The Paperless Event: Onsite

Of course, an event producer cannot take the event paperless alone:  most of the paper is actually given out by the exhibitors. The question is:  do attendees really want to collect a bunch of handouts and carry them home?  And when they get home, do they read them?  Or throw the entire conference bag behind the door?

There are various ways to get the exhibitors’ information into attendees’ hands electronically:

1. Each exhibitor collects leads and sends the pdf collateral via email
2. The event producer creates an area of the event website for collateral–or links to it from the exhibitor directory. A sign-in screen can continue to collect leads for the exhibitor to follow up.  Now that the show directory online is further enhanced, lets keep it up all year as an ongoing resource.  Maybe even throw some content around it…
3. Give every attendee a memory stick on a lanyard, to have the desired exhibitors upload their content onto.
4. Packaged solutions include Prism Technologies–the guys with the touch screen kiosk, and BD Metrics, which continues to expand its social network capability to additional event needs.

Or do all four.

Bottom line, it is possible to include exhibitors in a paperless event.  More and more events are already doing just that.

 

The Paperless Event: Eliminate the show guide

A key element of a green strategy is to simply avoid using resources, and to that end I propose using technology to create a 100% paperless event.
Onsite, attendees still need considerable information about their options to fully experience the event. What if the entire contents of a show guide were downloaded to the attendee’s smart phone? Not only could they scroll to the choices for the next session or find a map of the show floor with a couple of clicks, but you could also push out reminders of key program events, like a midday keynote, or a notification of a schedule change.  For me, this is a great example of the technology actually providing a better user experience than the paper does.  The attendee doesn’t have to carry around the heavy show guide, and can find the information they’re looking for much faster on their device.
What about advertising? Lets re-think that experience in the new medium.  Exhibitors can sponsor the home page with a banner ad.  They can sponsor a pushed message.  Best: they can pay for promotion of their event activities (conference speakers, give-aways, parties, press conferences…) in context within the program guide.  Like a well-placed Google ad.
The trade-off?  No branding advertising. No reference tool to put on the shelf post-event.  Show directors would want to create a show directory online to replicate the post-event ability to look up exhibitors.  Again, an ongoing online directory of exhibitors would provide both attendees and exhibitors more value than the show guide being replaced.
All we need to do is rethink the experience we want to create in the context of currently available media: rather than substitute exact functionality.
Now:  who does this?  I’m working on it.  Accenture did exactly this smart phone application for CTIA.  But I don’t think it is on the market.  Vaultus is in a similar situation, but working on how to make it broadly available.  And I read that A2Z has this type of technology…still checking into it.

 

The Paperless Event: Building Buzz

In the case of building buzz, technology is not a substitute for paper solutions: it has created entirely new options and a promotion category that did not exist before.  But that makes it no less important.  As your audience increasingly uses electronic communication and social media, you will gradually lose them if you do not follow them to their preferred methods of communication.  Better to lead them there.

Step one remains a well-designed web-site. Search engine optimization. Search within the site.  Tagging content.  Flash is pretty, but is hard for search to navigate.

Create a Facebook page, and a LinkedIn Group, as a minimum.  What social networks you work with should be dictated by your community: ask them where they hang out.  Upload photos, links to videos (all properly tagged for search). Let your community identify with you on these groups, and use the postings to update your community with short messages.  “Just announced: John Smith is Keynoting at Fantastic Event July 15!”  Post updates about your exhibitors new product releases as well.  Tweet.  I hate it too, but use every communication tool you have.

The biggest obstacle to using social networks is fitting it into the day and the existing job assignments in your organization.  It has to be added to one person’s job description.  If others can be incented to join in, great.  But one person has to have responsibility for making it happen.  Use an intern to help set it all up.

 

The Paperless Event: Attendee marketing

I do care about the environment, but honestly, the best reason for going paperless at an event is that the digital solutions are usually better.   I remember Oracle trying to go paperless for promoting a developer conference a decade ago and regretting it, as they were simply too early.  But now, the technology exists in almost every area to be fully successful.

Depending on your industry and the quality of your lists, attendee marketing is still the place I cheat, as generally only a third of the people on a list give permission for third-party email.  That aside, we’ve come a long way from mailing 80-page conference brochures.

The most you need is a postcard, sending prospects to your in-depth, well-organized website. Extra bonus points for customizing landing pages to different target audiences.

The design and organization of a brochure is still a preferred experience for many, especially those who need to print out details to justify the expense to their boss.  Here I love the various forms of downloadable, enhanced pdf .

• Interop provides a basic pdf, apparently meant only to be printed.
• The American Institute of Architects uses Zmags to create a page flipping experience with the conference guide.
• The Red 7 Media event Folio: Growth Summit uses Nxtbook Media for an interactive brochure that catches your eye on the home page with pages flipping in the graphic.

You get the idea.  This is a fraction of the options available:  try a Google search for “digital magazines” or “digital collateral”.  The most sophisticated allow search, clicking on the table of contents to jump to the desired page, links outside the brochure, and embedded audio or video.