Grosshandler - Top Ten FAQ Profile

1. What is one of the most important things for a start-up in the virtual event business?
2. Where did you get your first contacts?
3. How did you barter with your partners in the beginning?
4. What was the eComXpo University?
5. What platform does eComXpo use?
6. What are some of the recent changes you’ve seen in the virtual event world?
7. What will be the role of the large physical event providers in the virtual world?
8. What changes, if any, will be made to eComXpo under new ownership?
9. What were some of the challenges you faced in convincing people to barter?

10. What is the importance of webcasts in a virtual event?

What is one of the most important things for a start-up in the virtual event business?

The single biggest mistake is not appreciating the importance of having an existing database of perspective attendees and exhibitors and presenters from which to leverage. I probably should have walked away when I realized that I had made that mistake, but instead I decided that I would just work extra hard at creating a different type of virtual event than that which was being done before with the idea that if it was efficiently of higher value, that it would grow virally.

Where did you get your first contacts?

The way I did that was with strategic partnerships with the folks in MySpace that did own their audience: the key magazines, the key associations, even the key physical tradeshows in MySpace. I was able to partner with the leaders in each of those and barter with them in such a way so that they would promote my event to their constituencies and that ended up being probably the most successful thing that I did.

How did you barter with your partners in the beginning?

The nature of the barter was effectively that I would give them a virtual booth/sponsorship at my event, often a high profile one, which would be great for them, because it would get them exposed to some new people who came to my event that they otherwise wouldn’t have known about. It would show them as a cutting edge type of organization. In addition, even for the people that they were responsible for bringing to my event, if those people that they brought would engage with them at the virtual event, it actually would allow those relationships to deepen in a way that emails or webcasts don’t allow.

What was the eComXpo University?

We created a scenario where if you came to the eComXpo event while it was live, during those two or three days, you would get to consume that content for free and that was the way to encourage them to come while the event was live, where we knew they would have a better experience and it would be of more value to my sponsors. Whereas, if they came after the event and they wanted that same content, they would have to pay me the fifty bucks and that’s what I called eComXpo University.

What platform does eComXpo use?

The technology platform that was underneath eComXpo was Inxpo. I did a fair amount of research back in ’04 on which platform to choose and ended up choosing them. That turned out to be a good decision on my part, and their product really, to this day, continues to be a leading player in powering not only virtual tradeshows, but virtual events more broadly including for corporations. Their ability to provide tracking and then reporting from that tracking is what allowed me to grow to 500 exhibitors.

What are some of the recent changes you’ve seen in the virtual event world?

What has been interesting to see is that they’re [IT publishers] not the only ones having fun anymore. There are other publishers who are getting into the space like Pennwell and Wall Street Journal and others, where their audiences might be fire fighters or dental hygienists or travel professionals. So, it’s no longer just the IT title that is common.

In addition, it’s no longer just the propeller head. You now have the C suite showing up at these events as well. So, that’s been very interesting to see, titles like IDG, CIO magazine having a very robust virtual event offering. Again, in that case though, on the actual platform. So, it’s no longer just IT. It’s no longer just propeller head.

The other thing, though, is in the last year, of course, it’s not about just publishers making money. It’s all these corporations who are holding virtual events where it’s not about ROI, but rather maybe ROO, return on objective. So, you’ve got corporations like Proctor & Gamble and AT&T and players in the IT space like Cisco and IBM, who are now leveraging the same virtual event technology, but now instead of it being about making money, it’s about replacing or augmenting a physical event that might have been aimed at your customers or your prospects or your employees or your partners.

What will be the role of the large physical event providers in the virtual world?

Companies like Merit and George P. Johnson and others who have built a business around helping corporations with their physical meetings, they’re now getting aggressively in the virtual meeting space, and I think this is an extraordinarily interesting and exciting aspect of the tipping point, and the maturation of the market is these meeting planners getting in the middle. Because they’re going to be able to help with things like meeting effectiveness and driving engagement, and how do you measure it in order to rationalize it for next time in a way that the technology providers on their own simply are not able to do because they’re not event experts.

What changes, if any, will be made to eComXpo under new ownership?

The new owners are actually looking to make it even more exclusive and focus more on quality as opposed to quantity both in terms of the exhibitors as well as attendees. So, I think now the event is probably in the 75 exhibitor range. From an attendee point of view, I think the highest number we ever had was 8,000 unique attendees at a single event. That number also of 8,000 uniques has been reduced as the new owners, again, narrow the scope of the event. They’re actually creating branch off events as is typical in the physical event world when you have an event doing well, you sort of branch off if you can. So, the current event I think is probably more in the 4,000 unique attendees albeit a higher quality than I ever had.

What were some of the challenges you faced in convincing people to barter?

Some of the physical events search engine strategies in my particular space—and here I’m talking about Ad Tech Affiliate Summit, eTail, Shop Ad Org—I was able to get all of them(with one exception) eventually to agree to barter with me, and the reason that that was a harder sell was now, suddenly, their perception was that I was directly competitive with them in way that, of course, I wasn’t with the magazine or the association. What I was able to get them to understand is that it really gets at the core of the reality that these virtual tradeshows are different. They’re not better; they’re not worse. They’re just different than physical events. So they’re not so much competition as they are just a different way to achieve similar business needs, like checking out vendors and networking with your peers and getting educated.

What is the importance of webcasts in a virtual event?

In a virtual event, the webcasts are an important aspect to draw the audience. It is something that they get value from and they’ll come back the next time. But, it’s really not the unique value proposition. The unique value proposition of a virtual event is everything that happens in between the webcast. It’s the social networking with people from around the world that you otherwise wouldn’t have met. It’s the ability from your home office PC to check out exhibitors that you otherwise might have never seen or had to fly to Vegas to be able to see. So, it’s those types of things in between the webcast. And if you have too many webcasts, then people are not doing those things that are actually of the greatest value to them as an attendee as well as to the greatest value of your exhibitors who are ultimately funding the show. Also, webcasts are costly and difficult to produce and if you’ve got too many of them going on during your virtual event, it’s logistically challenging and heightens the risk and the effort required.