Tomorrow Jennifer Buch and I will be meeting up with our CEO, David LaPlante in Washington DC for DMAI’s Destination Showcase. David will be giving a presentation on the effective use of web technology and social media for destination marketing and event planning and management. Really looking forward to seeing all of our nation’s great destinations and the individuals who help fuel their tourism economies in attendance. If you are planning on attending, please look for us and say hi or leave a comment below.
Destinations Showcase Conference & Expos are the meeting industry’s largest forums exclusively bringing attending corporate, government, association, and independent meeting planners together with exhibiting destination marketing organizations (DMOs and CVBs) from the U.S. and beyond.
Sponsored by MPI Never before have there been so many technology-based tools and strategies available to meeting planners. Never before has there been so much confusion and consternation on where, when, what, and how to use them. Compounding the challenge is the disparities between what “IT and Operations” leaders feel are appropriate, and what you need at your fingertips today.
In this session, David LaPlante, CEO of online brand marketing and messaging technology company, Twelve Horses will share with you stories and strategies of how to “sell technology” to your management and what strategies are having a meaningful and competitive impact today.
In this session, you’ll learn about:
Comprehensive solutions for integrating and automating.
What new technologies successful and leading meeting planners are relying on.
How to sell the adoption of new technology to your management.
Avoiding common pitfalls of implementing new technology.
Proven strategies for building a better online collaboration.
Leveraging latent and persistent online conversations to drive greater attendance and interaction.
Deriving new revenue streams for your events with new technologies.
Once again, if you are planning on attending, please look for us and say hi or leave a comment below. We look forward to seeing you there!
One of our SEO clients, Setpoint Systems, has been producing a video podcast for the last few months. It’s not high production, or high gloss, but it is pretty high on interesting content and info about the busness and economic issues that affect their operations and profitability.
A few months back i was really happy to see their video on the “Financial Crisis” and who is to blame. It was simple, and easy to understand, and I’ve gone back to it a number of times and sent the link to friends and family.
It’s a great little podcast! It’s funny, informative, personal and useful. It makes the people seem like people you’d want to work for or do business with. Since we know them we already knew that, but as a strategic communications tool, it’s a great example of a business being real, and talking about what they love to do.
Since 1992 Setpoint Systems, Inc. has delivered industrial automation equipment to manufacturers for testing, inspection, or assembly. These machines are designed following the Toyota Production System philosophy for lean automation. Setpoint designs, programs, fabricates, and assembles machines that help businesses become more efficient in their daily operations and improves the consistency of their product.
As a web marketing and messaging company we love it when things go as planned, the ends meet in the middle and the message goes from sender to receiver without a hitch. But as with the evolution of life, it’s the mutations that change things. The random screwups that end up inspiring new ideas, new directions and new life.
Photo by reVerse
Such was the case a few weeks ago when I got a taste of “excellentsalmon” and a random connection over chat…
I was working remote when a chat window from “excellentsalmon” popped up posing the question, “wouldn’t it be cool to play with a kitten the size of an elephant?” I thought for a minute. I had a couple other chat windows open a phone call pending, other people in the room and an event to get to in the next half hour. But I responded with, “Think of the size of the cat box!”
The conversation started a little rocky. Each of us figuring out slowly that an unknown third party had somehow connected us, that i was in pacific time and he was in Central Time and that neither of us was a spammer or malicious weirdo. At first i thought it might be a cosmic connection to the future, but being only a few hours different that wasn’t a significant finding.
I did a twitter and google search on “excellentsalmon” and found one tweet and blog post about a previous incident. In both cases the person assumed it was spam and the conversation didn’t end well. Then I got followed by @caylorb. My chat buddy was on twitter! How cool is that! So we ended the conversation, i saved screen grabs of the chat and we went about our lives.
But here’s the interesting thing. I’ve actually found value in @caylorb on twitter. We’ve pinged back and forth several times. He’s recommended music that I’ve ended up downloading and liking. He’s funny and seems to think i’m funny, he does a video podcast on tech and social media and is into web video. So through a random mischievous chat hack, I’ve made valuable social media contact.
In my mind, and this won’t surprise people who know me, this shows the power of randomness, the usefulness of mischief and, most importantly, the value in taking each conversation at something other than face value. In business and in life, you can loose out on good opportunities by judging situations and people on what they seem to be at first.
This was a small simple event that has continued to inspire me. The connections we have with people are usually so linear. I know bob, who knows Ryan, who knows Martin from another job who i know from an interview 10 years ago… That’s great. They always say that it’s not so much what you know, but who you know.
But how often does the line jump so far outside your sphere? How do you get outside your network and find ideas and people you never would have seen? Just another example of Twitter providing value in meaningful exchange of ideas and social media tools acting as communication hubs and facilitating connections.
And all you have to do is take the time to answer the question…
-M
Read the whole chat.
Chat client: Digsby
Email account: gmail or yahoo
Username: excellentsalmon, ignorantsalmon (more than once?)
Other: i have the digsby chat widget on facebook.
Related links: http://groups.diigo.com/groups/salmon-chat
The International Ticketing Association is holding it’s annual conference in Salt Lake City this year at the Salt Palace (Man that place is big). I attended both the morning and afternoon sessions.
In the A.M. it was with Pro Sports/College Athletics Mini Conference. The group was mostly ticketing directors and box office managers from the MLB, NFL, NBA and colleges, but had vendors like Tickets.com, Ticketmaster, Veritix and of course Twelve Horses. The “Sports Guys” are relatively new for INTIX (last few years) but absolutely came out in significant, if not the majority numbers. Topics ranged from ticket printing, to print@home, box office logistics etc. There definitely was an underlying consensus around the down economy and how to continue to maintain attendance levels. The tactics that put butts in seats and performed were, deferred payment plans, payment installments and franchises using financing vendors that extended credit to purchasers who in turn paid over time. Groups that adopted these practices (US & Foreign) were reporting anywhere from 15% to 25% bumps in their ticket sales. I would say when your spending $1,500 to $10,000 on season tickets payment plans definitely would help. Great session with LOTS of open collaboration.
Later in the day I went to the “Breakout Sessions for Non-Sports Topics – College & University PACs” (Performing Arts Centers), The “Artsy” side to see what they were spending time and energies on. Because most of these organizations are non-profit or extensions of state agencies, “Doing more with less” was a significant topic. Also how to incentivize students to use these amenities and facilities. While there were not any commonalities in the tactics these groups were using, like with the Sports guys, there were lots of small ways that add up. Bundling of the entertainment and then food was a big one. We all like to eat right! I think the one I found the most profound was around the perception of value for these tickets. Basically if tickets are given away to students, the perception is they don’t have any value. But! If tickets were packaged as a student wide activity fees (everyone pays) or charged for, even if only a few dollars, then attendance went up. Perception of value, just like perception of brand, was a huge factor. Again LOTS of open collaboration and sharing of ideas.
Tomorrow Jennifer Buch and I will be meeting up with our CEO, David LaPlante in Washington DC for DMAI’s Destination Showcase. David will be giving a presentation on the effective use of web technology and social media for destination marketing and event planning and management. Really looking forward to seeing all of our nation’s great destinations and the individuals who help fuel their tourism economies in attendance. If you are planning on attending, please look for us and say hi or leave a comment below.
Sponsored by MPI
