Tuesday, July 26, 2011

I am quite awesome, thankyouverymuch

I actually look forward to performance reviews. I did the youth beauty pageant circuit. And I enjoyed that quite a bit. I really enjoy being judged. I believe I hold up very well to even severe scrutiny. 
  - Angela, The Office

Great post on Harvard Business Review about eliminating the self assessment part of annual reviews.
The point of the post is that it turns the review into a negotiation, as most A-ranked employees are afraid of being Bs. Most Bs are scared they’ll get a C, and most Cs believe they are As.
I recall my husband helpfully advising me when I was trying to write my own self appraisal many years ago, “Why would you ever rate yourself a B or a C? Always put A! Even if your boss doesn’t agree with it, you have on record a positive spin on all the great things you’ve accomplished.”
As a recovering manager of a rather large team, I love the HBR suggestion to avoid asking employees to actually rate themselves, and instead ask them to send you their top 10 accomplishments for the year. This way, you as a manager can evaluate the value provided to the organization and/or the personal growth each team member achieved during the year.
Now to find some advice on writing a performance plan that is actually not a waste of time...

Monday, July 25, 2011

Is it worth the risk?

No power in the 'verse can stop me.
  - Kaylee (Firefly) 

Life is about choices. Do I want to fight my 3-year-old to get dressed faster, or do I want to play with him and have a really fun morning, but be 10 minutes late to work? Do I want to take that new job, or stay comfortably where I am? Do I want to be a keynote speaker at a conference, or say no and attend like my peers?

This Harvard Business Review blog post got me thinking about risk... and I don't think I take enough of them. I have definately taken a few, and they have all worked out perfectly. Some ended in massive failure, but what I learned from that failure prepared me for another task later.

My first big risk was college. Upon graduating high school, I left my home state of Georgia and moved over to Texas, finding a roommate from the university's off-campus housing department (because all the dorms were full). Best risk ever.

About a year out of college, I quit my high tech marketing job to work at a high tech recruiting firm. It was a blast! Then the economy tanked and there weren't any jobs to recruit for. So they asked if I would like to spend a week in Boca Raton getting trained on how to become an account executive and recruit jobs (instead of people). I'm no salesman. I couldn't sell girl scout cookies to my own mother. But I figured it would be interesting to take the class, so I did. I made sales calls for about a month after that, to no avail. The company closed about 3 months later. FAIL. But what did I learn? Well, I definately reinforced to myself that I'm no salesman. :-) I also learned that I enjoy solving problems. When the problem was no jobs to recruit for, I decided to try and solve it by learning how to get more jobs for the company to help with. I learned that as a salesperson, marketing is vitally important. Even the basics! If I didn't have any collateral to give my prospect, there was no way they'd ever think of me when they needed to hire someone. Actually spending a couple months in sales was really the best marketing experience I could have gotten.

I've been at my current company for more than 6 years now, and have taken relatively few risks, but have been fortunate to have opportunity find me. I did take a professional presenting course through our Executive Briefing Center, and was encouraged to go take an improv comedy class. That was a spectacular risk! Standing in a class with 15 other people being spontaneous for 2 hours a week, enouraged to fail. We were taught that "there is no such thing as failure, just unexpected results." Most fun I've had in the last 5 years!

Recently, I was asked to keynote at a user conference. It's only 50-75 people, but it will be my first time truly in the spotlight telling a story. It's a risk. I'm SUPER excited about it... but this time, failure is not an option!

As the article I referenced above mentions, the key to risk is preparation. So I've hired my professional presentation instructor to help me prepare for my keynote, and my improv training will undoubtedly prove very valuable. In this instance, there should be minimal risk of failure. I'm ready!

Thursday, July 21, 2011

Giving for the greater good

True charity is the desire to be useful to others without thought of recompense.
  - Emanuel Swedenborg

I love my company! Last November, we instituted  a meeting points donation plan through our Dell YouthConnect program. We do not use meeting planning points from our events for personal gain, but instead capture them throughout the year and donate them to charities through the Dell YouthConnect network. 

Just for fun, I checked our account balance. Without much effort, and just with a few folks remembering to put our points number on contracts, here's our current point amount:
41,000 points on Starwood
56,000 points on Marriott
7,000 points on Hyatt
Unsure on Hilton, as all points go directly to the Boys & Girls Club of America

Our next step is to ensure that all of our suppliers are aware of our program so they can begin sharing the account numbers as they book events. How awesome will it be to say that our events gave more than a month's worth of hotel stays to organizations with recipients in need.

If your company is interested in setting up a charitable points program, I'm happy to share our best practices. Just comment here or tweet me @lizlathan.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Virtual gatherings

Internet:  absolute communication, absolute isolation.  
  - Paul Carvel

When I saw Botox, Skype, and face-to-face meetings in the title of this post, it was a must-read. Then when I read it, it was a must-respond. 

It takes me right over to my little soapbox about virtual event environments with their little static fake people standing around. Some looking like they’re talking to each other, some standing alone, even some illustrated holding a cell phone to their ear. Really? This is how I’m supposed to engage and experience a virtual event? By pretending I’m there in person, when I'm really alone at my cube or in my home office? 

I think we’re all mentally stable enough to know that we’re not physically there. I also think that we go to virtual events for a specific purpose, not to create a cartoon avatar to show up in our profile. At least for me, I attend a virtual event to either watch presentations I couldn’t get to in person, or download content that will help me on my quest to solve a problem. If I engage with other people in the environment, it was to ask a question about a product or solution from a vendor. Sitting in a chat room with 3 professionals and one kid who snuck in and randomly types profanities is not my idea of a good use of time. 

So why do we continue to see virtual event platforms that try to mimic in-person events? They are a different kind of engagement and should be included in the customer journey planning for virtual audiences as a parallel path to the in-person experience. 

Online should be viewed as a content channel. If you’re going to have breakouts online, then plan for it and use something like Skype or Google+ to have a 5 to 8-person web breakout. The virtual event can no longer be project managed as separate entity. It must be folded into the entire customer journey and experience strategy so attendees, whether in-person or online, leave your event happy that they acquired the knowledge they hoped to gain and satisfied with the connections they made.

In other news, Why Virtual Events Fail.

Monday, July 18, 2011

Event professionals' social use stats

Quit counting fans, followers and blog subscribers like bottle caps. Think, instead, about what you’re hoping to achieve with and through the community that actually cares about what you’re doing.
  – Amber Naslund of Social Media Today

A recent Successful Meetings article announced that social media use among event professionals is on the rise, but as I dig into the statistics a bit, I find more than meets the eye. Let's dissect it a little.

71 percent of the 830 people surveyed say they use Facebook for networking or marketing purposes. There are no more detailed statistics beyond this very high-level number, but I would be interested to know the conversation density of the activities taking place on Facebook, and whether the site is being used by event marketers as event-specific communication, or as a vehicle in a larger marketing campaign program.

41 percent use Twitter regularly - close to double the number who used it last year. Twitter is an interesting beast. If you're not following a hashtag of interest or datamining for a specific hastag, it's largely just a bunch of useless drivel from a bunch of friends and random people. When used appropriately, however, Twitter provides a wealth of information. When used for an event Twitter handle, you must either have a strong following or have a limited following of strong influencers with strong followings. Without an audience for updates and interactions, Twitter serves no purpose. I think Twitter can be used better than it is currently being used and we should advocate for some training for our event professional colleagues!

69 percent of people used LinkedIn. Ah, but are they using it to keep their resume up-to-date and gather connections and recommendations, or are they cultivating the hidden communities lurking beneath the LinkedIn surface? Because, man! Some of those are great!

25 percent use YouTube. I can argue a number of perspectives on this one. Rich media content is awesome and more people should use it where appropriate. Interviews with keynote speakers and breakout session leaders, and interviews with customers and event staff can be really great! But you don't just stick that on YouTube and hope people will watch it. You actively have those ideas included in the marcom plan and feed them into your event hypersite, while simultaneously promoting them via other social channels. However, I rarely sit around watchin YouTube videos. When I do watch them, I usually found them via Twitter and they are usually under 2 minutes long. So that's my advice.

24 percent read blogs. Well, that's because there are 800 bazillion million gajillion blogs out there and no one has enough time to keep up! But that's where Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn come in. Sharing an interesting blog post encourages others to read it. No one comments on blogs anymore, so what? The idea that a blog is a two-way conversation was a facade from the beginning. It's one-way, with the chance to comment, and if you're lucky the blog author will comment back to you. What blogs really do (including this one), are provide an outlet for the author to share thoughts and opinions. If they are good ones, other people will share them, too.

16 percent use QR codes. Just as I suspected and wrote about previously... We haven't really figured out how to use those things very effectively, have we?

The biggest question I have for event marketers trying to harness the power of social media is this: Is social media an integral part of your face-to-face experience and the long tail of content afterwards, or is it an add-on vehicle that you have for your event because you feel you must? If the former, great! I love to watch the feeds from events like that and feel the buzz from the event. If the latter, I recommend not even trying to make social a part of your event and just let it happen naturally. It will happen anyway, and you'll get better results with organic social than forced social.

Friday, July 15, 2011

Are you a disruptor?

Change before you have to.
   - Jack Welch

I caught this link on a Twitter feed on the #eventprofs hashtag and identified with it immediately. Sometimes I get frustrated trying to implement and manage change at work and revert back to the easy path of "follow the rules, do what your boss says, and don't make waves." But my nature is to push the envelope. I'm no Richard Branson or Steve Jobs, but in my own little world, I'm known for making people think beyond what they are comfortable doing. I want to find efficiencies and foster creativity.

In events, this means making more meaningful engagements happen in more surprising ways. Like I mentioned in a previous post, it's important to create memorable moments throughout your engagement.
People are at your event for the session content and the networking, so taking opportunities to surprise and delight them in unexpected ways is what disrupts their view of "yet another business conference."

I'm a huge advocate of disruption for the sake of breaking status quo (not disruption without purpose). I was an early adopter of eTouches registration tools, for examples, because I believed they were truly thinking from an event marketer's perspective, with a software hat on, rather than thinking from a software perspective with an event marketer's hat on. They get events, they get social, and they get the need to customize things for each customer. They are disruptors like I am.

Innovation is the buzzword of the moment, and it's a good one. Disruption is the activity we must do to pave the way for innovation.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

How to not work

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
  - George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists

I love the book The Four-Hour Workweek. I love The Energy Project. And I love this Harvard Business Review blog post.

The gist of these grand tales is that we should stop working so much, and start prioritizing our lives to be what we want them to be. The risk inherent in this, of course, is that a) we fail to meet deadlines, b) we fail to look like we're working as hard as other people, c) we fail to get as much stuff done. So I think we're seeing that it's a fear of failure here (at least it is in my world).

But I like the principles and I am learning from my new manager (of about 6 weeks now) that this is actually possible. If you ignore the chatter of the silly, you can focus on the challenges that matter. One more book for you: Long Fuse, Big Bang. This one has a great quote that really stuck with me - "Don't let the tyranny of the urgent stifle the pursuit of the important."

Set aside time to think. Prioritize prioritization. Calm your mind and reflect on the day behind you. Then calm your mind and prepare your head for the day in front of you.

Now, to get to that 4-hour workweek... (though I'm fairly certain I could never really just work just four hours a week as I would be bored out of my mind...)

Thursday, July 7, 2011

How to write an RFP

It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.

  - Oscar Wilde

I have had some really great successes creating RFPs for event projects (and have received some great feedback from my partner companies responding to the RFPs), so I thought I'd share some of my guidelines.

My RFP template comes from an amalgamation of RFP templates provided to me by my industry friends including 3D Exhibits, Czarnowski, Jack Morton, Event Marketing Partners, and Derse, among others, and my learnings from the last half-dozen or so RFPs I've completed in the last year!
  1. Cover page: I always name the project and provide the contact information necessary throughout the process, as well as the due date for the proposal.
  2. An overview of the business issue: This is the place to describe the project in a brief paragraph. Be specific and concise in describing what the final product should look like.
  3. Description of product and services: In a few paragraphs, describe what you are looking for the company to produce. I also like to put in this section the type of partnership I am looking for from the company (execution-only, strategic consulting, etc.)
  4. Company information needed for proposal: In this section, I share all of the details of the project and about the company or department that would be helpful to the agency to know. Not a place to air dirty laundry, but be very upfront about the way the group likes to work and any challenges that the company may face.
  5. Proposal format: Let the respondents know what you are expecting by way of response. If you want giant, bound books of designs, or if you want everything done in a pdf or Power Point, share that here. One of my best practices is creating a survey (even a short one in Survey Monkey) to gather the basic information from each respondent in an easily-comparable format.
  6. Due date: Very important!
  7. Timeline: Respondents understand that this may shift, but sharing the basic timeline for them is very helpful. For example:
  • February 11, 2011: RFP sent out
  • Week of February 14: Q&A calls with (Company Contact 1 & 2)
  • Week of February 21: (optional) (Company Contact 1 & 2) available to pre-review proposals and make suggestions
  • March 4, 2011: Proposals due
  • Week of March 7: Internal core team reviews proposals. Core team made up of (list names here). Core team to set up calls with candidate companies to review proposals.
  • March 11, 2011: Business awarded, planning calls begin

8.  Questions: On some of my RFPs, I let respondents know that we will answer questions at any time and all questions emailed to us will be shared with all respondents, unless the respondent requests the questions be kept confidential.
9. Estimated budget: This is a very debatable section - especially between myself and my procurement team! My procurement team believes that we should let the companies come back with their own proposals. I firmly believe that the respondents need parameters. I generally like to give a budget range, but ask for the proposal to be priced out in an a la carte format so I can understand the pricing structure (hourly, project-based, etc.)
10. Detailed Business Requirements: If not already covered in the sections above, I spend about a page here describing the details of the project and the outcomes we are seeking. If we are RFPing for booth design, there are a number of specific questions to ask... including what rush charges for graphics are!
11. Selection criteria: In this section, I clearly articulate what we are looking for in our partner and how we will evaluate the proposals. I also list the names of the selection committee and their roles as it relates to the project. I like to use a spreadsheet with weighted criteria for areas like account management, pricing, customer references, creativity, case study examples, previous relationship with our company, etc.
12. Performance Metrics: Here I describe the cadence of partner reviews and evaluations. I make sure the partner knows that they will be evaluating us as a client, as well. Partnerships do not work with the client just gets to evaluate and blame the partner - it's a two-way street!

I'm very happy to share my RFP templates with anyone in need. Ping me on Twitter @lizlathan, or drop me a note here!

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Social engagement at events

Social media is just a buzzword until you come up with a plan.

~ Zach Dunn

A recent blog post I read about mistakes event planners make with social media got me thinking about some of our success... and failures in the social space.

We're doing some amazing things at my company to bring social engagement to life at events. From QR codes for information (basic, and truthfully not always successful), to fully engaging mobile apps that are built in to the event strategy process.

You've often seen me type that "events are the original social media." I firmly believe this to be true. Even with social media online and in mobile, people make the most important connections face to face.

But let's look at some of the social engagements for events that I've seen succeed and fail at recent conferences:

QR Codes - We like to think these encourage interaction and engagement among our attendees. In reality, either very few people know how to scan them, or you have a bunch of people playing with their phone trying to figure out how to scan them, only to scan them and be taken to a URL that was built for a regular website and is pretty much useless on a mobile device. Bottom line: They make you look tech savvy, but I've rarely seen them offer real value.

Mobile Apps - Most of the mobile apps I've used at events act as a replacement to the traditional paper pocket guide. They have maps. They have session schedules. They have sponsor advertisements. They save trees. Bottom line: You really can't do an event without one and still look professional. If you don't have one, get one.

Gamification - pronounced "Game-if-ick-a-shun" - means offering rewards to the attendees who engage with your event in different ways. From Four Square badges to Facebook Places rewards, these activities can draw attendees toward an activity for either a physical prize or a "title" award (Mayor of booth #310!). Bottom line: Good for fun, but may not get the most qualified attendees to your booth for the right reasons. When used at your own branded event, gamification can be modified for your activity and can help you move the flow of traffic around for the attendees who are using their mobile devices to engage.

Augmented Reality - Using geolocation or the GPS in phones, you can overlay an augmented reality layer onto you event; for example, onto your show floor. This allows attendees to hold up their phone like they would using Google Street View and see content related to each area of your floor. You could put exhibitor information, cool facts, customer comments, ratings from participants, and so much more. Bottom line: Super cool to play with. Who has extra money just sitting around to throw at this? And is there anything valuable there other than the cool-factor?

I believe that the key for event marketers is to evaluate the technology for it's value to the attendees first, then its coolness factor second. If the event must showcase the latest and greatest just for the WOW effect, that's valid. If the event should be focusing on content and personal engagement, let the social engagement happen without the guided hand of the event gods.

The best social media engagements at events are the conversations about the event, not the conversations about the social media at the event.