the November 2009 Issue in PDF Format - Trade Show Executive

incubator
Digital Experience Options are Rapidly
Evolving in the Trade Show Space
By Hil Anderson, senior editor
Trade show organizers who see
the field of digital experience
technologies as a head-spinning
whirl can rest assured that it is indeed a
head-spinning whirl, but one that is also
becoming a more organized and userfriendly
whirl.
The conventional wisdom in the
exhibition industry is that social media
and other digital experience technologies
are a great fit with trade shows, and that
the time is now to add such community
building to one’s brands. The only
problem – and it’s no small problem – is
that the digital experience market relating
to live events is in a nearly frantic stage
of development, and it is a challenge to
keep up with the options. John Barber,
vice president of digital experience at
Immersa Marketing, said there is “an
explosion of emerging technologies”
underway. The “explosion” pertains
to the virtual event, online video, viral
invitation, mobile application and other
spaces powered by scores of startups,
all seeking their niches in the evolving
sector. “It is startling how many entrants
there are in this space,” Barber said.
Off-the-Shelf Solutions Are Affordable
and Quickly Deployable
It is no small wonder that Barber’s
presentation at the Trade Show Executive
2nd Annual Gold 100 Summit was wellreceived.
His rundown of which
companies are developing which
technologies provided the audience of
CEOs and show organizers a welcome
overview of what was available in the
market and what it could do for their
social networking operation. Barber said
advances have made these off-the-shelf
technologies affordable, easy to use and
rapidly deployable.
And if the Gold 100 Summit attendees
had to take notes fast, that was because
the field is crowded with start-ups
jockeying for position like thoroughbreds
in the backstretch.
“There is a lot of incubation going
on where companies are flying under
the radar,” Barber said. “They burst on
the scene and can change the landscape.
We have rewritten our own view of the
landscape six times in three months.” He
noted that the digital experience map is
taking shape in ways that accommodate
the goal of making trade shows and their
brands a year-round community for the
like-minded people who will attend the
event and patronize the exhibitors.
Promising Strategies
A promising strategy is the
unification of persisting online social
communities and live event communities.
The enabling technology platforms
for this, known in tech circles as
“social enterprise software,” allow the
creation of special-interest, white-label
social communities around a show’s
brand outside the sprawling worlds of
Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
The hottest products in this realm,
according to Barber, are fully-featured
white-label social networks like Jive
Software and social aggregation tools
like EventVue. Products like Jive and
its competitors Telligent, Mzinga, and
Ning, allow an organizer to create a
Studio Audience. John Barber of Immersa Marketing briefs attendees at the TSE Gold 100 Summit on the wide array of digital tools and solutions available
for building social media marketing strategies for trade shows.
Continued on page 22
20 November 2009 Trade Show Executive www.TradeShowExecutive.com