A Wider Net

I was driving home late last night after a late evening webcast. One of our clients needed to reach a distant international audience and answer their questions live. I was pretty tired after a fairly long day and I was flipping radio channels, too lazy to dig my iPod out of my Nintendo Event SWAG shoulder bag on the passenger seat. I passed by a station playing soft classical music, and realized that my kids were sound asleep with this very station playing quietly next to them. They had been raised with those insidious crib-mounted cassette tape-eating machines constantly set for “stun”. The net result: they routinely fall asleep to Mozart and the inhumanly deep voices of your average classical radio jock. So I flipped back and listened a while, imagining that I was there with them, listening along with them, dropping off to sleep. I don’t recommend doing this while driving (woops - two posts in one week about things not to do when you’re driving - not good).

Where am I going with this (besides off the road?)

The connection I felt with my kids still 20 miles away was enabled by a live broadcast. There’s something special about experiencing the same thing at the same time as someone else. This is a dying art in our on-demand world. The connection is obvious among attendees of a live event like a rock concert. It’s also obvious among viewers of the Superbowl when discussing it at work that next bleary Monday morning. There’s a perceptual lift in value when you share it with fellow audience. Let’s call that AOE (Amplification of Experience). Our industry loves acronyms. AOE one little reason we still love in-person events despite having so many alternate methods of communication.

Let’s consider ways to squeeze more of this effect out of every event. For starters, we can help connect attendees to each other prior to, during, and after an event. Then we can give them the opportunity to share their experience. In future posts we will discuss ways to connect attendees with online networking tools like BDMetrics, Leverage Software, and IntroNetworks. We will also look at ways to share experience. Onsite, this could include networking and collaboration tools such as nTag and Spotme personal devices, or tabletop collaboration systems from Crystal or Unison. Finally, we’ll look at systems that allow attendees to share. This could include discussion forums, blogs, and moblogging - where attendees can snap photos on their cell phones and upload them to common event galleries in one easy step.

To be sure, this warm fuzzy “AOE” I just concocted is only one of many benefits of connecting your audience. Aside from the feel-good bonus, your attendees will have better conversations with the right people. Exhibitors will find their conversations with booth visitors will already be far along the sales cycle and well-qualified. And perhaps most importantly, the conversation about you and your products won’t stop when the event is over.

It’s not as magical as feeling a connection to your sleeping children far away, but this is the evolution of events. Leverage the shared experience.