UPCEA.edu: Resources: Publications: InFocus: December 2009 Cover Story

Conference Trends: Virtual Collaboration Tools Enhance,
Not Replace, Face-to-Face Meetings

From the December 2009 Issue of InFocus (PDF)

The New York University Hospitality Conference advances green initiatives and sustainable solutions for the lodging industry. NYU used new online strategies, such as Twitter, to promote the program.

Photo courtesty of NYU

Online video conferencing and collaborations are expanding and enhancing—but not replacing—the way we like to meet. According to a new study by the American Society of Association Executives, participation among association members in online media events jumped from 30 to nearly 36 percent this past year. And their use of social media rose from nearly 10 to 16 percent. The 7,000 survey responses included associations of lawyers, doctors, pharmacists, counselors, architects, accountants, scientists, engineers and meeting professionals—representing both the corporate and nonprofit sectors.

CE conferencing is on the vanguard of employing new web-based networking technologies, vastly expanding a university’s reach. At a time when just about any computer can serve as a video conferencing tool, movement into the digital world has fundamentally changed the way workers interact. It has also greatly changed functionalities and preferences in conferencing. Collaborative technologies—university sponsored blogs, wikis, YouTube channels and other grassroots video and text uploads—can now quickly capture and disseminate the collective intelligence shared at conferences—something that used to take months or even years to produce in written proceedings. Moreover these reports no longer need to remain stagnant. They can be updated online with ongoing commenting. 

And all this means that today’s conference-goers have much higher expectations than in the past—including needs for 24/7 wireless access and live internet connections for their slide presentations. While our collective addiction and ability to connect can add great value to conferences, it also adds distractions. Among the new skill sets needed for session moderators is the ability to juggle Q&A not only via raised hands and index cards, but also by email, tweets, and webcam feeds. Yet, even as CE employs all these exciting new tools to expand the reach of conferences, UCEA members report that face-to-face meetings are still the most popular conference format.

Centralized Conference Centers: A Way to Leverage Resources

UCEA’s most recent membership survey reveals that 34 percent of public universities have their own Conference Centers, as do about 7 percent of private institutions. “There are so many advantages to having your own conference center, not all of which show up on the bottom line” says Suzanne Wrye, Director of Conferences & Institutes at Penn State Outreach. “At Penn State, the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel and our Conferences unit are in different organizations, so while we are not the Conference Center’s only client, we are an important one. We share the same mission to extend the knowledge and resources of the University to as many people as possible. Through our own Conference Center we get more competitive pricing compared to using private convention and conference centers. Because we all want to showcase Penn State, we have the opportunity to work in partnership with our faculty and University properties to find the best way to meet client needs. Various areas are often willing to provide some activities at lower costs to accomplish a broader goal for the institution. A centralized conferencing unit helps us avoid duplication of effort and keeps us from constantly reinventing the wheel with faculty across various departments. Another advantage is that we can experiment with the latest conferencing technologies, webinars for example, first at the internal level, educating staff and faculty on the skill sets needed and working out all the glitches before we take those same technologies to the university’s broader audiences.”

“Technology moves so fast it’s impossible for each and every academic department or faculty member to become an expert in every application. Our approach allows us to do what we do best—employing the most effective marketing and conferencing techniques to put on the best possible conferences… and it allows the faculty to concentrate on their core mission to provide the best possible instruction to engage participants in the academic subject matter.”

“But in the face of all these new technological developments, one of our big challenges is figuring out the new business model or models that make sense for each conference audience,” says Wrye. “While we have economies of scale, employing certain technologies is expensive. Sometimes we partner with a foundation, society or association to fund extra features like video streaming. Conferencing is evolving into a hybrid model…Technology enables wrap-around events to expand the reach and enhance the level of interaction prior to and post conference.

Mixing of Web-based & Face to Face Conferencing Expand CE's Reach

“Even in a difficult economy with all the hassles of airline travel, we’re finding most people still prefer to meet in-person to share ideas and learn from one another,” says Jim Onderdonk, Head of Conferences & Institutes at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “But to serve the growing number of people who need the convenience of conferencing online, we’ve expanded our delivery formats. For example, in our partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, we used to hold four technology transfer software training seminars annually. We now hold two of those conferences at attractive locations like Arizona or Florida in the winter and two online. Interestingly, we’ve found we are able to charge the same registration fee for the online versions. Obviously, the value for the online participants is that they save airline, hotel costs and travel time… by adding the online options, we have increased overall registrations.”

He adds that especially in tough economic times, partnerships are more important than ever. “We are experimenting with some online-only conferences, putting people together with similar interests internationally who would be otherwise be unable to meet.” One such partnership at the University of Illinois was forged by Institute for Computing in Humanities, Arts, and Social Science (I-CHASS).  With support from foundation grants, the group is producing a free, online international conference with more than a dozen universities from across the United States and various  research centers at institutions in Germany, the UK, Brazil, Singapore and Costa Rica. The virtual event, HASTAC 2010: Grand Challenges and Global Innovations Conference, will be held April 15-17, 2010. It will focus on the form of technologies, research, teaching, and inquiry that can be leveraged across personal, physical, geographical, institutional, disciplinary, and organizational boundaries. HASTAC 2010 will discuss the influence(s) of virtual spaces that transcend boundaries to impact global innovations (See http://ichass.illinois.edu/hastac2010 )

An Evolving Business Model

At the University of Missouri, Joy Millard, Director of MU Conferences says, “MU’s business model continues to evolve as we add to the face-to-face component of conferences by adopting technologies that advance our objectives without breaking the budgets. We have not yet found a group which wanted to offer its major conferences only via technology. We have other methods (podcasting, video streaming) for those who cannot attend in person, but the relational value of personal interaction still has a high significance in meetings. We add technologies that make sense for convenience

““We have strategically added streamed video at three of our large conferences. One supported the nature of the conference (on-line resource sharing), another was to enable us to reach a large population that could not leave their places of employment (due to being on call), and the other was a means to involve the community. Two were without charge and the other with a fee—all of these expanded the attendance numbers. You need to look at your audience and factor in their level of technology, job demands, method of learning, if the topic is conducive to other methods. It really opens up your conferences to audiences who may not have attended or exposed them to a new way to learn.”

Trends in Conference Marketing

While many CE marketers are successfully employing social networking technologies to reach their audiences, it’s important to know your audience’s “social technographics” before jumping onto the social networking band wagon. Many popular web-based applications (such as Google Doc, GoToMeeting, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, WikiMedia, YouTube, etc.) are free, and easily adopted by conference planners, participants, and speakers alike.

But as Onderdonk observes, “Even free web applications are not ‘free’ in the sense that they  require staff time, planning and monitoring… It becomes a management issue. You have only so many resources. You need to carefully weigh where you put them. Time spent working with each of these types of applications needs to be budgeted for or you can make already frazzled conference planners even more frazzled.”

“It’s essential to keep your audience in mind when you decide which technologies you’re going to include in the mix. We work mainly with academic and technical societies. Some groups love the social networking tools and will spend time blogging about their field… others just won’t use them and want only face-to-face discussions. You want to make sure the time spent employing a technology is a net plus to strategically advance your goals. One rule of thumb that I’ve heard is that if you’re going to create a social networking page, you need to put up some sort of interesting ‘news’ up every other day or so…we’ve only seen modest support for that intense a level of effort, although there are some departments on campus and within independent organizations that do have that level of interest…usually it is volunteer driven. We’ve found some support for social networking technologies through in-kind contributions. For example, an association might offer to promote our conferences for free on their own listservs, a click through on their website, or give us a free ad in their publications.”

Penn State’s Wrye adds, “Being creative with exhibitors helps fund the bottom line. Among the extras we offer exhibitors and sponsors are click thru links on conference websites, banner ads, and a presence on social networking pages to give them greater and longer lasting exposure than traditional print ad in programs. We’re also finding that there is a great deal of exhibitor interest in our smaller meetings. For conferences  too small to support an entire exhibit hall, we find they often are willing to pay for  a table in the hallway, or a small room across from the general session to display their wares…this can add  revenue and value to even our smallest conferences.

“Another way we’re saving dollars is with reduced printing and mailing costs. Sometimes when combined with an e-marketing campaign, an attractive postcard that leads them to a website gets better results than mailing a thick conference program. But what works for some groups doesn’t work for others. Some groups are happy to be handed a disk instead of paper handouts, but others, like participants at our annual tax conference, still want their big heavy binder workbook with paper documentation…You really have to look at the strategic goals of each group, and we’ve found the paperless conference hasn’t really materialized. Most people still expect speaker handouts onsite…or at least knowing the speaker will make them available online via a website address.”

NYU Extends Reach of Hospitality Industry Conference

New York University’s Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism, and Sports Management has hosted the International Hospitality Industry Investment Conference for over 30 years (www.nyu.edu/hospitalityconference). Each year some 1,600 hospitality business leaders attend the conference to network, gauge trends, and make deals with sponsorship which support undergraduate and graduate student scholarship at the Tisch Center. In the face of an economic downturn, NYU adopted some new strategies in 2009 designed to keep our constituencies engaged. One such strategy was to start a Twitter account.

Within two months of starting its Twitter account last spring, NYU had 200 followers. According to Steven Lambert, Director of Administration and Industry Relations, “That number has since nearly tripled, yet it underestimates the viral (translation: forwarding tweets or ‘RT’) we observed by our attendee, media, speaker, and sponser followers. An additional aspect of our Twitter strategy was to tell our patrons and sponsors that, ‘if you follow us, NYU will follow you.’ For those sponsors whose organizations have Twitter accounts, it’s a true win-win that we may actively listen to one another, adding value all around.”

As far as the staff time twittering requires, Lambert says, “Many of us ‘listen,’ but I do the twittering myself.” (You can see Lambert’s actual tweets for the past 6 months at http://twitter.com/nyuhospitality.) “I don’t tweet every day, but plan accordingly around notable industry and programmtic news of interest. For example, since we know sustainability is important to the industry, on April 22nd, we wished them a happy Earth Day, and mentioned relevant Conference sessions they could look forward to, such as ‘Green is Gold’.” 

In addition to twitter, NYU also branched out into podcasting in 2009. Podcasts offered data about the current and past U.S. recessions, lodging industry trends, and forecasts and the effects and implications for the hospitality industry. The University tracked well over 5000 listens to its podcasts.

The bottom line in 2009 was that, even in a downturn, NYU’s Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Management was able to keep its registrations steady and even increase its number of conference patrons and sponsors. It attributes this success in part to the implementation of technologies that have helped it connect to its audiences, prior to, during, and after its conferences.  in part to the implementation of technologies that have helped it connect to its audiences, prior to, during, and after its conferences. 

 (To listen to the Tisch Center podcasts see: www.scps.nyu.edu/tischcenter and click on News & Events.)

Editor’s Note: To help UCEA members sort through the art of finding just the right tools for the right audiences, UCEA’s Marketing Seminar (Feb 10-12, Tampa, FL) will focus on how CE units have developed and implemented plans that successfully link the ever-changing  real and virtual worlds. And also, for the first time this year, you can join the discussion ahead of time by clicking on the Marketing Seminar’s LinkedIn & Facebook pages and UCEA’s online marketing CoP blog. Moreover, especially if you find you are unable to join your colleagues in Tampa this year, you can still learn top tools, tips, and techniques by signing up for one of UCEA’s free upcoming marketing Webinars. For details, see www.upcea.edu.

James Onderdonk will be presenting a session at UCEA’s 95th Annual Conference (April 7-10, San Francisco) titled, “What Are the Expectations of Conferences in the Information Age?” For more information about conference sessions and to register, please visit: www.upcea.edu/profdev/2010annconf.

—Susan Goewey