Unisfair - Top 12 FAQ Profile

1. When is Unisfair founded and who are its founders?
2. How did the early years go for Unisfair?
3. How does Unisfair virtual space differ from the physical space?
4. How does Unisfair simulate virtual events?
5. What additional services does Unisfair provide?
6. So all the data are captured for every activity made, but how does Unisfair process all of these?
7. As a virtual events provider, how does Unisfair’s platform deal with language issues?
8. Talking about creativity, how does Unisfair go about event customization and reusability?
9. How does Unisfair differ from other virtual events provider like Second Life?

10. How many ‘attendees’ usually participate in a Unisfair event?

11. Going back to Unisfair’s early clients, how did the publishers evolve through Unisfair?

12. Looking forward, where does Unisfair see virtual events going and what will it look like down the road?

When is Unisfair founded and who are its founders?

Unisfair was founded in 2002 by Guy Piekarz and Ronen Sobol. They are both from Tel Aviv, Israel. They established Unisfair after looking at Comdex and CeBit, a couple of the largest physical events in the world, and hypothesizing that there must be a more efficient way of organizing events online.

Unisfair is headquartered in Menlo Park, California and currently employs about 65 people including its employees in its offices in Boston, New York and Southern California. However, part of the company’s support staff as well as their Research & Development center resides in Tel Aviv.

How did the early years go for Unisfair?

According to Brent Arslaner, Vice President of Marketing for Unisfair, the company was self-funded through the early part of the 2000’s. Moreover, the initial target market was B2B media publishers. Publishers emulated a model very similar to the physical event world whereby they would leverage their content and their audience and then sell sponsors tiered packages.

From 2002 through 2006, Unisfair experienced incremental growth from the publishers and remained focused on strengthening the virtual event platform. Eventually, in 2006, Unisfair began getting more interest from large corporations and as a result, the number of virtual events they organized skyrocketed. Innovative high-tech companies including Cisco and IBM were early adopters that paved the path for Unisfair’s growth.

In 2006, Unisfair received funding from Sequoia Capital, a leading Silicon Valley venture capitalist, which enabled them to expand the customer facing parts of their business.

Successful virtual events are made possible through a combination of their robust virtual event platform in conjunction with the world’s most experienced virtual event strategists, managers and producers.

How does Unisfair virtual space differ from the physical space?

The major difference between physical and virtual will come down to the services that will be provided. You don’t need someone who can manufacture a booth with metal and plastic. What we do need are event management, experiential marketing and advertising agencies that can provide strategic, promotional and creative services.

How does Unisfair simulate virtual events?

In Unisfair, virtual events simulate every aspect of a physical event. As Brent said, Unisfair started with more traditional media like tradeshows, conferences and expos, with the functionality that was straight forward.

“You have a main hall which is the grand entryway into the virtual event. There is also an exhibition hall which includes exhibition booths which allows communication between attendees and sponsors. A standard event also includes resource center to store multi-media; a conference hall which houses various types of conference sessions including keynotes and multiple session tracks; and networking lounges so you can do forums, moderate chats and blogs” Brent said.

What additional services does Unisfair provide?

Unisfair provides professional networking throughout the environment. It is very similar to LinkedIn - where customers can build a profile and then have the option to either search for others. Unisfair’s system can also make recommendations about other attendees that customers might be interested in interacting with based on their interests and areas of expertise.

Unisfair also provide comprehensive reporting on everything that occurs within a virtual event. As Brent pointed out:

“On the average about 1,500 people will attend one of our events. It becomes very important for the solution to be able to rank and qualify the data, because as people walk into one of our events, your registration data as well as all of the activity data, any session you go to, any white paper you download, any survey or polling question that you respond to, as well as all the communications data is all captured. So, how you conduct yourself in chats or other types of interactions all creates one single string about who the attendee and what they are interested in.”

So all the data are captured for every activity made, but how does Unisfair process all of these?

Brent explains that organizers provide their lead ranking and qualification analytic tools that allow marketers to easily rank the leads based on any combination of the criteria that they track. Oftentimes, marketers will run multiple scenarios based on their internal rules in order to rapidly disseminate the leads between enterprise sales, inside sales and marketing. So far, Unisfair is the only virtual events provider that offers those types of analytic capabilities.

To aid data processing, Unisfair added comprehensive integration capabilities to its platform. As Unisfair grows, this model has evolved in to a platform which they can integrate with third party micro-sites, user repositories, communities, CRM, HRMS and LMS systems based on corporate demands.

As a virtual events provider, how does Unisfair’s platform deal with language issues?

Unisfair developed their platform into a multilingual database to aid the language issue. As Unisfair continue to work with leading Fortune 500 corporations, they have subsequently added “Enterprise Class” capabilities in which they converted their virtual event solutions into a global product offering that is multi-lingual in 16 languages including all of the major European and Asian languages.

Talking about creativity, how does Unisfair go about event customization and reusability?

Unisfair recently added the ability for organizers to easily customize the theme across all locations with a virtual event. They help companies create virtual experiences. Without development resources, clients can make a virtual environment that can look like anything they wanted. Booth properties that could be interchangeable or usable in other platforms are also possible but this is still soon to come.

Reusability in the system is also simplistic Through Unisfair platform properties, clients can choose which assets (booths, sessions, etc) they want to bring forward from the previous activity to the next.

How does Unisfair differ from other virtual events provider like Second Life?

In other virtual events provider like Second Life, getting started can be expensive and it can be time consuming. Oftentimes, clients have to pay a third party, an interactive agency, to build their location. At Unisfair, new environments can be up in days. This is because they have created a repository of reusable templates that can be customized without touching the code. Furthermore, a Flash player is only needed to enter the platform and participation in any Unisfair virtual event takes a learning curve of only 10-15 seconds. However, in Second Life, there’s a substantial learning curve before a user can proficiently traverse the virtual world.

How many ‘attendees’ usually participate in a Unisfair event?

The percentages vary based on the type of event. According to Brent, about 1, 500 people attend a virtual event with a 60/40 split between US and international attendance. Of the attendance, 30 to 40% are management, VP and C-Level. In VIP executive events, executives usually make up 90% of the audience.

Going back to Unisfair’s early clients, how did the publishers evolve through Unisfair?

As Brent mentioned, the biggest change in media companies is seen in the number and types of events that these companies are organizing. B2B publishers like Penton Media or eBizQ are now able to organize 20-30 events that are more diverse than a standard tradeshow for a year. Media event types include roundtables, job fairs, expos, educational seminars and custom events. Innovative media companies are constantly coming up with new monetization strategies and year round sponsorship packages.

Looking forward, where does Unisfair see virtual events going and what will it look like down the road?

Virtual events will continue to go farther from where it is nowadays. As Brent pointed out, customer will continue to create, customize and manage virtual experiences. These virtual experiences will morph into the next generation collaborative platform in which you can conduct an event for 5,000 people or 5.