Why Corporate Meeting Planners Should Never Fear the Online Meeting

Hi my name is Erica St. Angel, and I'll be your moderator for

today's webinar.

I'm delighted to be here with Patrick Saty, who's with

Innovative Event Production, or IEP.

And a bit of housekeeping before we get started.

In your Mediasite Player experience you are going to

see a little speech bubble, and if you have a question at

any time you can click on that and ask that of Patrick.

And if we don't have a chance to get to your question during

our live web cast, just send us your email address or

include that when you ask your question and we'll follow up

with you afterwards.

This presentation will be available on demand

immediately after.

You can click the same link that brought you here today.

We've also got Patrick's PowerPoint slides and some

additional case studies in the links tab.

It looks like a little paper clip linked

in your player window.

And again we'll be taking questions at the end.

And with that I'm going to turn it over to Patrick.

Erica thank you very much.

And I'd like to thank our host at Sonic Foundry for arranging

today's web cast. As Erica said, I'm a senior vice

president with Innovative Event Productions.

I'm delighted to be here with you this afternoon.

If you were told that your success and the future of your

company was directly dependent upon your ability to

understand and strategically deploy a specific set of

emerging technologies, what would you say?

Well, for those of us that are in the events business,

whether you're a meeting planner, or an events

coordinator, a DMC, or a service provider, an agency or

an administrator, a senior leader in your organization,

or like me, an events production company.

A strong argument can be made that over the next five years

your grasp, our grasp, of virtual meeting solutions will

determine our personal and professional success in this

very rapidly changing market.

To give you a little of bit of context regarding our

conversation today, I'd like to share a little bit of

background.

As Erica said I'm with IEP.

And we're one of the premier event production companies in

the nation.

Staff, sound, stage, lighting and video.

We provide event production, audiovisual, creative, and

entertainment services to about 460 client events every

year throughout the nation and internationally.

For the last 20 years, IEP has served four vertical markets.

Corporations, associations, government agencies, and

nonprofits.

We're headquartered outside of Washington, DC.

And unique in our industry, we're asset rich.

Both in terms of the A/V and production equipment that we

own, and our full time staff.

We have about 100 talented executive producers and

technical directors.

And interestingly, only about 15% of our business is hosted

in the mid-Atlantic venues.

The vast majority of our events are hosted throughout

the United States, with about 5% internationally.

We're one of the few companies in the nation to have earned

the designation of White House Most Preferred.

In fact, we've supported presidential and inaugural

events for six of our last US presidents.

Supporting President Obama with seven of his inaugural

parties this last election.

And we were also the lighting company for Snoop Dogg's

latest US tour.

Just an example of our versatility.

While many in our industry were running from virtual

meetings, they saw virtual meetings as the beginning of

the end, IEP was one of the early adopters of these

technologies.

We pride ourselves on being one of the best in A/V and

production.

And our model dictates that we find best of breed partners to

complement our services.

In looking at many companies across the country, we

selected Sonic Foundry because our clients demand quality,

consistency, and technologies that work.

Now I'm not a technologist, I'm a business strategist. And

the business strategies of virtual meeting solutions is

exactly what I'd like to spend a few minutes talking to you

today about.

So what are the recent technology changes?

The trends are that economics in today's business market has

presented a very tough business climate.

All expenditures are under review.

We're being asked to deliver efficiencies to our

traditional events in real time and virtually as well.

We're under pressure to reduce travel costs and travel

downtime, improving value and meeting ROI.

We're asked to grow our meeting attendances while

tightening our budgets.

And in our spare time, investigate web casts, video

conferences, and digital content management solutions.

And as an underscore, the technologies are changing at

an accelerated rate.

Faster and faster bandwidth and new applications are being

developed and introduced all the time.

Our executive business leaders are under the impression that

virtual meeting solutions can positively impact their bottom

lines, address social agendas, and help mitigate some of

their expenses in requiring everybody to

attend every event.

Yes, I guess to some it does look like the

beginning of the end.

So what do these what the solutions look like?

Well the good news is that there's more and more

visibility of virtual meeting solutions all the time.

the bad news is that most of the solutions that are

recognized today are not commercial grade solutions.

Consumer grade solutions are perfect for personal

communication, for networking of small internal

requirements.

But you don't have to look too far to find a lot of companies

whose virtual meeting solutions were over promised

and under delivered.

If you support a company that has high professional

standards in place, where they take their meeting investments

seriously, delivering consumer grade solutions dressed up to

look like commercial grade solutions can truly be a

career ender.

So commercial grade solutions are tools like media site,

broadcast quality video conferencing, and utilizing

commercial grade equipment quality, support, and

functionality.

Integration of data captures and archiving of management

systems into company's web sites and intranets,

addressing mission critical business issues, institutional

networking sites, and the live involvement of meeting

attendees, both pre-live and post-event.

We produced an event for a large nonprofit

earlier this year.

They distributed 3,000 wireless interface devices to

all of their attendees.

In real time, their fundraising activity increased

their level of donations by over a third over

the previous year.

In real terms this third increase in donations was in

excess of a million dollars.

That's a million dollars additionally

raised in one night.

Powerful opportunities.

So what will the next generation of

solutions look like?

Virtual reality, where attendees will be placed in

environments that are digitally created.

Meeting attendance by individuals that are actually

remote from the actual meeting location.

And more and more real time interactivity.

So what is driving these changes, and what are the

biggest lessons learned from virtual meeting successes and

failures today.

Virtual meetings are being driven by business needs, not

the technology innovations.

Just because you can do something doesn't mean you

should incorporate it into your meeting.

Your meeting objectives are still your meeting objectives.

And we all are charged to look for more effective ways to

accomplish our meeting goals.

Those companies that have tried to replace their

traditional face to face meetings with virtual

meetings, have almost all come back to traditional meetings.

However, those companies that have taken a blended approach

to marrying their traditional meetings with very specific

virtual meeting strategies are singing the praise of VMS

technologies.

The key is to choose the right technology for the right

meeting objective.

For instance, if you're IMAG-ing your general

sessions, consider repurposing your content for live and

post-video conference and web cast. It provides a minimal

investment and a maximum payout.

Companies that have taken a blended approach to meeting

solutions have really discovered what they term, the

holy trinity of meetings.

The best companies have discovered that strategically

implementing virtual meeting solutions are producing

measurable improvements, in both event ROI by reducing

costs, in extending the reach of their events by including

remote audiences not even in attendance.

And building live attendance for upcoming events as well as

extending the life of their meeting message by delivering

meaty content post-conference.

So how are business leaders utilizing these meeting

technologies?

They're utilizing them effectively for international,

national, and regional conferences.

Capturing and repurchasing general sessions, breakouts,

pre and post-sessions.

They're incorporating internal and corporate meetings and

workforce training events.

They're using them for trade shows and vendor

presentations, as well as effectively using them for

sales and marketing initiatives.

Live web casts from events include multi-locations from a

single presentation site.

And live video conferencing are tying multiple locations

together and creating virtual national and international

conferences.

So what did the platforms actually deliver?

Mediasite, for instance delivers record, delivery,

watch, and management functionality.

For record, it captures and synchronizes what you say and

what you show.

It requires no slide uploads or post-production work.

And it facilitates multiple content sources.

It delivers live, or on demand.

And publishes the information to the Mediasite cataloged,

course management systems, and web portals.

It embeds content in any website and its content is

portable, whether it's audio podcasts,

DVD, USB flash drives.

It allows the users to watch high resolution

video, slides, and audio.

Interactively polling, and questioning, and answering

it's users.

It provides closed caption support.

It works on any platform and any browser.

Most importantly, it allows the users to brand their

players, customize searchable online catalogs, track who

watches, what they watch, and when.

Secures video viewing and system access.

It's scalable enterprise-wide.

And it's a hosted platform.

So these functionalities provide registration security

allowing the client to see who views the content.

Whether through a single sign in or multi-level

level access codes.

You can increase security by email verification, domain

unnamed white list, or closed registrations.

It facilitates e-learning allowing your users to

remotely live, or post-event watch what they want, when

they want, for as long as they want.

And it sets up live tests and polls for the clients.

These systems also provide robust e-commerce, monetizing

the event by allowing the clients to charge for live and

recorded sessions.

And create value pricing strategies to raise the

perceived the value of attended meetings.

This is just a small sample of the companies that are using

virtual meeting technologies today.

And let me give you a couple of recent case studies.

AOL, under the direction of their new CEO, a global

technology pioneer, needed to reach out to all their

managers and their employees globally.

In an effort to present their new strategies and new

positioning for the company.

Historically an international roadshow would be accomplished

by flying the senior executives

to all the AOL offices.

And speaking to all the employees and managers.

But AOL wanted to speak directly to, and hear from

their entire global employee base all at the same time.

During what they termed, an all hands conference.

In less than three weeks, IEP designed, engineered, and

executed a live global conference for AOL.

We placed presentation teams in four major AOL sites,

Sterling, Virginia New York City, London, England and

Bangalore, India.

Each site was linked by a live commercial comercial-grade

video conference.

IEP set up live global webcasts, streaming video and

audio, allowing the employees and managers from over 2100

AOL employee sites to participate in the all hands

conference, sending their questions to a conference

moderator via text.

This solution allowed AOL executives to throw their

meeting presentations back and forth between the four primary

presentation sites.

In addition to responding live to employees' questions and

comments throughout the world.

AOL executives executed their first global all hands

conference flawlessly.

And for the first time, all AOL associates were able to

gain a real appreciation for the scale of the AOL

organization globally.

All employees and managers were able to participate and

receive the AOL senior leadership's message and

presentation at the same time, regardless of their location

or their office size.

A powerful solution for AOL.

Another example is Tata Global Beverages.

Maybe not a company that you're familiar with, but the

companies that they own, I'm sure you are.

Tata is the largest company in India, and the second largest

tea company in the world.

Their best known consumer brands include Tetley Tea,

Good Earth, and Eight O'clock Coffee.

Executives from Tata wanted to effectively communicate their

North American roadshow, an annual of leadership meeting

with all of its subsidiaries.

However this year, their executives wanted to forgo an

exhausting series of meetings and presentations required

when they would travel and visit all of their North

American holdings.

By utilizing virtual meetings solutions, they effectively

held a live global web cast. Tata flew all of their

executives from North America into their New Jersey

location, and conducted a one day, six

hour management meeting.

This meeting was broadcast live to 25 employee sites

spread throughout North America.

And all of the sites had the ability to interact with their

senior leadership through text messaging online.

Tat Group was delighted with the result.

The company was able to save significant time and expense

by allowing their executive leadership to conduct all of

their North American conferences in one day.

All managers from each of the Tata subsidiaries benefited

from the presentation and interaction

from their peer companies.

And a process that would have normally taken several weeks

was accomplished within 24 hour.

Streaming video and content from their meeting

presentations was captured, indexed, and made available to

Tata's management team for future reference via the

company's secure internet immediately.

As you can see, these types of technologies correctly

implemented, can deliver tremendous results.

They can specifically deliver fully integrated traditional

and virtual media resources, provide a seamless experience

for attendees, both in the conference and

from off site locations.

Virtual meetings offer cost effective integration options,

and truly provide the best value solutions for many

corporate strategies, sales initiatives, marketing

campaigns, service and product trainings,

and on demand content.

As well as they provide the ability to move initiatives

forward in between conferences and promote building the

attendance for traditional meetings year over year.

Great, thank you.

And you've been kind enough to share your contact

information, so if people have questions they can follow up

with you directly.

But right now we invite you to use the ask button, again that

little speech bubble.

And if you have any questions about what Patrick presented,

or about how the technology works, feel free

to share those now.

We do have several coming in.

And the first one is where to begin?

You've mentioned some great case studies.

Were those conversations that you brought to your client?

Or did they ask about webcasting?

In some cases they're asking about web casting.

Historically we would receive maybe two or three queries

regarding web casting, or global video

conferences a month.

But that's changed.

That's really the message today.

In our environment, it's not uncommon for us to receive two

or three requests a week.

And so this is an important aspect for a lot of companies,

and they want to understand how to implement these things,

but they want to know how to implement them in such a

fashion that they're going to get the desired results.

The things we tell our clients initially, is look at what

you're currently doing.

And sometimes minor tweaks in what you're doing in your

traditional meeting, will lend itself to

virtual meeting solutions.

It really is the first minor step.

And that's the way to get that the best result for the for

the lowest cost.

That's a great answer.

Along the same lines, I think for some people, technology

becomes kind of a shiny new toys where they want to try

everything.

Or there may be one or two people in the organization who

are really pushing to move online.

And you emphasize the importance of strategy.

If the technology bandwagon is going, how do you apply a

strategic approach to that?

Or how do you come at it from a business perspective?

The meeting the objectives are still the meeting objectives.

So you're right, just because you have a shiny new toy

doesn't mean you need to bring it out and

use it all it's worth.

And oftentimes a conservative approach

is the better approach.

To implement two or three things for your meetings or

conferences and make sure they work well.

Measure their results, and then for the next conference

go that next step.

But it's a building process, and really being

conservative is a key.

And you also talked about the importance of choosing the

right tool for the right application.

Have you had experience where you've used things that are

better for personal communication and tried to

apply them in a corporate setting?

Or in a in a mass scale?

Yeah I think maybe the message is that if you understand the

meeting objectives, then you pick technologies that really

target and address those specific objectives.

You stand the best opportunity to get the best results.

And I'm sure testing plays a very important role in this

whole process.

It does, and the ability to get time real time feedback

from these technologies is just hugely important.

And so you really do have the ability to get

feedback from users.

And get a real understanding of what they like, and what

they see value in.

A question here about-- in terms of the users, how do you

let people know what the end viewing experience

is going to be like?

Perhaps in those case studies, did you prep the teams for

what they would be like on camera?

And what it would also be like then for their employees who

are watching?

To build in the right expectations is key.

And so you want, like all conferences, to under promise

and over deliver.

And so you're much better off identifying what the goals and

objectives are for the meeting.

And what the client would view as a success for implementing

a particular technology.

And then build solution around that.

Make sure that it's delivered.

And a couple people have asked questions about who is the

client in this type of situation?

So if you could take a moment to explain?

So you're at an event production crew.

That's what you specialize in.

And then you work with clients to make specific choices about

the technology they use online, with Sonic Foundry

being one of those choices among many different things.

And for somebody who's in house on the client side of

things, who's doing this is a full time job, how would you

recommend they go about choosing the right vendor?

If working with a company like yours isn't an option.

They need to check references.

And go to clients.

Spend time talking to your vendors and customers about

their experiences.

It's pretty easy to find out which clients are experiencing

success and are utilizing commercial grade solutions.

And which clients have had challenges.

And you'll find in most cases, that they're attempting to use

consumer grade solutions in commercial applications.

Have you had to overcome those types of barriers?

When people have maybe a bad experience with the technology

and then need to convince them there's other ways to go?

Well, they have a tendency to think that the

shiny new toy is broken.

It's really maybe just the wrong toy.

The commercial grade solutions are really designed for

professional companies and professional applications.

And they have a degree of quality and safety built into

the processes that cause them to be able to

stand up under stress.

And they don't fall over.

The consumer grade solutions are just not

designed for that.

Their design is really for efficiencies and cost. So they

give up on a lot of the quality values in order to

make the cost negligible.

And so it's one of those things where you get

what you pay for.

You should be willing to invest at least a reasonable

amount in order to get a quality event.

And with the limited time that we have left, keep the

questions coming and just insert your email address

we'll get back to you online.

I did want to ask--

we told you today we're going to talk about why not to be

afraid of the online meeting.

And I think many people it's the fear that it's going to

cannibalize the attendance of your onsite meeting.

Or it's going end that physical event.

But you're not seeing that trend.

No, the big secret of virtual meetings.

Is almost everybody that's implementing them is

identifying that the use of virtual meetings solutions in

their traditional meetings is actually building their live

attendance, year over year.

It makes it easier for the attendees to go back to their

companies, go back to their offices and justify their

attendance.

It gives them something tangible to show their peers

and superiors about the conference and meeting that

they attended.

And those people that attend remotely get a flavor for the

event and really become the next year set of attendees.

It does not cannibalize the events at all.

As was the concern with a lot of companies when this was a

newer technology.

It actually significantly built attendance.

Well I want to thank Patrick again for being with us today.

And thank all of you for joining us

and for your questions.

Again just keep that ask button active, and use your

email address if you have anything else

you'd like to ask us.

This presentation will be available on demand

immediately after.

You can click the same link that brought you here.

And I encourage you to check out the links pad, where you

can get access to both of those case studies that

Patrick presented, as well as his PowerPoint slides.

Thanks so much for joining us, have a great day.