Event Camp #ec10 MeetingsPodcast Show 49

Today Meetings Podcast show talks about EventCamp at the Roger Smith Hotel which happened at the beginning of this month for the eventprofs! Transcript will follow soon! The Hash Tag was #ec10 if you want to do a www.search.twitter.com search.

Related articles-

Hearts of Darkness: A EventCamp Stream Apocalypse (grassshackroad.com)
We love #eventprofs (eventmanagerblog.com)
Roger Smith Hotel Hosts BeatBox Event Camp! (grassshackroad.com)
8 Online Tools for Event Camp (grassshackroad.com)
EventCamp Session: Engaging Audiences Using Hot Steamy Sex (grassshackroad.com)
Happy Birthday #eventprofs! (eventcoup.com)

Transcripts:

Mike McAllen: Welcome back to Meetings Podcast. This is Mike McAllen with Grass Shack Events & Media. We are a corporate production company handling mostly corporate events. Today I am doing a lone star podcast. is busy and so is Tom Hillmer and I wanted to take a chance just to kind the talk a little bit about Event Camp which is happen in New York City at the Roger Smith Hotel. I was one of five planners, Jeff Hurt, Michael McCurry, Jessica Levin and Christina Coster. We all put on this event in New York City. I was the only one from the West coast. Jeff is from Dallas and Mike – Michael McCurry or Mike McCurry, I call him Mike. I think he goes by Michael though he is from Chicago. Jessica Levin is from New Jersey and Christina Coster is from New York City.

So, we all put this event on. It was a very interesting event where it comes from is there is a group on the internet called, Event Profs and it’s a Hashtag that is used. –Some of you who are listeners to the podcast and I want to welcome you. I want to welcome the newer listeners that we have because I know we got a jump in listeners which is been pretty cool. I wanted to say hello and welcome but we did interview Lara McCulloch Carter last year and she is the one who started and she created this event profs and what it is two times a week. There’s scheduled times, one is on Tuesdays and the others on Thursdays, Tuesdays is in the evening and Thursdays is in the morning. Tuesday eve 6-7 pm pacific and 9-10am on Thursday. They do it Eastern Time, I am of courses on the West coast in San Francisco area but they do a chat and there’s a subject that comes up and that someone might put in and someone moderate its and everyone goes to a Twitter chat software, the one that I use is called Twitchat and so I can just put in the hashtag event profs on the top and it will only show me that twits that are from event profs. So, there’s a subject and we all talk about it, of course everyone else who’s following stream has no idea what’s going on unless you tell them that on the next hour I’m going to be just chatting about event stuff. So, you only see those – those twits.

The community since Lara started this and she’s starting it like I think last year in February and I think – then they just did have their anniversary of the chat . What happens there, we talk about different things in industry and everyone come throw things in there and there’s a links throwing back and forth and it’s a really great little online community and it’s been growing. What’s happen now is there’s a Wiki that goes along with it, so you can back if you missed the chat, you can go back and read through it really quickly and to find out what people are talking about and now it’s been – the event profs has been mentioned into several books that I’ve been written about how this community started. There is award which they did this year or last year and it just kind the supports people. It’s been kind of a cool – a cool online community. So, now this is kind the flip flop of more people now a days are trying to really get the online communities go attached to their events. There’s a lot of this different types like Pathable and then blanking another names but there’s a whole bunch of different communities, to companies that you can go through to get a community started before your event.

This event is kind the flip flop of that, where we decided myself and Michael McCurry, Jeff Hurt, Christina Coster and Jessica Levin. We decided to do an event attached to the online community, so it’s flip flop, so it’s kind of cool. The event itself went really well. We had a lot of different speakers, some of the speakers where David Berkowitz. He did one on How to Change the World: A Good Guide to Social Media Marketing. We had a great panel which Michael McCurry moderated, had about Hybrid Events. We had Jessica Liven had a little – a little and one of the small rooms, there are three rooms, one of the room she did one about, Overcoming Objections to Social Media from Business Leaders and Clients.

Samuel Jay Smith did an Integrating Social Media On-Site and he did a fish bowl session. So, he didn’t really talk. What he did is he post the questions to the whole group and then he had a fish ball and you could go and sit down in the fish ball, we hand you the microphone and you could talk about the, you know, how you know, social media works for you. It was very interesting. He got everybody engaged. I really loved it. There was another one called, Creating an Online Community, Comforts to Community and Jessica Liven was the – was the moderator of that. There was another one in Social 2.0 Hospitality Panel and Christina Coster – Coster did the, I say Cosner. I apologize. It’s Coster, did the moderating of that. Jason Falls came in. He talked about, The Art of Listening: How Social Media Can Improve Event Communication. Jeff Hurt did a great presentation at the – about,
Meeting The Needs of Face-to-Face & Virtual Audiences and then to close it out we had Deidre Breckenridge, who talked about Social Marketing – Social Marketing and Return Investment for your Events.

So, all in all it was a really great day. There was just so much information. I myself had a little challenge and I know some of you read the blog, our podcast blog. I did a little post called it the, Hearts of Darkness: The EventCamp Stream Apocalypse and I kind the – I saw myself as a Francis Ford Coppola sort of apocalypse now thing, you know. I don’t know if you saw that movie which was called, the heart of – the Hearts of Darkness and it was about Francis Ford Coppola and how you know, the whole script shooting budget and casting, problems you know destroyed his life and the career of him and I kind of had – kind of experience like that but I mean overly dramatic about doing the live stream for the event.

So, what we did at Event Camp besides having all theses wonderful people that showed up, so – so all the event profs in this chat, a lot of them came. We had about 75 people onsite, that came to the Roger Smith Hotel which is a very small boutique hotel and – so they came and then we also had a virtual audience. So, we use live stream who was our sponsor to stream the event, to a virtual audience and we really had a lot of good feedback from that. I mean myself putting it together. I had some problems with the venue with the AV, had a lot of problems but it all worked out really well, as all these things do. A lot of fires, I can see in the future. It was the first time that I had done an event like this, a live stream event with no budget whatsoever. So, it was really getting stuff together, making it work with the some of the challenges we had with the venue itself, with power, with internet access, some of the main things you really need for a good stream.

So, what I really like about it was I learn a lot actually from Jeff Hurt, who was there and was talking about the virtual audience. So, my posting that I did about the apocalypse, I really got a lot great feedbacks from people who were watching the virtual –the virtual stream that we put up. So, we had the stream going in the main room and we watched the Twitter stream. We use 12 events to have the webpage that the virtual audience could log on to. They could read the twits going by, they could ask questions and of course all of us in the room were following that stream because if they had questions we could post them to the – to the speakers if they had problems with what was going on like – was too dark to see, we try to fixed that for them right away. We responded to them.

So, we were – we actually had two different audiences to deal with, which was fantastic. Jeff Hurt like I said had a great idea about interviewing the speakers after they spoke to the – just to the virtual audience, so the virtual audience then would feel special and kind of really cool idea, great idea, very well received. We had – we had – when we had those interviews, they really went well just because again they were – they were bringing the virtual audience into feeling very special, I already said that but I was just thinking you should kind the – if you’re thinking about using a virtual stream for your event, you should really think about doing two show flows, maybe one show flow for your face to face audience that you have there in the room and then also do another show flow for your virtual audience. Obviously people aren’t really going to sit four to eight hours at their computer, they might, some people did, some people did for our – for the Event Camp were there at the whole time. I think Kevin Richardson had like the most twits of anyone and he was watching from Dallas. So – and I’m going to interview him tomorrow I think, to talk a little bit about his experience with being a virtual attendee and so I’ll get that up on the feed quick but be interesting to hear form him.

Some of the interesting thing though, so if you have this two show flows for each audience, you can also record everything in this manner, so even the face to face audience can go back and see what they missed from the – what the virtual audience saw. I think in our case the event profs that came to Event Camp, the community really got strong. I mean I’ve talked to – lots of this people for you know, years and years about you know, just about this event profs chats and then to actually meet them in person, really submits your – it was like a reunion. It is the way I can kind the see it. Michael McCurry wrote on his blog, it reminded him of like the boy scouts, going to camp you know, where they actually everybody came and the community was built. I can’t say – I really have to say that it was really a good, good experience.

Some of the tools we used for Event Camp, the live stream who was the sponsor, I think it’s like $350 a month to keep up their stream, that you can have a stream channel but they – they were really great to give us the sponsorship and I thank them and I think next time it will be like 18 times – 18,000 times better. Of course we use Twitter because everyone is from Twitter that was there. We all utilize Twitter and with Twitter, we used 12 events which was a – like I explained, it’s a virtual tool that combines the live stream and the Twitter stream which is also like the twitchat which I kind the talked about. So, it only pulls those twits that have the hashtag and our hashtag was hashtag ec 10 and so whenever somebody would twit, they would put that hashtag on the end, so they would know that that’s coming from our event. That’s another thing to think you know, keep that in your mind that you want to pick a hashtag for your event right away and make sure that’s on everything that goes out to your attendees, anything printed material, anything you talk about, make sure that hashtag is on there because now the back channel or what’s going on behind the scenes on the internet, you want to make sure that everybody is in the same place so you can build your community, so think about that hashtag.

Another thing we use – oh it was Conference 2.0 that was where the community page was held. You can connect with attendees like Pathable, what’s the other one, Crowdvine is another great one and we used Event Bright, they were also a sponsor that was who we use for registration, our blog was a simple tumbler site that Christina, excuse me. I’m getting dry mouth now. She used. Around the event space, we utilize live twits. It’s a great way to use – to put the stream up for everyone in the event, so we had big plasmas stationed in different places that you could watch the stream go by. A great thing about this – this is if you’re going to project maybe behind a speaker or a behind a panel on the wall, you could use live twits and what you can do is you can pull out the people who, maybe you will have somebody who says – who was just obviously being kind of the pain in the ass, you can pull them out and not have them project on the plasma and it comes out nice and clean. It shows pictures in the stream and like I said it’s great for filtering out the unflattering kind of twits that people may – somebody may get on there.

Another thing we used was a thing called, Animoto. It’s a way to put your pictures in a collage, it’s a free tool that you can use to create thing for a sponsor loop. Again we had some issues with the venue to get that up there but it’s up on our YouTube channel which is YouTube.com/eventcampvideos and I’m in the process of putting up all the videos from the event that we captured. Again, we had some challenges, so some of them didn’t get captured but I’m planning on getting them all up there right now. I think I have David Berkowitz. I don’t remember talking about David Berkowitz but David Berkowitz, he was the first speaker. His is up there right now. I think the, Social Hospitality panel is up there and a really great one Jeff Hurt which I really enjoyed, Meeting The Needs of Face-to-Face & Virtual Audiences is up there. I really think you should take a look at that. There’s some great people in the audience which was the great thing about this is that it kind the turn in to the audience who are asking questions who are very knowledgeable about what we do as event professionals or meeting professionals. So, that’s really something very cool to look at.

So, maybe that’s it, maybe I should – maybe cut off with that. I want to encourage you all to come to the next one, we’re hoping to get one, to have one out here on the West coast this year, this summer we’re going to talk about that soon and that’s about it. So, that’s all I really wanted to say. I hope that you can come to the next Event Camp. We will probably use the same website, so if you have any more questions or you want to talk more about virtual – well maybe I should do, should I talk a little bit about the virtual, to some of the things. Let’s do a quick – before I go, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Before I go, let me tell you a little bit about the virtual, some things I learn from doing – from doing the live stream.

First of all of having no budgets sucks. I am spoiled rotten because now after running Grass Shack for now and the last eight years and doing – and having corporate clients working with you know, budgets and I was complaining – I’ll never complain about a budget again. I don’t think after – I didn’t really have a team of people that I normally have, Mari Kimura who is somebody who I’ve worked with for a while, was going to come but her father – has a little accident and she couldn’t come out and that kind the shifted me down to a producer level and I really I’m not the greater producers anymore. So, it was kind of – I felt like I needed somebody else there to help me along with that. Some things about streaming, you want to make sure if it’s a Union Hotel. Midori Connolly was telling me a story about how she saw somebody streaming in a Union Hotel and they didn’t clear it with the Union and the Union came in and shut down the whole show. So, that’s kind of scary thing. So, keep it in mind if it’s a Union Hotel, you might want to talk him a little bit about it and make sure you are all in the open up with them.

Another thing which we didn’t do in this show because we don’t have budget and I’m in San Francisco and it was in New York. Do a technical sites survey. I always tell my clients that we needed to get out there because we can save them hundreds and thousands of dollars even sometimes, you know, you find up – find little nuances that might be a problem with the venue. When I was calling the Roger Smith Hotel, I never got a return phone call. They’re wonderful people there but they don’t really do meetings and here we are all meetings professionals and I knew I should have saw on a red flag that they didn’t never called me back but it is a great hotel and I don’t want to put them down because they did sponsor the rooms and they were fantastic people there and if I ever go to New York again which I will, I will stay there for vacation or if I have to go for a work I’d love to just stay there. It’s just a really neat place. Great vibe, wonderful people there, the restaurant is fantastic. I can’t say enough good things about the Roger Smith Hotel.

Another thing with the live stream, you want to rehearse the stream at the venue before the event of course. Well, we didn’t have time to do that. We had some problems with some of the venue issues budget of course, I keep saying budget but – so you just want to make sure, you know all it really takes is getting in there early, get a laptop, a camera, you know check the venues internet speeds and then have somebody from somewhere else looking at it from a way to see what it looks like, you know, watch it, start it going and have somebody run down the street and watch it somewhere else, so you can see what your audience is going to see. Double check the internet speeds at different times. I like to say that for the internet for any event, you want to make sure you have a hard line for your virtual stream, make sure those levels are high enough. You don’t want to share that line with the rest of the attendees.

And also another thing to think about is have a – have a direct line for your presenters to use too because sometimes presenters use the internet for their – for their talks, for their presentations. So, you want to make sure they have a dedicated line, so you’re not running into any problems. What else is there, power, make sure you have power in the room, can’t say that enough. The Roger Smith had lots of plugs, lots of plugs where on the same circuit, lots of plugs didn’t work. Again there are made – I am spoiled for working in really fantastic venues all the time that are made for meetings and the Roger Smith is getting there, really getting there but make sure you have power, so that’s the other thing and then the main thing which I talked a little bit about before, have a strategy and goals for the stream audience, for the virtual stream audience, you know. Like we did with that, make them feel special and make them feel like they’re part of it. It will pay dividends on getting more people because it makes people want to come into your meeting and that’s the goal of getting people face to face. It isn’t about that virtual audience, I mean you want to grow that virtual audience but you want – you want them to want to be there. So, keep that in mind you know. Use Twitter – the Twitter stream if you like. This was a fantastic thing. We were had a dialog going all the time with them.

So, anyway that’s what all I will shout out with because that will give you a little information if you ever need any – any questions about Event Camp or about live streaming, please you know, send me an e-mail at MeetingsPodcast.com, oh I’m sorry, MeetingsPodcast@gmail.com. If you have any – if you have anybody would like to have interviewed or you would like to have us talk about on the show, please contact me. I’d love to, you know, we’d love to have – it’s an open forum, love to get more event profs on the Meetings Podcast. So, with that I will let you go. Thank you very much for listening and I look forward to conversing with you on the Twitters or on the phone, so – or face to face. So, thank you and I’ll see you next time.

Female: We appreciate and thank you for listening to the Meetings Podcast. Please e-mail with any questions or comments to MeetingsPodcast@gmail.com. The Meetings Podcast theme music comes from the Delgado Brothers which can be found at delgadobrothers.com. Special thanks to riptidegraphics.com for graphics and audio editing of this podcas