This past year, I have transitioned my career to a new role with Choose Chicago, the sales & marketing arm for the city of Chicago for conventions, trade shows, meetings, and tourism. It has been a year of change as I left Texas and relocated back to Chicago, as well as moving forward from 6+ … Continue reading
Filed under conventions …
How Well Do You REALLY Know Your Exhibitors?
This week I had the opportunity to make a presentation on the title subject in Washington, D.C. at an industry conference. This is the 2nd time I’ve spoken directly to this subject, and the 3rd time this year, at an industry conference, I led a discussion around this idea of really understanding who your customers … Continue reading
We’re Emulating the Wrong Education Methods
Khan Academy on 60 Minutes (click here to watch clip) Over the Labor Day weekend I had a chance to catch this segment on the news magazine show, 60 Minutes. It was fascinating…and disappointing at the same time. As a parent it is disappointing that this proven method has been around so long yet not … Continue reading
The 3 A’s Critical to Change
Recently I read another terrific post by Jeff Hurt of Velvet Chainsaw. Jeff is someone I enjoy, respect, and admire. He pushes the industry to never settle for what we have achieved, but he sees the best in all of us…even if we don’t always agree. He drew an aspirational analogy to the Olympics, where … Continue reading
Using Live to Drive Social
It starts with a spark… Hybrid events have caught fire, and rightly so, as the next broadcasting frontier. And, just like the NFL, MLB, NHL, PGA, etc, broadcasting creates greater interest in a live event, and more demand for it. If you don’t believe me, try and buy a face price ticket to the new … Continue reading
“Less Disruptive, More Instructive”
This is a quote I read in a recent article of B to B Online (http://www.btobonline.com/article/20120516/EVENT02/305169995/iab-innovation-days-everything-is-a-screen-these-days), referencing the challenges marketers face utilizing the wide variety of marketing channels that are “screens”…computers, tablets, phones, cameras, and soon…paper! Live events present terrific opportunities to engage the visual senses to enhance attendee education, interaction, and engagement. Exhibit booth … Continue reading
The Price Isn’t Right
In the last five months I have had the opportunity to attend IAEE, PCMA, the Exhibitor Show and others…a pretty fair cross-section of the trade show stakeholder market. Most of the formal and informal conversations that I have been a part of have been focused around: How do we stay relevant to our dues paying members? How … Continue reading
Just because YOU built it, do THEY need to come?
“We are interested in doing some research to identify why the members that don’t come, well, don’t come to our events” -Anonymous, or it could be any event organizer really In my experience, about 15-25% of members…on average (based, again, on my experience so don’t start quoting specific numbers from some research conglomerate) come to … Continue reading
PCMAmazing!
I saw this video on YouTube, and it was created by Jeff Hurt of Velvet Chainsaw and featured in his Midcourse Corrections blog. Jeff is an amazing individual, and his company did a terrific job on the content and speakers in the Learning Lounge at PCMA 2011. Great job, Jeff! The creative team I work … Continue reading
So what is it you do?
For many of us in the convention and trade show “business” the hardest question we answer in a given day is, “So, what is it you do?”. Freeman, my employer, is ” the leading provider of integrated services for face-to-face marketing and brand building events, including expositions, conventions, corporate events, meetings and exhibit programs. Our strategic, … Continue reading
