I spent 10 minutes chatting with Stowe Boyd about GroupSwim, Enterprise 2.0, and other fun stuff on the Enterprise 2.0 Blog. Let me know what you think.
Posts Tagged ‘Enterprise2.0’
Conference Sponsorship – Is It Worth It?
January 12, 2009It is my favorite time of the year – budget time. We are looking at all the wonderful ways we spend money communicating with prospects and customers. As a small company, we take every dime we spend very seriously. Last year, we attended 5 conferences. As we plan this year’s budget, we are asking the hard questions about whether conferences are really worth it or not.
We all know they types of conferences I’m talking about. They include SalesForce DreamForce, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, user conferences, Demo, etc. These conferences can be very costly. In addition to the steep fees they charge to sponsor them, the travel and prep costs are potentially significant. The amount of time we spend on collateral, prep, logistics, etc. is a big investment money aside. Once we get to the conference, we usually find the time is worth it. We end up demoing to a large group of people who appear genuinely interested. We usually end up with a handful of customers by the time we work through the sales process so there is ROI there.
However, when you add it all up, I’ve come to the conclusion the ROI may not be worth it. Could we have spend our time and money on more fruitful endeavors? Maybe. There are ancillary benefits to these conferences. We usually meet writers, analysts, etc. so we get exposure and PR, but it is usually hit or miss. The other big factor to consider now is the economy. I believe attendance at the conferences is going to fall sharply over the next few years. Companies are not going to spend the money to send people to them unless absolutely necessary. The CES conference dropped 30% this year for example.
Even if you do find the right conference and they manage to pull in a decent crowd, the main problem with sponsoring conferences like these is that the bulk of the attendees aren’t usually there to find new solutions to buy for their companies; they are there to learn, network and have fun (all of which I vigorously support). This is the key to deciding which conferences to attend, at least for us. It is all about push or pull marketing. If people are coming to a conference who are very likely there to buy, it is a good conference to attend. If we are going to be pulling them in versus pushing ourselves out, I love it. If we are just there among a crowd of other booths and companies to display our wares, then no thanks. This will be the main criteria we use to pick which conferences to invest in – are the attendees real buyers with real budgets? It sounds simple but I think you would be surprised how few companies really look at conferences this way. What do you think?
“Getting Things Done” in the Enterprise
September 10, 2008This is cross-posted with ReadWriteWeb where I will be occasionally writing on the Enterprise Channel.
I recently attended the Office 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. The highlight for me was the first session where Ismael Ghalimi interviewed David Allen, the author of “Getting Things Done.” The book and associated methodology highlight the need to capture and organize ideas and tasks in a structured way. The interesting question for me is how to make it work on an Enterprise or company level.
One theory of Getting Things Done (GTD) is that it is impossible to “really” concentrate on more than one thing at a time. Therefore, a system like GTD helps juggle the competing tasks to organize and prioritize them. As you can imagine, the bulk of the conversation centered on Office 2.0 type tools that can help facilitate this process. David is an avid user of Jott for example. He uses it to capture his thoughts while driving so he doesn’t force his brain to keep a running list. What struck me after listening to him in the keynote and subsequent panel is that the tools are actually the least important part of successfully getting things done. Practitioners of GTD in the Enteprise world probably use an infinite number of tool combinations including Outlook Tasks, Jott, iPhones, Text notes, Lotus Notes, etc.; you get the idea. What is fundamentally more important is the discipline and commitment to do it.
We all have different levels of both and our respective individual success will vary. What I find interesting is to figure out how to make a group practice GTD consistently. There is no silver bullet but the following factors need to be addressed:
- Management commitment - There is no way that an entire group will practice GTD if the management team is not fully committed and emphasizes it every day. Managers (and team members) need to conduct meetings with GTD principles and plan work in the same way
- Training - GTD is a clever methodology that leverages alot of common sense. However, if a group is going to adopt it and use it in the course of business, they need training. For no other reason, the need to speak the same language with each other is critical. For example, if I tell you I’m going to put that task in my One Week Action List, you better know what I mean
- Incentives – People must have incentives to adopt this system in a consistent and lasting way. GTD could be baked into employee’s MBOs, team goals, public recognition opportunities, whatever. There has to be incentives and measurement for true adoption
- Tools - As I mentioned earlier, the actual tools can vary widly. In the panel discussion I attended, there were several vendors (Enleiten, Mindjet, bllist) who utilize GTD concepts in their products and/or methodologies. There is even a GTD plug-in for FireFox. Whatever tool a company decides to use, they must use it consistently and ensure it fits into how people work. Otherwise, I guarantee it will fail
Does your company practice GTD? How does it work?
Enterprise 2.0 – Day 2
June 13, 2008Well, the conference is over and it was quite an experience. Tom McCleary and I met tons of people and had lots of fun. See Tom working his magic.
The mix of people who attended was impressive. There were vendors, CIOs and other executives, analysts, and bloggers. What became obvious was the focus was on larger Enterprises. The attendees and vendors were mostly interested in large Enterprises like Lockheed, Sony, etc.; the SMB market was not well represented.
Instead of a rambling set of observations like Day 1, I’m focusing on 2 sections for this post.
1. Interesting tidbits from customers
The conference featured a Q&A with several large customers (FedEx, Sony, the CIA, Wachovia, Pfizer) and what they learned implementing Enterprise 2.0. Here are the sound bites that caught my attention:
- Openness is required. The minute you stifle employees and what they can say in blogs or whatever, you will fail
- The challenge for getting going is the opposite of what you think. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t build it and employees will come. You need to enlist people and encourage them to get things rolling. It will eventually take on a life of its own, but it takes nurturing first. You need champions (We see this in our customer base as well)
- Brand your tools to help drive adoption. I think it was Pfizer that branded their social network the Pool. While it is a shame they had to steal the name of our customer community, we’ll give them a pass
- Just do it. Don’t over think it or you will never get started
- Go big and audacious. Of course, another customer then said start small and use stepping stones so you decide based on the particular culture and personality of your business
- The hardest thing for most companies is to give up control; this is scary. However, you need to trust your people at some point or it isn’t going to work
- Do not add extra stuff to people’s plates. In order to make this technology catch on, you need to change or eliminate something they hate
- Don’t use artificial incentives. Schwag (boy it keeps coming up) and badges work well, but don’t rely on money to incent participation (I’m not sure I totally agree with this one for managers. I think you should link a portion of performance bonuses for managers to encourage them and their employees to participate. I blogged about if you can force collaboration here)
- Look for email volleyball. This is a great indication of an area that can benefit from Enterprise 2.0 tools and techniques
2. LaunchPad update
To make a long story short, we didn’t win. A company called Veodia took the prize. They streamed live video from a camcorder directly onto the screen. I give them credit; they took a chance on internet connectivity, the demo gremlins who always seem to surface during these things, and hung it all out there. As one of my former clients used to say, the had serious “wow” going. Our approach was to describe what we did, show a scenario, and describe the benefits.
I learned a couple of things from this experience.
- Sex it up. While our powerpoint was clear and accurate, it obviously didn’t have the wow. It may have been my delivery but you can decide
- Video is a great way to create the “wow”. We are learning this on our website and even in the app, but the same goes for presentations
- You can use Twitter to cheat. I’m not saying it actually happened, but it appears that people in the audience were using Twitter to broadcast voting instructions. I use a service called Summize to look for mentions of GroupSwim, and I picked up some interested Tweets during the LaunchPad session. As an aside, I have to give Twitter a tiny bit of credit here as the may be the first time I’ve actually seen people use Twitter to accomplish something useful
Enterprise 2.0 – Day One
June 10, 2008Well, Day 1 of the conference is in the books. We had a great time today. Here are some observations:
- Standing all day demoing GroupSwim is tough on the dogs; bring comfy shoes if you have them
- When people offer to give you their business cards, it is very strong signal. They can always just claim they don’t have them or simply shake hands and walk away. A very high percentage of people that visited with us offered them up
- I love the casual, no eye contact roll-by from competitors. It is no big deal to check each other’s booth out. Why even try to do it in stealth mode? We even let someone take a picture of the application. The way we figure it, they can always create a site or check out one of our demo environments so what the hell
- Use cabs to get around versus public transportation. Preserve the feet because the dogs will be barking later
- If you are doing a session on the main stage, use slides. I saw companies in the LaunchPad prep meeting get all bent out of shape because the computer they are using doesn’t have the right version of flash, etc. I would take all the risk out of the equation if I were them. Let’s not even talk about relying on a fast internet connection that inevitably goes down during your demo
- Ship stuff to the conference, not to your hotel if you aren’t staying there
- It is very easy to tell who is interested in your demo/solution. The eyes, body language and note taking say it all
- I’m happy to say the GroupSwim message is resonating with people who come to the booth. We see lots of head nodding and interest
- We already ran out of collateral to hand out. We are making an early morning run to Kinkos (soon to be named Fedex permanently) to replenish
- Too much schwag seems desperate. I look at some of the booths of companies that have tons of schwag. They are giving out iPods, stuffed animals, etc. If you ask me, if you need gimmicks to draw people over, you are in trouble. If this is the case, they are not inherently interested in your message and are not likely to buy anyway so you just wasted valuable time AND schwag
- Napping in the lobby between demo sessions is awesome; I recommend it
- Don’t use long titles when you register for these things as they will be cut off on your badge. For the next 2 days, I’m VP of Cust
- Bring an air card so you can have 2 demos at the booth. It is much cheaper than paying the hotel for multiple internet drops
That’s it for now. We’ll talk to you tomorrow.
Jason and Tom
Preparing for Enterprise 2.0
June 5, 2008Well, our first conference this year is around the corner. If you have never presented or hosted a booth at one of these things, I highly recommend you keep it that way. Just kidding. There is a pile of work to get ready for these things. Here are just a couple of things to keep in mind:
- Remember to bring lots of business cards and collateral. You give them out like candy
- Bring schwag to give out at your booth. We are still in entrepreneurial mode, so we are skipping this piece. However, if you belong to a company with a sizable marketing budget, schwag really works to drive traffic
- Call or email everyone. It is important to line-up as many meetings as you can. It is a great opportunity to meet lots of people who can be important to your business, but it takes a great deal of effort to schedule
- Bank some sleep. You don’t tend to get much because there are usually meetings, receptions, etc. that tend to cut into sleep. You also need to catch-up at night on everything you missed during the day while at the conference
- Buy a nice monitor and have it shipped to the conference instead of renting one. We are doing this and bringing it home. It’s cheaper believe it or not
- Do your presentation ahead of time. These things tend to slip to the last minute, which I wouldn’t advise. As an aside, we haven’t started ours yet
That’s it for now. Lots to do. Let us know if we missed anything and we hope to see some of you in Boston!
GroupSwim Makes Final 4 for the Enterprise 2.0 Conference Contest
May 28, 2008We are very pleased to announce that GroupSwim is in the Final 4 of the LaunchPad Contest at Enterprise 2.0. The competition has been going for several weeks. The first round included 16 companies. Each one published a 1 minute video and visitors voted on their favorites. The second round finished on Monday and 8 companies vied for the final 4 spots. We did a 2 minute video for this round, which you can watch here. This contest is important because we will be demonstrating GroupSwim and its benefits to the entire conference. The attendees include press, bloggers, potential prospects and partners so we are very excited. Please swing by our booth if you are going and say hi.
GroupSwim makes it to Round 2 of Enterprise 2.0 LaunchPad Contest
May 14, 2008We are happy to report we’ve made it to the second round of the LaunchPad contest for the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in June. This is an “American Idol” type contest where start-ups compete for the opportunity to present to the entire conference, and earn a free demo booth the following year. It is based on voting on videos that the companies submit. Thanks to everyone who voted for us.
