Godin says: Kindle as Community

Have you tried the widgets on Facebook and LinkedIn that track your reading interests and share them with your community? They recognize that reading is actually a social experience, where we recommend, critique and discuss what we’ve read with others. (My favorite is the ability on Facebook to throw a book at a friend.)

How much cooler would it be if we could include authors and publishers into that community? Where an author can say, hey, if you liked that book of mine, let me give you this other one. Publishers can promote a new unknown author through affinity marketing based on knowing what else on his list you’ve read.

Great blog post from Seth Godin goes into some detail based on asking: what if the Kindle were seen as a way toward engaging a reading community, instead of simply as a product?

 

Primal Branding

Great article in the last Corporate Event, also on ExhibitorOnline.com called “Primal Instincts“.  In this interview, with Patrick Hanlon, author of Primal Branding, they explore the similarities between a strong brand and a belief system or ideology.

“If you look at a brand as a belief system, it automatically gains a number of advantages: things like trust, vibrancy, relevance, commitment, and so on.  Believing is belonging; believing builds community.“

Sounds like exactly what all event professionals are looking to achieve, and the magic behind the best events.  As I read Hanlon’s list of the seven definable asets that build meaning behind a brand, his “primal code”, I kept comparing them to the strongest event brand and community I have had the opportunity to work with: Interop in the 90’s.

1. Creation Story:  Dan Lynch needed a job, so he invited all his friends to his new conference to network.

2. Creed:   My first lesson in events was that they needed a point of view.  Interop existed to promote Interoperability.  The nascent computer networking industry.  In the early years of the event, if your product couldn’t connect to the show network (InteropNet) without it crashing you couldn’t exhibit.

3. Icons/symbols:  Used in the drawing of network schematics

4. Rituals/activities: The coolest part of Interop was the InteropNet: a totally volunteer year-long project to create the most state-of-the-art network possible at the event

5. Sacred Words/language or jargon: Asynchronous Transfer Mode , Fast Ethernet, packet switching…

6. Non-Believers: Hardware engineers are inside the circle, everyone else is not. The mythology of the geeks no one appreciates or understands who actually run the company.

7. Leader/Figurehead: Dan Lynch. When Ziff-Davis bought the event they kept him as the chairman as long as they could entice him, until he finally bought himself a vinyard.  With the loss of Dan and the growth of the event, it kind of lost its soul.  Its still a great, large IT event, but without the primal brand it once had.

The best attendee marketing campaign we ever did was called “Born to Network”, totally playing into the networking engineer culture by relating their insular experience with a biker club.  The imagery of a mock tattoo with an eagle holding the Born to Network  banner made it clear that this event was only for members of the club.  Used to being considered an outsider and a geek?  Here you are part of an exclusive society of heroes.

The leather biker jackets with the embossed Interop logo and Born to Network graphic sold out on the first day, despite the $100 pricetag.

I could tell the same story with Seybold Seminars, again, until Jonathan bowed out. That’s why Apple is less important to Macworld than Steve Jobs.

 

Peak Experiences

Just finished reading Peak by Chip Conley.  OK, so the full title is “Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow.”

I remember learning about Abraham Maslow and his “Hierarchy of Needs“–you know, the pyramid with survival issues at the base and self-actualization at the top. You can’t move up the pyramid without satisfying the lower level needs first.  But I don’t remember learning that Maslow dedicated his entire career to working with businesses, and applying his theories to the workplace.

Conley resynthesizes Maslow’s work, with extensive examples, to remind us to move beyond the basics in all three key workplace relationships: with customers, employees, and investors. (Though the investor part seems stretched.)

The interesting part is how clearly this thinking applies to events: creating transformative experiences for attendees.  So often events get mired in selling sponsorships. We’re happy when a producer rises above that to realize the event is actually about attendees: attract and make happy the right ones and the sponsors will follow.

But what if we focused above that, to creating a truly transformative experience for the attendee? Totally satisfying his need for community, rewarding his need for self-esteem, pushing him to learn something new and fascinating, making him feel a part of something that really is larger than the individuals can do alone?

I see several directions an event organizer could go to start this discussion when planning an event:

• How can we startle the attendee with our customer service? Recognizing him? Applying what we know about his interests?
• How can we fulfill our attendees social needs? Really bring the community together in meaningful ways, so that people of like interests actually meet?
• How can we make the attendee feel like part of something larger, and worthwhile? Is there an appropriate cause to support together?
• How can we create an educational and activity-oriented experience in which the attendee will come out feeling like he accomplished something greater than he expected?
• What if the attendee got all his needs met at this event?  Would it be easier to get him to come to another one?

Sometimes its just a matter of asking the right questions.

 

Intersections

Just read The Medici Effect by Frans Johansson. His point is that breakthrough ideas most often occur at “the intersection” of two dissimilar fields.  “Directional innovation”, which occurs within a field, tends to be incremental.  A jump in innovation comes from bringing a concept from one field into another. 

Fusion cooking.  The astronomer who got interested in paleontology and discovered that a meteor strike killed the dinosaurs, etc.

Where can we find those links in the event industry? Virtual events; the intersection of the internet (wasn’t that supposed to kill face to face?) and events?

My favorite right now the intersection of mobile devices and events.  To replace show guides, offer pushed messaging…sometimes location driven, and promote participation from attendees in polling and twittering. 

Soon we won’t be able to imagine a keynote that didn’t include audience interaction as the speaker answers questions sent him throughout the speech.

What is really missing from events is the technology tool that will really help drive more productive networking. The badges with LEDs had the right idea; wrong execution. The social networking tools like BD Metrics and Leverage Software are getting there, but require considerable premeditation.