Improving The Virtual Event User Experience

Improving The Virtual Event User Experience
by Dennis Shiao of It's All Virtual

The Airport Experience

To get to your flight, one embarks on a journey through the airport.  First, you park your car (or arrive via mass transportation).  Then you take an elevator, walkway or escalator and arrive at your terminal.  From there, you use a self service kiosk to check in to your flight and receive your boarding pass.  Perhaps you check in an item of luggage or two.  Then, you enter the security checkpoint line and have your carry-on items (and yourself) screened.

Once through, you walk towards your assigned gate, while stopping (if needed) to use the restroom, purchase a snack or pick up some reading material for the flight.  Once that’s all done, you may sit at the gate and relax for a bit before your flight takes off.  All in all, quite a complex journey – and, you’re no closer to your destination!  Believe it or not, however, the airport has provided subtle “tools” to make this journey a bit more efficient.

In the midst of one such journey (on a recent business trip), I drew comparisons between the airport experience and the virtual event experience.  Here are some tactics used at the airport that may improve the user experience for virtual events:

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2010 Predictions for Virtual Events

One of my favorite blogs "It's All Virtual" (hosted by Dennis Shiao) has posted a predictions for 2010 in Virtual Events. It's definitely worth the read.

2010 Predictions For Virtual Events
"Virtual events have incorporated a lot of on-demand and live video – however, to date, the majority of attendee interaction has been via text (e.g. private text chat, group text chat, etc.).  Many platforms have enabled the use of attendee webcams (a la Skype) and that was a nice start.  In 2010, I believe that the virtual event platforms will integrate with third party video conferencing technologies in a big way – stirred largely by client demand for it."   Full article is HERE

Plus, make sure to check out 2009 Virtual Events : Year in Review

Making Sense Of The Ever-Changing Social Media Landscape

Making Sense Of The Ever-Changing Social Media Landscape
by: Dennis Shiao of InXpo

Social Media Landscape by Ivan Walsh via flickr

In the early days (e.g. 2003 through 2007), social media was Missouri — in a “show me state”.  As Director of Marketing or CMO, your biggest challenge was not how to leverage social media – but rather, how to justify it to the CFO and CEO.  Return On Investment (ROI) metrics had not yet been established, so you had to “make it up” on the go – and then convince stakeholders that the metrics were valid.  In fact, you probably had to first educate stakeholders on what social media was and how it could benefit your company.
Here we are in 2009 and the world has shifted.  Social media and social networking sites are as much a household name as the “Big 3″ television networks were back in the 1960’s.  Today’s networks include YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.  The C-suite has read numerous accounts of social media driving real business value (ROI) – and they’re seeing the competition active in social networks.  So now the tables have turned – the CEO is now in pursuit of the CMO to ask questions like, “what is our social media strategy” and “why aren’t we doing more of it”?

Social media is an ever-changing landscape – and that’s a good thing, as it reflects the fluid and dynamic nature of the associated technologies and communities.  As a marketer, though, it means that you need to stay on your toes to best judge how to adapt to the changing landscape.  How quickly do things change?  Well, let’s consider the developments of the past few months:

[READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE]

Incorporate Gaming In Virtual Events

Incorporate Gaming In Virtual Events
by Dennis Shiao of It’s All Virtual

Virtual Worlds, Virtual Tradeshows, Virtual Meetings and more…

We’ve reached a point in the virtual events industry where users who have attended 1-5 events (or more) are starting to ask, “What’s next”?  If the industry doesn’t effectively answer that question, then users will eventually stop coming back and attendance will suffer.  One concept that makes a lot of sense is to introduce gaming into virtual events.  By doing so, you’ll achieve real results.  Why gaming?  It’s all about REEL:

Retention
Retention is a key objective of any virtual event – whether it’s a lead generation event (virtual tradeshow), partner education event or a virtual sales meeting, you want attendees to leave the event with a level of retention over the content you’ve provided (e.g. exhibitor product information, your own product and technology specifications or the the coming year’s sales priorities and initiatives).  Even in a virtual career fair, “retention” is about job candidates retaining information about your company and why they might want to work there.

With gaming, retention isn’t going to be achieved magically...

[READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE]

See also:

Virtual Trade Shows No Longer Novel at BtoBonline
Gaming and Virtual Reality at Cisco’s Annual Sales Meeting at Cisco

Stay Current On Virtual Events and Virtual Worlds with Social Media

As a followup to my post about my current favorite web 2.0 and social networking services, here's a cool article.
[Thanks Mal Burns for the find]

How To Use Social Media To Stay Current On Virtual Events And Virtual Worlds
Written by Dennis Shiao from It's All Virtual

In 2009, I’ve seen a surge in the volume of content published around virtual events and virtual worlds - coverage in mainstream media, blog postings, videos, podcasts and even entirely new web sites developed to cover these specific industries. It’s all great - but with a rising volume of information comes the challenge of how to efficiently stay current. I’ll highlight a few social media services that I use to keep current on events, track emerging technologies and find relevant commentary on all things virtual....

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