A Wider Net

You’re busy on Sunday - we know that. There’s the small matter of legendary sports history on the line in Arizona at Super Bowl XLII. On Saturday, I suggest you seek out your nearest IMAX theater and witness the greatest virtual event ever - U2 3D.

Even if you’re not a big U2 fan, and I’ll admit - I’m only a casual fan - you will find this event, at times, simply breathtaking. They have captured the live U2 experience and delivered it to your nearby IMAX on a massive screen with masssive sound and in 3D. And it’s not just any old U2 experience - this was a massive energy ball of a concert assembled from 100 hours of footage shot in South America from their Vertigo tour. At times you are given the perspective of one of the fans on the floor, crammed in like a massive sardine mosh pit. You see the concert in the distance through a forest of waving hands clutching cell phones and cameras. You can see the shots of the stage on the viewfinders of all those cameras, and you feel you can reach out and snatch one from the sweaty palm of a screaming fan.

Other times they afford you a perspective that you simply can’t get from any concert no matter how much money you have or who you know in the band. We were hovering just above and just in front of The Edge as he ripped through a solo or filled the song with one of his signature rhythms. The neck of the guitar seemed close enough that you almost had to duck to avoid a bonk on the noggin. Sometimes we were given a bird-on-a-cymbal’s view of the drum kit, while the slightly sweetened sound of each drum hit in our faces reinforced the experience.

It wasn’t a perfect experience - some of the early edits were distracting, some of the 3D effects at the end were over the top, and the kick drum mapped to the IMAX butt-kicker subwoofers was a gimmicky replacement for the pounding chest we enjoy when standing in front of a 100,000 watt audio system. Still, this was a shining example of how we can capture a live event and deliver it, with maximum impact, to a remote audience. It shows us what we can do with 3D and a great deal of attention to production value. Start with great content, capture it well, and manipulate it to make maximum use of the capabilities and limitations of the delivery vehicle. The same approach pays dividends for webcasts, second life, and podcasts.

In our part of the marble this show only runs through mid-February. So don’t wait. Tomorrow is good.

More here and here.

Dan Parks, President/Creative Director for Corporate Planners Unlimited, Inc, has created a first-of-its-kind virtual convention center in Second Life. He recently gave me a tour and I will admit - this experiment is an example of extraordinary vision that could only have come from someone who had spend 20 years in the event industry. You owe it to yourself to try this out at your first opportunity. I will try to explain what it is and why I think you need to see it.

By the way - the image above features the exhibit hall on the right, the convention rooms on the left, and two skyscraper towers in the background. The “smoke” is actually low-flying clouds. See the thumbnails at the bottom of this post for the really high-res shots I took.

First, since there are still many people who have no idea what Second Life is, let me expend a paragraph on that topic. Non-Newbies can skip ahead. Second Life is a computer-generated world that you access through a free downloadable application - the Second Life Browser. Using this application, you can create a graphical 3D representation of yourself - an avatar - that you manipulate like a puppet within the second life world. It doesn’t have to look like you (it can be a different gender or even species) but it is what you will look like in this second life. Using this avatar, you walk or fly around this fantasy world, meeting other users, experiencing wild places, chatting, playing games, etc. It’s like a video game except it isn’t nearly as much fun. In fact, there’s very little to do in Second Life that the average working professional would find interesting. Companies like The Gap have spend big bucks setting up virtual stores and virtual hotels in Second Life only to find a lack of participants and a similar lack of real money. Ironically, the company most vocal about not wasting money in Second Life, IBM, is also one of its biggest investors, participants, and technology partners.

Two significant things have changed within Second Life that have changed my perception of it’s value for marketing and event professionals. First, a Massachusetts company called Vivox has introduced a voice chat technology that enables Second Life users to converse with other users by simply talking through a standard computer microphone or headset. It’s a free call anywhere in the world. You can talk privately person to person or talk openly in crowds. This is a surprisingly cool ability. As you walk near other people in Second Life you can join their voice conversations. This means that, in a business meeting, you can introduce yourself and network with other attendees. It is the most face-to-face experience I have ever seen online.

The second significant change within Second Life is the construction of Virtualis by Dan Parks and his team of hired guns - architects, landscapers, and designers. They have built a monumental convention center and meeting facility within Second Life and it will soon be open for business. It would take far more text than a mere blog post would stomach in order to fully explain all there is to see and do at Virtualis, so I will stick to the bullet points and get to why this is important. First, Virtualis has a massive virtual exhibit floor, complete with large 3D exhibits. You will be able to watch streaming videos, examine product information, and talk “face to face” with booth attendees. They have even come up with the ability to webcast live from the real world, using any standard webcam, into these exhibits for the purpose of product launches, product demos, and presentations. No other virtual trade show comes close to this level of functionality, attendee mingling, and user experience.

Virtualis also has a large ballroom and many smaller meeting rooms, all found within a beautiful glass building lined with waterfalls and other interesting visual elements. In the ballroom, Parks has provided a variety of meeting support services including a dance floor, a follow spot, podium, and presentation areas. Two nearby skyscrapers are loaded with meeting rooms and areas dedicated to the press. In fact, an outdoor ampitheater is equipped with multiple live virtual video cameras that can actually webcast a press conference out of second life to the real world.

Other features include a massive yacht full of meeting rooms (that may be private - I’m not sure), an outdoor learning facility with all sorts of special effects and presentation capabilities, and a koi pond.

Because you can participate in group activities, network and speak to other visitors, give and receive video and slide presentations, and browse exhibit halls, this is a fairly complete meeting experience. You just have to remember to find food in the real world while your avatar sits in a hot tub on the yacht.

It isn’t perfect, however. As I mentioned in previous posts, Second Life is an unstable and rapidly growing platform. It is not ready for you to abandon your sales meeting in Fiji to save money by having it at Virtualis. This is an experiment. You can book 100 people or so to attend an experimental summit or exercise here. Some will have trouble connecting, and some will have trouble navigating. It is a very new and very demanding technology. It is, first and foremost, a vision of what can and probably will be done with the next generation of Second Life or a competing platform. If the underlying technology were bullet-proof, and if the user interface were more intuitive, and if everyone had the necessary computer horsepower and bandwidth - then I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this as a real meeting solution. All the pieces are there. For now, I recommend seeing it, experiencing it, and keeping a close eye on it. Book a meeting there with nothing but your most adventurous audience and enjoy it with your virtual guests - but expect the few problems I mentioned. And when this technology is robust and real, you can say you’ve been “with it” since the beginning.

Highres pics:

In a recent issue of Lighting Dimensions magazine, Chauvet Lighting took out two consecutive full-page ads promoting their new campaign “Green Thinking” as a method of driving traffic to their exhibit at Lighting Dimensions International (LDI) 2007, the premiere lighting trade show in the United States. It resulted in a two-sided page with mostly images of green leaves and white space. In fact, one side featured no product shots at all - just green, white, and this sentence:
“Chauvet is a leader in eco-illumination for the entertainment industry with the wides range of innovative, earth-friendly LED luminaires.”
I’m sure the folks at Philips Solid State Lighting (formerly Color Kinetics) would have some issue with that claim, especially since some of the Chauvet technology is licensed from Philips, but that’s not what this article is about.

Surprisingly, there aren’t many LED-based lighting manufacturers jumping heaving onto the “green” marketing bandwagon. You certainly hear about big stage shows talking about their switch to LED as a way to save energy, but not the lighting makers themselves, at least not in the entertainment space. I was very pleased to see the ad and decided to take a look at Chauvet to see what else they were doing with their “Green Thinking” campaign.

Unfortunately, they have not done much with their new campaign on their website. I was expecting (hoping, actually) that they had integrated it thoroughly into their corporate marketing and even their strategy. “Green Thinking” was only exposed on the website as a small element of a graphic promoting their tiny LED-powered moving spotlight called the MiN Spot. Also, their corporate mission has nothing in it about green values whatsoever. I am close to calling this a greenwashing campaign, but the LED lighting is a very green technology and I will simply suggest that they should try harder to highlight that.

There was a nice article on their site about an outdoor holiday tree lighting project they did for St. Paul, Minnesota. In it, they claim that the switch to LED lights dropped the power bills from $1,300.00 to approximately $130.00, and carbon emissions from 18.7 tons to about 4 tons, according to an estimate from the Minnesota State Energy Office. Pretty impressive! LED Lighting has become a highly effective and technically viable solution for events and while it does cost a bit more to specify, is a reasonable way to reduce energy costs on your events and exhibits.

Chauvet, a company best known in the nightclub market, really made it’s presence known at LDI by winning Best Big Booth. They captured that booth experience on video and delivered it through their website. While the video was way too long at 45 minutes, I heartily applaud the use of video to extend the reach and value of their booth. The also have their own YouTube video channel but the LDI booth tour is not on there (length issue, maybe?).

In summary, I give high marks to Chauvet for playing the green card in their LDI booth promotions, but low marks for not integrating it onto their website and corporate mission. Also, I love their use of video and their channel on YouTube - they just need to package the booth tour better. If you’re considering the impact of lighting on your next event, talk to a good lighting designer. Most professional lighting designers are now well-versed in the ins-and-outs of LED and other low energy lighting solutions. If you have set goals to make your events or exhibits more green, then LED lighting should be part of your plan.

The bloggers from Gizmodo ran amok at CES with a tiny portable IR transmitter that shuts down almost any TV screen in sight. The fact that CES, with 1.85million square feet of TELEVISIONS wasn’t prepared for this even though the devices have been around for years, is fairly surprising.

This sort of prank isn’t unique to CES, so exhibitors at any show will want to heed this vivid warning and block their IR ports. In the meantime, I have to work on not laughing every time I see this video of the prank in action.

EDIT - The blogger has been officially banned from CES, and additional actions against Gizmodo may also be taken.

I managed to avoid posting over the holidays while I was on vacation, hanging out with family, and playing Rock Band while, strangely, our viewership actually went UP on this blog. To our readers who stuck with us through the holidays despite a brief lack of fresh content: THANK YOU.

I thought I should kick the year off with an oldie-but-goodie: 3D Viewers.

I found myself hanging around a friend during one of last weeks holiday gatherings who specializes in 3D of all sorts from the old nostalgia to the new IMAX movies. He was sharing some astonishing 3D still photos he had taken at various exotic places when he mentioned that he also produces 3D View-Master reels for corporations. It warmed my heart to hear that, not only are corporations recognizing the nostalgic karma they achieve by gifting these nifty contraptions to people, but they’re actually funding original relevant content for them.

If you’re interested in this stuff check out the official View-Master site, or one of these sites here, here, and here.
My friend’s site is also great 3D reference: Studio3D.com.

And as far as the relevance to New Year’s is concerned: Here is a View-Master reel that brings you into Times Square for New Year’s Eve at the Millenium.

Also, don’t forget about the American Paper Optics people. They specialize in branded paper 3D glasses, including 3D “fireworks glasses” used at (you guessed it) First Nights everywhere.

Wovin makes a series of unique textured wall materials with surprising versatility. Using a proprietary set of frames and interwoven “tiles”, a Wovin Wall looks literally like a giant weave of stuff. In fact, a wall made of tiles using their wood laminate finishes looks surprisingly like a giant basket weave.

But that’s just the beginning: Wovin materials also include translucent polypropylene for a backlit colored wall, metal laminates for a wild industrial look, and printed materials for a 3D mosaic image tapestry.

They also have a linear “wave wall” which creates horizonal strips that dip in and out of the wall in a wave pattern. These can also be made of translucent backlit materials.

Wovin Wall

Are the Tour de France sponsors taking notice of this? Tech blog Everything USB highlights a Japanese website offering a programmable device that you clamp onto the spokes of a bicycle wheel. When the wheel spins, a row of LED’s displays a rotating message for all to see.

Idea: At your next big offsite conference, schedule a bike rally for the attendees. Outfit them with rental bikes and have them ride through the city sporting these LED message boards. They get team-building and energy-building exercise and your company or organization gets splashy promotion. Throw in a charity contribution for everyone who rides and you have headlines, tax benefits, and a noteworthy “green” activity.

This devices is technically ready for purchase, but you’ll have to navigate a rather insane (to my American eyes) Japanese website that features bizarre videos of the product being demonstrated by a guy wearing a horse head mask to hide his identity. I guess. If you want to make your own, these are even better.

The winners of the annual EIBTM Worldwide Technology Watch were announced last week. SpotMe 2, a handheld networking and communication tool, won top honors. The runners-up included nTAG, eTouches, Jambo Networks, and Jot Event Messaging Systems.

Shown below: The SpotMe 2

Complete details at MeetingsNet.

Whenever I stroll the toothpaste aisle or the peanut butter aisle in the local mega-supermarket I often think we have too many choices (at least in North America). That doesn’t apply to Presidential candidates, of course, when we are given 2.1 candidates to choose from and we end up with walnut brains like our current nutjob, even though we technically didn’t even give him the most votes. But when I was reading Choice, Seth Godin’s short but sweet commentary on the difference between “then” and “now”, I had to agree that choice is where it’s at.

I’m not sure if we need a hundred toothpastes, or a thousand flavors of high-fructose corn syrup, but we do enjoy having choice. The need for choice is obvious in the changes in web marketing. Gone are the days where a flash-based website did all the driving. Now users demand small bites of web content in easy to browse arrangements, even though they increasingly need a crowd of content raters helping them make their choices.

But, oddly, the age of choice hasn’t caught up with events. Exhibitions - yes. But try to find the elements of choice in a user conference or sales meeting. Here it’s still about sit back and be spoken to. You can choose your sessions. You can choose your muffin. But you sit and watch a general session. For how much longer, I wonder?

The nearest equivalent I can think of is movies. They’re about the same length as a general session. You sit and you watch. And with increasing numbers, people are choosing to have a remote control in their hands instead of a frighteningly over-priced bag of artificially buttered popcorn. At home, we control our pace, our volume, our seating position, our food choices, and our breaks.

While the movie industry scrambles to keep people in the theaters, will we have to do the same in live events? Maybe not to the same extent, but we will do well to understand those issues and respond to them with choices.

The choice to sit through some or all of a session.

The choice to watch some or all of it online later, or on my phone, PDA, PSP, or PMP.

The choice to listen as part of a crowd or speak as part of a conversation.

The choice to hear about a solution or to be part of the solution.

The choice to present another PowerPoint slide show full of words or make a lasting visual impression

Continuing the topic of extending live events across the web, I thought it may help to list some of the essential elements of live face-to-face meetings and some technology solutions that can be deployed to allow remote audiences to experience those elements. To be clear, I include attendees as remote audiences, because they are only on site for a short while. Before and after the event they are part of the remote audience with everybody else. This is an important distinction because I find that many people assume that online components of an event, such as video archives, are directed exclusively at non-attendees.

Pre-Event

Networking: Social Networking. Examples: BD Metrics, Leverage Software, Ning, Intronetworks

Audience Alignment: Blogging. Examples: Lotusphere

Making a list of things to see: Social Networking and User Rankings. Example: Ning

During the Event

Conference and General Sessions: Webcasts. Examples: InAAU, Demo

Product Demonstrations: Video On Demand. Example: YouTube, Engadget

Team Building: Gaming (online and through kiosks) - couldn’t find an example…

Swag: e-Swag. Examples: Widgets, Desktop Wallpapers, Screensavers, E-certificates

Buying your client drinks: Buy Your Friend a Drink.com

Asking Questions: Webcasts, Webinars, Chat Sessions, Blogging

Post-Event

Measurement: Online polling. Example: Survey Monkey, Zoomerang

Course Credits: Webcasts with CE credits

Memories: Photo Sharing, Video Sharing. Examples: DragonCon on Flickr, DragonCon on YouTube