E-venting.net

At the Intersection of Social Media and Events is... a Widget

I'm more than just a geek. I'm actually two geeks - an Events geek and a Social Media geek. So when Freewebs asked me to produce a conference for them on Widget Marketing, I happily accepted, and WidgetCon was born.

You've seen widgets - they're those little mini-applications that are all over the social media web: slide shows, games, music playlists, YouTube players, etc. All these are widgets. You probably have some on your own blog.

WidgetCon is about how advertisers can use widgets as a new type of media. Which is interesting and all, and I'm doing the programming for it. But what's more interesting (at least to this audience I trow) is the widget we created for the conference:

Introducing the world's first Conference Registration Widget:

Here's what it does:

• WidgetCon is by invitation only. If you’re invited, the WidgetCon widget will confirm your RSVP based on your email address. It's linked to a database on the backend with invitees' info, so it recognizes you.
• But that’s not all – you can also use the widget to custom design your conference badge for WidgetCon. You can even upload a picture which will display on the website (but not on the actual badge - we opted to keep it only online because of resolution quality concerns)
  
• “Attendees” on the widget displays a slide show of all the RSVP’ed attendees and their custom badges. It's a list of who you'll be able to network with, and a photo album of badges combined.
• And if you have colleagues who are not yet invited, they can request an invitation using the widget. Their info and badge design go into the database until their request is reviewed. Clicking a box on the database backend accepts their invite and adds their badge to the "Attendees" slide show.
• It also pushes out updated content. We chose to include tabs with the Agenda and Speaker list, but could easily have included one with a RSS feed to the show blog, so all updates were pushed in real-time to the widget. And yes, if we elect to stream live video from the conference, we can do that through the widget as well.
• Finally, like all widgets, you can easily post it to any blog, profile page or website.

We put the WidgetCon Widget into a WidgetCon website, but it's also distributed all over the web. And that's its magic, really - distributed content. Wherever it shows up online - on this blog, on speakers' blogs, on ad agencies' corporate intranets, whatever - the entire conference has a presence there, not just an ad banner and a link. It tells a pretty complete picture of what the event looks like, invites interactivity, and encourages participation. And because the event is on Widget Marketing, it's naturally an ideal proof-of-concept of the show topic.

But it's also something I can see show producers getting behind no matter what their focus is.

So try it - monkey around with it, turn it over in your head, even put it on your own sites if you want by simply clicking on the "Get This!" button. Would love to hear your thoughts.

But do we make good Moderators?

I've said that Bloggers make good conference speakers, but how are we at moderating?

I guess we'll find out. I'll be moderating a panel on "The State of Online Advertising" at Digital Media Wire's 3rd Annual Digital Media Conference in McLean, VA on June 23rd.

I'm really looking forward to it. I've spent the past 4 years putting other people on stage, coaching speakers and moderators, developing sessions and conversations, but haven't done any speaking myself during that time. But I should. Everyone who programs conferences should try their hand at moderating - somewhere. I plan to follow my own advice to speakers and moderators and see if it works, or if I'm full of crap. (I followed my advice on getting a speaking gig and that seemed to work out, so maybe I'm onto something after all...) And I'll review my performance here, and let you know where I was wrong, and what doesn't work, and otherwise let you profit from whatever pain I engender.

I used to be an analyst, and I remember saying then that one of the hardest things about that job was that the longer I spent as an analyst, the more difficult it was to understand the industry because I was no longer a practitioner of what I was analyzing. Sure I spent tons of hours studying, researching, contemplating, and meeting with folks chin-deep in the field, but I wasn't there grinding it out myself anymore. And I feared that while I had a good grasp of the industry facts and theories, there were nuances of practical execution that eluded me. It was hard for me to feel authentic after a while, so I moved out of research into Event Programming. And now that I've found myself in an Events Ivory Tower, I'm excited to get back to class and learn.

So go forth and moderate.

Working its like Berkowitz

Special thanks to David Berkowitz (no, not that David Berkowitz) for seconding my nomination for the 57th Annual Trade Show and Events Enthusiast of the Year Awards.

That brings me up to 2 nominations, but now I've got momentum.
I'm rockin' like Dokken.
I'm cruisin' like Susan.
And now, thanks to David, I'm workin' its like Berkowitz.

If you've ever been to a show I've programmed you probably know David, as he speaks at a lot of them. He also writes for the MediaPost Search Insider every Tuesday. One of my favorite columns of his chronicles the launch of his blog, and the search implications of gaining some e-notoriety. Definitely worth a read.

And for more on David, there's this.
Warning - nudity! Not suitable for viewing at work.

(Kidding about the nudity, David. Just trying to get you more traffic. Google Analytics doesn't discount for pervs. Yet.)

Huzzah for me (please)

I've been nominated for the 57th Annual Tradeshow and Event Enthusiast of the Year Awards. If I win, my acceptance speech will likely be shorter than the name of the award. I'm going for gold in the 'Industry Consultants' category.

In the Awards FAQs I read that winners are determined, in part, by the number of nominations received. So I looked through the current nominees to see what the competition looks like in my category. Linda Rodriguez of TradeShow Teacher, and Candy Adams, aka 'The Booth Mom' are both coming out with their A-games.

Nothing against Linda and Candy, but I'd sure like to lay the smack down in the Industry Consultants category. So if you have 5 minutes and find this blog at all useful, why not lend a kind word to the effort?

Personal shout-out and a link here to anyone who does. Thanks.

Hat-tip to Sue at Face2Face MeetingsNet who alerted me to the awards, so as I could tell my fiancee and get myself nominated in the first place.