your society to its audience.
Filed under: Uncategorized admin @ 4:40 am on 09/11/07
Greetings!
I’m a little late to the game, so I won’t mire this process in a lot of babble. The question I pose is a serious one for member-associations and societies alike. There is more information available at the fingertips these days than we can process. How do you go about separating the commonplace with the extraordinary?
One means that has been rapidly growing involves not only capturing and producing content from your annual conference and educational events, but by distributing them in such a way as to make them easily discovered!
Sure, we’re all aware of the rather traditional method of producing some enduring product for sale to members and attendees; but what else is out there?
This is only one area I’d like to explore with you, but sure would like to hear your input too!
