It's always a good thing to remember that your conferences are about providing value to attendees. Attendees generally measure value in terms of dollars, time/efficiencies and credentials (CEUs, licensing requirements, etc.).
Because sometimes even the best of professional organizations forget about providing hard value when trying to cash in on a hot trend.
Case in point: The American Marketing Association wanted to cash in on the blogging phenomenon (and understandably so, because blogs can provide significant marketing advantages). But one blogger began taking the AMA to task for not providing hard value. And then others began linking to it... and so on and so on and so on.
The blogger had an excellent point. AMA was asking him to spend $695 on a seminar. But they didn't tell HIM why it was worth $695 to HIM.
As it turns out, the AMA's "Blogs: Marketing Beyond the Web Site" seminar did OK, probably because a number of the speakers were "celebrities" in the blogosphere. To AMA's credit, the conference chair replied to post and suggested AMA would rethink their value proposition.
I don't know this story qualifies for "Irony of the year", but you have to admit that blogs being used to attack (and defend) an event on blogging is somewhat amusing.
Markets are conversations.
You can't control the conversation.
But you can listen. And participate. And act.
There's an important lesson here. One blogger can be the snowflake that can start an avalanche. Granted, AMA is on the very forefront of the phenomenon. And they're apparently smart enough to handle, deflect and embrace the skeptics. Listening and acting.
Right now blogs are something you probably don't have to worry about for your event (although you should check your event name at Technorati or Feedster just to see if anyone is saying anything about you). But eventually blogs will find your event. Might be next year or five years from now. What will they say about you? And how will you respond?
And don't forget the bulletin boards. They're still around. And sometimes people have interesting things to say about trade shows on them.
Hi -
Thanks for your post and comments about the AMA Workshop on blogs.
Yes, TDavid's post caught AMA, and to be quite candid, all of the speakers by surprised. In retrospect it turned out to be an invaluable learning experience for all of us and an example that was used during the event of the how blogs are helping build "conversational marketing" ... like it or not!
By the way, from our conversations with attendees, the Workshop - worked. In fact, we were told it exceeded expectations.
Toby
Posted by: Toby | December 20, 2004 at 11:15 AM