Social Media
« Previous EntriesSocial Media Metaphors and the Death of Print
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010Editor’s Note: This guest post is excerpted from the “oblogatory blig” produced by Vancouver writer Lynne Melcombe, a former associate and longtime friend of our firm. It flags some of the unexpected twists that knowledge producers—including meeting professionals—can expect to run into on the road to new media and “free” content.
According to Gillian Shaw, writing [...]
Recycle Your Conference for Fun and Profit
Thursday, October 1st, 2009A few years ago, archaeologists found a small Bronze Age spear point in England. I can’t remember exactly where they found it, but I do remember that they determined the bronze in the spear point had originated in Italy. In fact, an original larger spear point had broken, and then been melted down to make [...]
A Dynamic Dozen: The Making of a “Killer App”
Sunday, September 27th, 2009Everywhere you turn these days, meeting professionals are searching for the “killer app” that will make social media and virtual technologies more an opportunity and less a threat for face-to-face events.
The language of hybrid meetings, virtually unknown a year ago, is quickly gaining currency. MPI experimented with a Virtual Access Pass at its 2009 World [...]
Control Your Content—or Someone Else Will
Wednesday, September 16th, 2009A friend of mine who is an experienced meeting planner told me of a recurring nightmare she’s been having lately. In her nightmare, she is standing in a 5,000+ auditorium, with a very expensive band playing under an elaborate light and laser show, but only about 100 other people are there, including her and the [...]
Is a “Good Enough” Meeting Good Enough?
Thursday, September 10th, 2009What would happen if meetings were scaled back to the barest of essentials, on the principle that the best event is the one that is just good enough?
It isn’t an idle question. There’s an emerging trend that is reshaping everything from long distance telephone to video cameras, from the design of military aircraft to the [...]
A Hybrid in Your Future
Thursday, September 3rd, 2009By now, they’re a familiar sight: hybrid vehicles that combine two separate power sources to squeeze maximum energy out of every drop of gasoline they use. Once considered an environmentalist’s fantasy, hybrids have made it into the mainstream, and for good reason—they’re a great, practical way to make your gas dollar stretch further, at a [...]
Can a Value-Add be Free?
Saturday, July 11th, 2009Recently a lot fingers have been doing a lot of typing regarding the Virtual Access Pass as proposed by Meeting Professionals International (MPI) for the upcoming World Education Congress (WEC). The dedication and earnest concern of the various bloggers should be commended, for this debate about using the Internet to extend the reach of conferences [...]
The Tempest Over MPI’s Virtual Access Pass
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009There’s quite a tempest brewing over the Virtual Access Pass that our professional association, Meeting Professionals International (MPI), has introduced for its 2009 World Education Congress (WEC), which gets under way this weekend in Salt Lake City, Utah.
The conversation is an echo of a wider debate about when it’s legitimate—or whether it’s ever legitimate—to charge [...]
Why I Consider My Golf Club an Essential Business Tool
Friday, July 3rd, 2009Call it an age thing.
I realized the other day that I spend an inordinate amount of time playing golf, or attending golf tournaments, or talking about golf, or organizing my own golf tournament just so I can play golf. And I don’t even golf all that well!
But when I look around at a [...]
Farewell Rick Redfern: A Revolution in Search of a Cash Flow
Monday, May 25th, 2009What would you do if Twitter stopped tweeting and YouTube suddenly went off the air?
Particularly if you lived in a community where television outlets were consolidating, radio stations had cut local programming, and the venerable daily newspaper was on the verge of shutting down?
No doubt, with Internet access and decent search skills, you would still [...]