After much anticipation within the conference world, the ‘Conference for Conference Professionals‘ finally took place last Friday 1st April 2011.

I was really looking forward to catching up with old colleagues and clients and to be honest other than that I had no real expectations of the event and went with a very open mind. The conference industry has always been surrounded with a lot of secrecy and I thought this conference wouldn’t necessarily change the fact.

The organisers definitely made a bold move in putting this event together – like they said themselves, it’s like putting on a “huge banquet for the world’s top chefs”.

My overall view – they’ve done well with the event and here is why.

The conference was well attended. There were somewhere in the region of 200 delegates at the event and the majority of them senior level from conference companies, publishers and associations.

We were welcomed with voting pads in our chairs and instructions on how we could cast votes and ask questions to the panel via the “ConfConf iphone app”. Unfortunately there were a number of technical glitches in the beginning and it would have been much simpler to just raise our hands!

I was pleasantly surprised to hear the likes of Incisive media, Terrapin, Informa, LexisNexis and UBM being fairly “open” about their high level stance. I would agree with many in saying that what was shared wasn’t particularly revolutionary, but it certainly gave us some clear benchmarks and an understanding of where we are right now compared to some of the big players.

• Concepts like the 400% ROI on traditional marketing methods are almost dead
• Email is no longer a tool to generate bookings (or measured by ROI) but more a tool to generate leads and engage with their audiences through content
• Organisations are now investing in creating and building content
• The balance has shifted heavily towards telesales bringing the majority of the delegate revenue
• Gone are the days of tens of thousands of direct marketing pieces. It still plays an important role but are much more personalised
• Most companies are including webinars in their marketing mix and in some cases organising virtual fairs and exhibitions

What did I gain from attending the event?

A very positive outlook for the times ahead for small and medium sized organisations – great news for us as most of our client are within this space. There are plenty of opportunities for innovation within the conference industry and those organisations that are concentrating in one specific industry or niche area have a lot to gain, as change can be instilled much quicker. It means your teams can truly specialise, become experts and leaders in their field and deliver real excellence. This will give the smaller companies an edge over the big players.

In fact, in some cases the bigger companies have a long way to go, for example in social media where most still seem quite mystified by it all…in my opinion the small companies have the biggest opportunity here! So exciting times for the ‘perceived underdogs’.

In the final session and for me probably the best one, it was great to hear the panel singing from the same hymn sheet as me! Virtual events represent the biggest opportunity and if you’re not doing it, then you should! There are a lot of different formats and ways to engage, connect and profit from your respective markets – live streaming, webinars, online exhibitions.

BrightBull have driven webinar marketing strategies for a number of a clients, so we’ve seen the success this channel can definitely bring. Event companies simply need to embrace the technologies out there and if done right you can certainly gain a competitive advantage.

The verdict

A good first event. It was great to see a room of people from the same industry, probably facing similar challenges and strangely there was some comfort in that.

Overall, I wasn’t disappointed. I think the format of the event should probably be reviewed – there were far too many panel style discussions for my liking and topic areas could have been more dynamic, considering the event strapline was ‘challenging traditional formats’. Of course, like with every event, there is always room for improvement and I am sure the organisers will take feedback on board for next year – I ensured I completed my evaluation form as a fellow marketer!

Would I attend next year? Yes, I probably would, to catch up with industry folk and listen to some healthy debate. I wouldn’t bank on any insider secrets being shared that’s for sure!

If you missed the event, you can view some sessions here.

Now on to The Conference Awards on 17 June, which will see many from the industry gather again for a summer knees up!

If you want to have a chat about how BrightBull can help to invigorate your event strategy and leverage the new technologies available for your organisation, don’t hesitate to give us a call or drop us a line.