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Leveraging Information
By Adam Hardiman | October 6, 2008
Much to the dismay of my significant other, I spent two hours on the phone yesterday with another woman—and the conversation was really good.
Okay, okay, it wasn’t like that. I had a really interesting discussion with a market analyst from the Detroit area who had some pleasantly pointed things to say about knowledge transfer, the networking of people and ideas, and where The Conference Publishers fits into the whole scene. In particular, one thing she said hit me like a ton of bricks:
“With the Internet, anyone can find information anywhere. It’s how we leverage information that matters, especially for the clients with which you work.”
I agree with this rather profusely. The same thing that makes the Internet valuable is the same thing that makes it a challenging, uncertain medium for the transfer of information, if you don’t play your cards right.
The Web is interactive, ongoing, and forever present, making it the ideal mechanism for engaging your stakeholders and community of interest, either before, during, or after a meeting. At the same time, the Web is filled with entertainment news, gossip, and misinformation, and bloggers who fill bandwidth with unsubstantiated opinion pieces.
With the Internet, I admit we have a high-risk, high-reward challenge on our hands.
Conferences almost always have one or both of these two objectives: The networking of ideas, and/or the networking of people. While these objectives are the cornerstone of why people from a certain community get together to learn, discuss, argue, think, and make connections, there’s something else just under the surface that is just as integral. In a word, I’m talking about legitimacy.
Whether the organization is public or private, an NGO or a professional association, the local cooperative or the world’s largest multinational, it has the charge of demonstrating to its constituency that it’s responding to the issues that underlie its existence.
For a government health department, that might mean a conference to demonstrate to the public they’re on top of dealing with inequalities in access to treatment. For a national professional association, it might mean an annual meeting to remind stakeholders of the important work they’re doing to advocate on members’ behalf. On top of the exchange of ideas and the connection of like-minded individuals, it matters for organizations that depend on those people and their ideas to transparently demonstrate that they are acting in the community’s interest.
For a long time, The Conference Publishers was part of the traditional (and only) response to this reality. Our firm used its editorial and project management departments to produce post-conference reports and onsite newsletters, which were either delivered at the conference or sent by courier, fax, or—over the last dozen years—via email.
While we continue to deliver these products, we (and many of our clients) recognize that the future is online, or at the very least, that existing methods for extending the life of a meeting should be supplemented by some sort of outreach and interaction via the Web. This is a challenge, because opening the lines of communication using the Web means you could lose control of your message.
Standard options for getting your message out there won’t necessarily build on the cornerstone of the conference (the networking of people and ideas), nor address the issue of legitimacy. Any organization can write a press release, and while that may promote the conference, it does nothing to make people believe in what the organization is trying to achieve.
Sending out or posting PowerPoint slides is a start, although if that’s all you needed to do to engage your community, you wouldn’t have to spend money to meet in the first place. Just press the Send button, and all the networking of people and ideas is done…right?
I respectfully disagree.
Television, print, and online media outlets provide coverage whether you want it or not, and whether the coverage is immensely positive or totally scathing is out of your control.
Then there’s the blogosphere, the location where attendees and others comment on the meeting at all hours in whatever way they see fit. These posts are often entertaining and well-intentioned, but they often do nothing to address the specific objectives of the meeting and/or organization, or build on what you’ve continued or started a few days or weeks earlier. While the conference might outline the various cures for cancer, the attendee blog, live to the whole world, focuses more on the wonderful climate in Mexico City than on the intensive sessions, energy on the conference floor, or scientific discoveries debated onsite.
The thing is, there’s plenty of information out there you can’t control, and it will be out there for anyone and everyone to see, whether you like it or not. The good news is that there’s a way to leverage the power of your organization and your conferences, and a way to take hold of the networking of people and ideas. There’s a way to shape and foster legitimacy with regard to what you’re doing and where you’re going. That’s where we come in—we offer you a method to the madness that is the Web.
With us, you own the content, and control editorial priorities. Use our expertise to produce news and summary content that is far more legitimate than a press release, and much more useful than a set of PowerPoint slides. Get your message out there by using the voices of the presenters and participants—indeed, the community itself. You’re already investing in a great conference, so why not leverage the meeting to its full extent?
Finally, by bringing the coverage of your meeting online, you have at your disposal a permanent roundtable where members of the community can share and debate ideas through blogs, discussion boards, wikis, comment boxes, or any other tool that’s useful for you, or them, or both.
The point is that by leveraging information, you get to decide how to communicate your ideas and message in way that’s legitimate to your members, stakeholders, and community of interest, which for some organizations is as small as the office or as large as the planet. When you couple that choice with an avenue that fosters the networking of people and ideas crucial to your organization, you’re left with a dynamic, positive building block that allows you to benefit tremendously from your meetings and the reason you’re holding them in the first place.
Topics: Conference Content, Social Media, The Conference Publishers |