I joined the UK Electronics Group at LinkedIn a little while back. Unlike most of the LinkedIn groups I've come across this one is nice and small with what seems a good membership of professional types. A discussion came up where the idea was floated about whether maybe a conference should be organised somewhere and what it should contain. I made what I thought might well be an unpopular comment, saying that I think it would be great idea to look at organising some form of online conference using webinars. For me this concept solves all the problems of conferences - having to travel across the country to some town that is hugely inconvenient for 99% of the attendees, the day or more out of the office and that I'd be able to pick and choose what I participated in. It would also mean that a well organised online event could potentially attract lots of visitors and make it all very worthwhile to do in the first place. To my surprise the only other comments on the discussion seemed to agree with me - I thought I might get lambasted for suggesting that doing a conference online could in any way be better that face to face human contact!
This got me thinking about this area and about the exhibitions conferences are often organised around. It seems obvious to me that online conferences are very much in their infancy right now, but have a huge potential. Speaking as a company that that's just exhibited at Southern Manufacturing & Electronics 2010 I have recent firsthand experience of the woes of being an exhibitor at an exhibition event. I was very surprised to discover that many exhibitors are actually pleased with a just a handful of decent enquires after spending large sums of money and a lots of staff time to be there. For the big companies I guess brand promotion justifies anything, but for many others I spoke to (and us) it seems quite hit and miss as to whether they get anywhere close to properly justifying the time and money invested to be there.
So take all of the problems of current day specialist conferences and exhibitions:- the location, the cost to exhibit, the time and inconvenience to attend, the number of exhibitors, the number of visitors and the number of seminars, speakers or sessions that are actually of interest to visitors (whatever line-up you put on only certain sessions are of interest to different people). These problems are all now solvable if you we're to place the event online. Now to anyone that's not participated in a webinar this may sound like techie geek nonsense. But if you have attended a webinar that was hosted properly and had content that you we're interested in then you'll know that actually attending a webinar can be a very rewarding experience. This is still a very techie dominated field, but as is always the way the fact that the techies are starting to get really into it means that its probably only a couple of years before it hits the mainstream. Firstly just the fact that a webinar is an event at a particular time and if you want it then you need to be there at that time is a surprisingly compelling thing. Even though you're going to be watching something online, and maybe not even participating (asking questions, interacting etc) there is something about the event itself and the knowledge that you and many others will be there at that virtual place all together.
So then the event itself. Well it's possible to totally cock it up as an organiser of course, but it's also not really that hard to create an event which everyone comes away from impressed, educated, informed, or whatever the aims are. Its no different to getting people to stand up in a room full of people and speak - if they are interesting, present reasonably well and have good content for their audience then it works just as well online.
However the thing that really got me thinking about all this is a webinar I attended today and a virtual conference I've received invites to attend next week. Both are doing it completely wrong in my opinion and I find it interesting how obvious it seems to do it right and why these companies have it so wrong. Its really very simple - if you apply real world rules to what you are doing then it can work just as well (and actually could easily be better in many ways), but if you use technology to cheat then it doesn't. What niggles me is that I can see the perfect way of approaching it all and wish I had the time and resources to create the perfect system, but there aren't enough hours in the day to do my current job so instead I'll just comment from the sidelines.
Firstly the not so great webinar. I've attended quite a few webinars and have generally been really impressed about how well they technically just work these days. This one was laid on by a big worldwide company in the electronics design sector, with an impressive product I already use. They have a really progressive program of regular emailed short videos about their product that are incredibly effective in a way that fits into my silly busy working life (a 2 minute video sent regularly showing often really useful tips is an amazingly effective marketing tool). So I was looking forward to the webinar to learn yet more about the system, and also just because it's an event that I knew lots of other engineers just like me would be attending. It was hosted using a system from a company called UP Media Group, whoever the hell they are. Their system was basically rubbish. The experience signing up and getting into the webinar was unfriendly, made me jump through hoops to use the specific software and settings they wanted me to use, and then when I got there looked like it had been designed 15 years ago. So we wait for the webinar to start, having been tipped that we could attend early before it starts if we wanted 'to start the experience early'.
This experience involved a single scrolling chat window, also designed 15 years ago. It was nice in the sense that it was sort of fun to see all the people posting silly comments and to get a real feel of being there with all these other people, but when you have more than 5 people on such a system its basically pointless as all the messages randomly appear in quick succession. I've not seen anyone do this bit right yet, but there are some really obvious innovations to make this experience great and turn a webinar into a rewarding semi networking type event also. The idea of turning up early and being 'part' of it is appealing when the event is very niche and will attract people who specialise in a particular field - lots of us did. So give us an experience to utilise all these like minded people coming together. Show us maps of the attendees there who are geographically near to us (I don't care about people in Spain, but I'm interested to see who's there from the UK or down the road from me). Let us easily enter some info, upload a photo, provide our LinkedIn page, Facebook page, etc, etc. We're all there to interact and see who else is there so make that experience work in a really fulfilling way for everyone. Finally make the chat experience work properly.
It's not hard. When someone responds to someone else show it like that, let us join specific discussions, show us all the things people are talking about so we can find like minded folk to join in with, not just a stupid list of random comments. With the speed of connections these days giving us audio and webcam functionality so we can speak and see others in smaller groups, or just listen in is not at all far fetched. You do it while you hang around outside a real world conference, so why not online? Actually online could be better for meeting new contacts as its a lot easier to try a quick hello online behind the safety of your PC rather face to face if your not the confident sort. I could go on, but this stuff is all so solvable these days, really wouldn't be hard to implement and could transform the experience into something very cool indeed.
So then the webinar starts. Well for me at least it falls over, disconnects several times, shows me error messages before finally it starts. Its fine, but its only a PowerPoint & audio type experience which is frustrating when you know that it's all technically very feasible to show a bit of low res video of the speaker alongside, other info about stuff, other visitors, promotion material etc I can scan during the boring bits I'm not into. About 30 minutes in my connection goes down for whatever reason so I reconnect. The webinar starts again from the beginning. Not only is there no way for me to skip through to the point I left or to the live feed (I'm not about to re-watch the 30 minutes I've already seen), it also becomes completely obvious that the webinar is not live at all. It's pre-recorded. You can just see the big corporate company bosses deciding to do this. Pre-record it, make sure it's perfect and ensure there are no hiccups. What they don't get is that in doing this they've violated the one rule of providing a live webinar - it must be live. When you realise it isn't all of the reasons to attend vanish in an instant and you'll never bother with that companies webinars again. It's just a bloody video with someone there to answer a few questions live at the end.
So on to the virtual conference. The event is called Virtual PCB and I really like this idea. Its not happened yet but it looks like it could be an interesting experience with seminars and a virtual hall of exhibitors to go around and interact with. Again it's the live thing that I think is really compelling. If you want to visit you have to go there while it's on and if you do then the exhibitors will be on hand to meet you, albeit virtually via your PC. However it's already broken for me before its even started for two reasons. Firstly I had a quick look at the costs the exhibitors have to pay and its really expensive. I'm all for there being a decent cost barrier to entry for exhibitors - it ensures you get a good quality of relevant exhibitors for the visitors. But this is a virtual exhibition with only a fraction of the costs to put on compared to a real world event. The prices they are charging seem ridiculous to me and will no doubt put off many companies exhibiting that I'd actually like to find. However the main reason it's broken is the visitor registration.
To sign up you have to give your email address of course, and answer all the questions about what you're into. Nothing strange there - all conferences want this in the hope you'll forget to tick the box saying you can't use my details for marketing. However this form has no such box and you can't sign-up without answering every category. I complain to the organisers that this is a violation of people's right to privacy and it's also illegal in many countries around the world including the UK. I've not even had a reply. On the form it states that you give them permission to give these details to their sponsors.
Sorry but I don't walk around a real world exhibition with all of my contact details and preferences emblazoned on my T-shirt, so why on earth would I accept this for the online equivalent? I choose who I give my details to. No doubt they'll also be tracking all of your movements through the exhibition and will they be sharing this with the exhibitors for a fee - this guy looked through these bits of your stuff for 5 minutes and here's all his details so you can bombard him with spam. There's something horribly eerie about knowing people will be told you've been looking just by daring to look at a page (it's the thing about LinkedIn I really wish they'd change). In this day and age I think it's a terrible attitude for an event organiser to have and demonstrates a complete lack of regard for their visitors and also their exhibitors in that many people like me will simply not attend because of it.
So that's my wee rant over. It felt good, but really it's a rant wishing someone would fix all these things and give me the great online conference and exhibition experiences I want. I really want to be able to attend these things, learn new things, meet new people and companies. The realities of the real world conferences and exhibitions mean that I can rarely actually justify it though. Once someone out there gets it right in the online space this market is going to be massive.
Adam Pulley
Managing & Technical Director of IBEX Electronic Product Design
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