eventvue « Beyond Credits

29Jan/100

From the Archives: EventVue, Twitter, Kevin O’Keefe and #ACLEA

I don't have time to be writing this post right now. I should be packing up for my trip to the ACLEA (Association of Continuing Legal Education Administrators) Conference in Orlando tomorrow.

But yesterday I set our conference hashtag (#ACLEA) on the recently relaunched EventVue platform (if you're going to or interested in the conference, be sure to check it out). And this reminded me of how great Twitter can be at events, which reminded me of a post I wrote in 2008 claiming that Twitter really hits its stride at events and conferences. I can't find that post to save my life, but I did find this one, which happens to be even more relevant.

First, it's the first write-up I ever did of EventVue (a company just down the road from me in Boulder) and I highlighted its Chatter function, which is now the focus of the relaunch I just mentioned.

Second, I talked about Twitter for legal conferences and yearned for the day we might get to put it to use:

I love the new features. Focusing on legal conferences, my first thought was that this would be a ways off for me. But then this from Kevin O'Keefe. If lawyers, perhaps the latest of the late-adopting crowd, are already starting to look to twitter as a serious business tool, we might not be as far off as I thought.

Finally (and this is the kicker), I got a comment from Kevin O'Keefe on lawyers and Twitter. From Kevin:

Thanks for mentioning my take on Twitter Alli.
Though I think it’s going to take some time for a app like Twitter to make significant inroads in the legal field, I am seeing Twitter discussed more and more. Just this week at a Law Firm PR Conference in Chicago, Twitter came up on a number of occasions.

Why is all this relevant? Because Kevin will be the keynote speaker of a plenary topic on social media at the conference. And I'll be part of the follow-up panel discussing this very topic with him.

Twitter is almost nothing like it was in May 2008 when I wrote this post. Sure, the interface has changed only slightly, but its population has exploded, which has made it harder to manage and build relationships--at least for me. But its massive growth and popularity is also the reason we'll be talking about it this week and I can't complain about that.

To those heading to Orlando, I'll tweet (and see) you soon.

Tagged as: #ACLEA, eventvue, twitter No Comments

22May/084

Get a Jump Start on All that Networking with EventVue

A few years ago, I read Keith Ferrazzi's Never Eat Alone (NEA) and it forever changed my approach to conferences. Pre-NEA, I basically met whoever I sat by during the first session of the first day and my nights were spent reading the materials for the next day's sessions. I had just graduated from law school, so this seemed very normal. I learned a lot, but nothing that I could not have gotten by simply reading the materials at home and listening to a podcast.

NEA let me in on a secret that successful people already know: good face-to-face conferences aren't really about content.

Coming from a person who spends hours a day carefully crafting the content of conferences, that is a significant statement.

You do need good content to get people to a conference--especially a new conference--but you need good people to call the conference a success. If you have good people, conversation and connections will follow and, before you know it, your conference is memorable and meaningful.

My post-NEA conferences (as an attendee) have been an entirely different experience. I do all my research in advance, learning everything I can about the attendees and identifying the attendees I would really like to meet. This is a lot of work, but maybe it doesn't have to be.

EventVue, a service offering online social networking for events, has recently beefed up its offerings. The service already enabled conference-goers to create profiles, complete with pictures and tags to identify common interests.

Now, we get the Chatter function, which pulls in attendee-generated content from blogs, twitter, YouTube and more, and allows attendees to subscribe feeds to receive the updates.

As an attendee, you can get to know others in advance of the conference, have collaborative live-blogging/tweeting, and keep in touch when the conference is over.

As a conference provider, you get to steal a glimpse into the minds of your attendees to help you plan a better conference now and in the future.

I love the new features. Focusing on legal conferences, my first thought was that this would be a ways off for me. But then this from Kevin O'Keefe. If lawyers, perhaps the latest of the late-adopting crowd, are already starting to look to twitter as a serious business tool, we might not be as far off as I thought.