With great love comes great responsibility

The day began in a pleasant way with a phone call from the CEO of a company that is going to exhibit in an upcoming virtual trade show. When a veteran marketer who spent several years in Corporate America and then started what is now a hugely successful marketing strategy and promotions firm comes out on her own and tells us how meaningful our product is, it makes our day. Without giving away details of the discussion, I am compelled to share her sentiments as she began describing our offering.

She said as she was watching it work, it "brought a smile to my face". She even labeled our product, among other things, "amazing", "easy" and "friendly". I believe she grasped the essence of our offerings, when she said that it helps one "segment" information.

The reason virtual trade shows will survive and thrive is because they bring a standardized experience for users. Plain and simple. All other arguments are weak -- whether we hear supposed value propositions such as no travel, no high gas prices no sore feet, better lead gathering, or the latest - low carbon footprint - none of them carry enough weight because humans are social beings and no number of virtual technologies will prevent them from wanting to meet other humans. However, because the Internet has become such a dominant source of business intelligence, a simple and engaging way to "segment" the information, and standardize the experience will go long way in making people smile.

When prospects and customers love a company or its products, the bar is suddenly raised. It is like being a teacher's favorite student. Now the student has a higher expectation to meet. The student will do everything in his or her power to not end up disappointing the teacher.

With such great love, comes great responsibility.

That literally keeps our team up at night. We want to make sure that we do everything in our power to keep surpassing our prospects' and customers' expectations. When we receive praises, the concern is that it may lull us into becoming complacent. The last thing we want to do when we hear positive comments is to relax and sit on our (might I call it) laurels. That is exactly the time to buckle up and work harder. The one thing that we have been blessed with is a passionate team.

Making life purposeful, making a living in a purposeful manner

This Monday, a dear friend and second cousin lost his father in India. For first-generation immigrants, decision-times regarding ageing parents prove to be very defining moments. The shift in roles that one assumes, of children being able to personally attend to and care for their ageing parents, can not be taken for granted by first-generation immigrants. Flying 8,000 miles for a family emergency is not always possible. The travel time itself could run into 24 or 36 gruelling hours. My friend happened to be there on a 3-week visit, and was able to be by his father's side, care for him through his hospitalization, and be by his bedside as he breathed his last. For a father, I suppose there must have been a sense of calm and peace to see all his children settled, and present in person. Any such experience of seeing someone breathe their last puts things back in perspective for those of us who are left behind. One tends to cherish life, good health, the laughter of loved ones, the change of seasons.

Until the phone rings, and then it is back to the business of chasing deadlines. When we keep busy, life and time pass by quickly. If we keep busy with a sense of purpose, it is more fulfilling. If that purpose touches many lives - or even one life - in a positive manner, then the reward at the very least, simply is the ability and the luxury to live that kind of a purposeful life.

I am hoping that through our work at iTradeFair.com, we are able to create prosperity for businesses by helping them make the right connections with buyers, or employers or any faraway customers or prospects. Or simply, that we are able to make someone smile (like the CEO of a marketing strategy firm who called me this morning to share her 'aha' moment when she saw our work. That story warrants a separate post.)

So here's to a purposeful existence. Here's to a purposeful way of life and purposeful way of making a living.

This is for my friend and his family - Heartfelt condolences! May your father's soul rest in everlasting peace.

The perfect virtual booth

Since the time we were born in early 1999, we have been in search of the perfect design for a virtual booth. There are two sides to this coin.

From the exhibitor's perspective, the booth should be flexible enough to accomodate their branding needs. Virtual booth designs are such a subjective matter that no answer is right and there are also no wrong answers. When we ask event organizers what they would like their virtual booth to be, the responses are replete with descriptions such as "photo-realistic", "business-like", "flexible in size", and "futuristic". We have had requests for booth designs that reflect various sizes of booths so that more or less of the screen space (real-estate) can be offered depending on the pricing packages.

The challenge always has been to tolerate the constraints experienced when taking a real-world space and squeezing it into a 1024 x 786 flat screen, without losing the flexibility and ease of navigation.

Case in point - the AMD virtual trade show which is a fascinating high-end visual rendering of a life-like convention center. From what I recall, it had a North view, a South view, an East view, and so on. Impressive for the student of multimedia digital art. Limited, however, in its utility. From AMD and its partners' perspective, it was perhaps a new kind of advertising opportunity. The online visits and downloads over a period of time were also impressive. I would safely bet that they could have accomplished the same thing with (a) a streamed video of the presentations, or a video of a real-life conference along with (b) a receptable to collect visitor information by making them fill out a form, and (c) a mechanism to gather or download brochures.

Let us look at it from the visitor's perspective. The visitors have limited time to browse the web for marketing literature or to watch a serious business presentation for an extended period of time. It is more fun to watch a viral video on YouTube. They are looking for information that they would otherwise not find on a corporate website. They are looking to make connections with key decision-makers. They are looking to be able to bump into professional peers and potential employers. They don't have time to guess what each icon on a booth means. Their network administrators usually throw a fit if they are asked to download any proprietary software for visiting at a virtual trade show booth. Visitors want to be able to switch from booth to booth and gather information swiftly - a standardized experience for efficient research and live interaction with decision makers is all that they care about. They do not want to get on spam lists, nor do they want to have to fill out lengthy forms. They want that giveaway. They want to be able to sign up for the lucky draw and win that free trip for 2 to Hawaii. They want to be entertained.

The perfect virtual booth strikes a perfect balance between the branding needs of the exhibitors and the utilitarian goals of the attendee. The perfect virtual booth strikes a perfect balance between the needs of an exhibitor to customize the booth and the needs of an attendee to enjoy a consistent, standardized and entertaining experience, with as short a learning curve as possible.

We have accomplished the near-perfect virtual exhibit hall to some extent. The perfect virtual booth has been elusive, but not for long. So stay tuned.

Mini-innovations

I chanced upon an interesting piece on mini-innovations. The reason this approach appeals to me is because of its simplicity. It does not need a massive dose of investment. It does not need re-training internally and externally. It just needs a lot of listening and some quiet time.

While on the topic of small changes that make a big positive impact, we are ramping up for a major virtual trade show now, and I just got off web conference that was basically a live version of a tutorial on how to register and set up a virtual booth. I like such sessions because they help us step in the shoes of the uninitiated. We see and do virtual events day in and day out, and we tend to get a false sense of security that we have perfected it. We assume that registration forms are simple to complete and intuitive.

It is only when we look at things from a fresher's perspective do we see how much difference a simple tweak in the navigation can make, how much more intuitive things can be with just changing a few words or dropping a few words, or moving things around a bit. It's like the joy of learning to tune a guitar.

Seven other (controllable) factors that impede the runaway success of virtual trade shows - Part 2 of my analysis

In a continuation of my analysis of why virtual trade shows have failed to realize their immense potential, here are seven controllable factors. On why I truly believe in the tremendous untapped potential of virtual events, I will save for another discussion. For now, I just want to address all the issues that are kind of stifling the promise of virtual trade shows.

1. The process of launching a virtual trade show often gets disjointed. Virtual trade shows can certainly be delivered in a very turnkey fashion, with every step of the process flowing through seamlessly, with no strain or extra effort by the event sponsors. We have a process that moves like an automobile assembly line. The challenge is when that process is interrupted to accomodate the specific needs of event organizers or sponsors. Every organizer or brand worth its salt will choose to assume ownership of at least some parts of the experience. Take the simple example of contacting potential exhibitors. Organizers often like to have that extra touch-point with their customers and sponsors. I don't blame them. If you have spent years building a customer base, you need to be very sure before you allow a third-party vendor's call center to start dialing your customer list on your behalf. There are ways around it, which I will save for a later post.
2. "Are you adding to my list of things-to-do?" is the first thought that crosses the minds of the operational team at the client's side. This is one of the biggest hurdles for virtual trade shows to go mainstream. The more automated the entire process becomes, the lesser the hassles.
3. Divided attention. When run simultaneously with an in-person trade show, the virtual trade show initiative does not get sufficient care and feed. "Do I focus on my in-person trade show, or should I bother about this new untested thing that my management wants to put on my already full plate". Unless an event organizer is committed to its success, a virtual trade show will not really get off the ground. Without such a commitment, it is natural for a team to play it safe and focus on what has worked well before, rather than divide one's attention and have niether do well.
4. Stuck at the initial wow. Social networks display a dynamic list of recent activities by members. It gives us a sense of how busy the network really is. When we do virtual trade shows, participants often ask us, "So what really goes on? Do I constantly see things happening on my screen? Do we get to see people approaching us? Do I get to 'fly like Superman' into a convention center and watch the speaker, raise my virtual hand, and ask a question? Almost, and subject to ideal conditions. What can be shown on a demo or a nicely edited promotional animated clip can be dramatically different from the actual experience at a virtual trade show. Which is why some kind of self-regulating mechanism is required among virtual trade show creators to not over-promise in a demo. The real experience is rarely like a video game virtual reality, and even if it could be, there are several variables beyond anybody's control right from the point a trade show is served via the Internet to the point where it is received and experienced, that the nascent industry is putting its virtual foot in its virtual mouth by overpromising in demos and under-delivering online.
5. Absence of simplicity. The virtual events industry, if one may call it so, has failed consistently to simplify its messaging. I am myself guilty of needlessly spewing out jargon. In essense a virtual trade show is just a gathering of people and businesses that would be happy to get in touch with one another at the same time via the Internet, no matter where they are located. How this experience is best manifested does not matter. Its outcome could be several online connections made between real people, an in-person encounter or it could even be a flash mob. For a virtual trade show or a virtual event to become mainstream, it has to make its message simple and crisp. Business professionals that I talk to believe that it is a really 'cool' thing to have along with all other marketing initatives. It is only a matter of time before event organizers will heed these rumblings and catch the wave as it hits their industry.
6. Absence of follow-through. In a real-world trade show, once the crates are shipped and people leave the convention center, nobody documents or traces the results of connections made on the show floor. Strangely, virtual trade shows are held so far apart from one another that virtual trade show organizers have not gone the extra mile to help users build some loyalty to their brand and make them want to come back and talk about how fruitful the connections really were. Even though it is easier to accomplish such follow-through in a virtual trade show as compared to the conventional kind.
7. Not keeping it real. A virtual trade show is still a relatively unknown concept. Participants do not often know one another (that is the whole point of coming together). In such a situation, it is up to the virtual trade show producer to keep a constant line of communication with all parties concerned, so that there is a realization that real humans are running it, and that there is a team that cares about the outcome. When we expect users to spare time and money to be at a virtual trade show, the least we can do is be instantly accessible to answer any questions. Keeping it real is important to keep it virtual.

More to come in my next post.

A dozen reasons why virtual tradeshows fail to realize their potential

Hope you had a great holiday weekend! Quote from an almost-4-year-old, "I really like these holiday days, because they make me very happy!"

This will probably be a multi-part post because I want to spend some time analyzing why virtual trade shows, despite being such a powerful and compelling method of marketing, have failed to realize their true potential.

We do several virtual trade shows in closely monitored corporate environments, very successful, and very loved by participants, held entirely online - with no in-person counterpart. The definition of success of these virtual fairs however, is different from what the convention industry would consider to be the definition of a successful trade show. What I foresee happening is for every marketing department to be weaving in virtual trade shows as part of its marketing mix. This post may seem like introspection or a set of lessons learned. As is usually the case with any exercise in introspection, some good will come out of it. By understanding and confronting the reasons for the failure of virtual trade shows to realize their true potential - of being able to connect millions of businesses worldwide - I hope to facilitate some thinking about the right climate for virtual fairs to flourish.

It is just a matter of time before virtual fairs become as popular as social networks. Social networks are limited to people who know each other through a certain degree of separation. Virtual trade shows, on the other hand, make chance encounters possible. Therein lies their power and potential.

1. Virtual tradeshows might connect businesses, but they fail to connect emotionally with business professionals. It is more interesting to hear of a real-life romance that grew out of an online dating site than to hear of a successful business deal through a lead found at a virtual trade show. Ever heard of two businesses falling in love with one another at an online matchmaker, and wanting to do business together? Even if we hear of them, there are perhaps very few scenarios in which they could become human-interest stories.
2. Virtual tradeshow participants do not like to share their success stories. When we piloted a trade show for the promotional products industry way back in October 1999, I did some follow-up calls to find out if any real inquiries and orders were generated. An exhibitor actually had someone place an order directly after visiting his virtual booth. Here's the problem. For competitive reasons, he did not want me to publicize it. About a month ago I heard that a virtual exhibitor was talking about 2 contracts she won after online visits at her virtual booth from buyers of a large Fortune 100 corporation. Again, due to competitive reasons, she has avoided media attention. I heard that it took 15 years for sliced bread to become wildly popular. I believe virtual trade shows will have greater success once it is not such a well-kept secret.
3. Virtual trade shows are too transparent. Every click of the mouse can be tracked in a virtual trade show. Trade show organizers are more easily held accountable for the return on tradeshow that they deliver to exhibitors. The return on investment in a virtual trade show is easy to identify and analyze in absolute terms. In a real-world trade show, there are several subjective aspects that factor into a participants' perception of whether they consider a trade show a success or not.
4. Virtual trade show is an underdog with no cheerleaders. Without exception, whenever I have mentioned virtual trade shows to marketers and exhibitors they have always expressed tremendous enthusiasm for its value. However, when perceived as a replacement to in-person trade shows it has evoked strong mixed reactions. Often a trade show gig is an escape from the cubicle. It is the time when one can combine a trip to exotic locales along with the family and have a mini-vacation. Virtual trade shows are not merely fighting misconceptions about what they can do for a business, but they actually compete with a marketing executive's leisure time. Virtual trade shows shoot themselves in the foot when they try to position themselves as helping a business executive spend time with her or his family. Asking someone to give up in-person trade shows and do only virtual trade shows is like asking a connoisseur of chocolates to give up chocolate. Highly unlikely.
5. "There is no such thing as a virtual trade show": This, quite literally was the welcoming remark of a veteran trade show industry executive whom I had gone to meet during our early years in business, as I was being ushered into his office. As he described the magic of bringing to life an in-person tradeshow, the magic of 'getting it right', the magic of bringing the right attendees in front of the right exhibitors year after year, the magic of seeing an empty convention center come alive over a 3-day period, the thrill of creating value and entertainment, I could see in his eyes the pride and joy of creation. He said it feels like a Hollywood movie maker. Virtual trade shows may very likely have to wait until they have learned to scale up in alternate untapped markets before they can earn the respect and the attention of veterans in the trade show and media industry. For now, it is like telling Formula One drivers that their races will be held in the video game arcade. In their present state, virtual trade shows can provide neither a comparable adrenalin-rush, nor the incremental financial incentive to get established trade show organizers excited about them.
6. The tradeshow metaphor is being carried too far. When we began in the late 90's it made sense to borrow the trade show metaphor for these online events. Making a virtual booth look and feel like a real-world trade show booth helped users scale the learning curve rather well. However, the demographics of the workforce has changed significantly in the past decade. The new entrants to the workforce view the web as an extension of their universe. There is no need for a real-world metaphor to explain what one is trying to do with a virtual trade show. Why then should a virtual booth look like a real-world trade show booth. Why should one have virtual trade shows that have a panoramic 2-dimensional view of an exhibition hall with meaningless human-like figures gliding by aimlessly? Why are virtual trade shows not defining themselves to really provide an extra dimension to the entire marketing experience of a business. Why provide a metaphor when the virtual trade show can never replace the in-person trade show and is not designed to replace it?
7. Absence of standards on what an ideal virtual trade show should do is a major obstacle. We get inquiries for different kinds of online environments. It is not possible to describe them accurately with the term virtual trade shows. They serve various purposes. They always have a business objective. They aim to solve one or more problems. They often have nothing to do with in-person trade shows. However, the absence of standards for virtual trade shows means that it is open to anybody's interpretation. When one looks at publicly accessible virtual trade shows, whether they be of HGTV or of the EPA, one never knows what to expect. The concept of same-time, different-place interaction as my co-founder aptly puts it, is missing most of the time. Making users go through meaningless convoluted pages of navigation only go to reveal that the virtual trade show suffered from lack of a clear direction, purpose or sense of ownership.
8. Use of traditional media to pull audiences into a virtual trade show is known to fail. We have learned this from experience. If you send me a post card in the mail reminding me of a virtual trade show, or if you put an expensive ad in the nation's leading journal about a virtual career fair, I still can't click through to enter.
9. Exhibitors and sponsors fail to take ownership of the virtual trade show experience being offered. Unfortunately, some of the virtual trade shows that I have experienced include cases where a media company goes through hoops to advertise the virtual trade show, pummels me with emails to stay on my radar screen, only to have no real human being available online during the live event, or have someone clueless and/or indifferent, who simply takes down an email address and phone number to pass on to the right person. Virtual trade shows fail when sponsors and exhibitors do not have sufficient skin in the game.
10. The feeling that anything online ought to be free. There are two problems with giving access to a virtual trade show for free even when a sponsor is supporting it fully. One is that without sufficient skin in the game, the groups that are supposed to show up online to make the virtual trade show a success, will more than likely not show up. Secondly, when a virtual trade show is delivered for free, it can not be adequately supported. An improperly supported virtual trade show in turn is a disservice to the users and to the concept itself. Just like in-person trade shows, a virtual trade show distinguishes itself by the quality of the traffic and interaction it can produce.
11. I danced even though I had sore feet. Trade shows usually are a lot of fun. Often they include a band and a dance floor. Virtual trade show producers then have a very poorly woven argument under which to take cover if they try to tell trade show participants that you can spare yourselves some sore feet at our virtual trade show. Sometimes, the 'no sore feet' argument sells, but it is not a sufficiently strong one to result in a sweeping acceptance of virtual trade shows.
12. Neither the green movement nor soaring gas prices can help virtual fairs become mainstream. While getting on the green movement is great, I hesitate to anchor the value proposition for our virtual trade shows on that argument. It is the same about spiralling gas prices. The virtual fairs have been compelling in their value even when gas was selling at $0.95 a gallon. It should be no different even if gas hits $8 a gallon. Virtual fairs have been compelling in their value well before see-through screeners at airports force us to spend an extra 10 minutes at the gym. No free-gas coupons here. Riding the latest news headlines have never helped virtual trade shows.

In my next post, I will analyze some more aspects of virtual trade shows. Have a great week ahead!

Are we becoming (global) villagers?

[ This post is a slightly modified version of the original note that I posted upon joining American Business Media's social network, seeing how quickly it was being embraced by the leadership at some very traditional media companies. ]

I used to always be amazed at the concept of personal space in the tangible world. In a crowded subway one would not mind someone breathing down one's collar. We learn to tune out the noise of a crowd and be able to drown ourselves in a book or in personal music. In the suburbs however, a friendly neighbor can border on the nosy depending on the proximity and frequency of interaction.

I therefore ponder over the the concept of personal space on the web and what is considered an acceptable boundary of personal information. When individuals are open to having strangers online 'follow' them on twitter, I begin to wonder where one draws a line on dimming the lights on one's professional time and taking a break for some quiet time to be spent with one's family, with one's near and dear ones, and with oneself. Quiet time is essential for recharging the brain. It is essential for creative work. When everyone we know gets on LinkedIn or Facebook or other social media that can comb an addressbook and send an invitation to a whole group, it is hard to choose to be left behind, and it is hard not to rethink the concepts of personal space and privacy.

I have heard that keeping a journal, whether on a blog or in a book is considered therapeutic and beneficial to the writer's well-being. Perhaps social (and now business-social media) is helping the world become more accepting of friendly neighbors when they lower their guard collectively to share more and more personal information. Perhaps, as a society we are gently being steered into a place where we are not so hung up on privacy and learn to share thoughts and things to make the world a better place.

Some years ago, I took my parents on a visit to a village in southern India where my father had spent a part of his childhood. We stopped our car to ask for directions. A villager on a bicycle offered to help. I did something one would never do in a city. I swapped seats with him. I followed the car on his bicycle, and he sat in the car giving directions to the driver. Not only did he know the elderly aunt and cousins we were visiting in the village, but also shared a whole lot of details about every house in the village that would never have crossed our city-bred minds because it was none of our business. However, that is the essence of village life. Your life is everybody's business. They are always there to help the family in need. They clobber the store-owner who scalps a customer who often happens to be a neighbor or a friend of a neighbor. There are no pretences, no false images one can sustain, and the concept of privacy is very different from what we see in big cities.

Online social media, in my opinion is pushing us to make the world a smaller place, a cozier place, making it more like a village. Perhaps we are beginning to see a widespread manifestation of the term 'global village' only now. We are indeed becoming 'global villagers'.

Helping the Help Lines

A support line for a live online event is an interesting animal. An event is live for short spells of time, and a related support issue is not only live but also ticking. A 'live online event' simply means that a large number of people show up online by logging into the system simultaneously through the event website and use a variety of instant interaction and instant information tools for a short duration. Live events often end in 24 or 36 hours. Customer support delivered a little late could be too late. We are only as good as the last support request that we have resolved - how we resolved it, and how quickly we resolved it.

Our users come to us with a sense of urgency, because time lost on a live event could be opportunity lost for making the right connections with online visitors and exhibitors. Further, since the virtual events that we create happen over the Internet, we have to rely on a set of online tools to sense a problem, or be notified of a problem, and a swift and efficient mechanism to acknowledge requests, to escalate issues as needed, respond, resolve and also take measures to prevent other users facing a similar issue in the remaining hours of the live event.

A typical online support process in my experience starts with an emailed auto-response, and then an email follow-up in a couple of days. If we take that as the norm of online support, it does not help in the area of live online events. During live events, we sometimes even have to turn off auto-responders on support channels because they could cause needless aggravation to users who are already pressed for time. When the clock on an event is ticking, the last thing that an end-user needs is an impersonal auto-response. The best response in such cases is one that carries a resolution with it, a quick explanation and an apology (not necessarily in that order). The responses are delivered either through a quick phone call, an email or a broadcast message if it affects all users. It is important for the online attendees to know that real humans are monitoring the live online event. For high-traffic online events we have also very successfully staffed a dedicated text-chat room for live support and addressed users in private or collectively.

We learned the hard way that it is most efficient to steer all support requests to text-based channels so that little or nothing would be lost in transmission or translation. Users love the flexibility that they have in being able to screen-capture errors and send it to our support lines, or copy and paste anything they see that they do not understand, and our support system can act on them and respond to them with precision. An IVR (integrated voice response) system that places live online help-seekers in a queue is a bad idea when the count-down has begun for the launch of an online event, or when the clock on a live online event is ticking away.

These dynamic factors amid a ticking clock are what make the world of online events so different. I admire the nerves of our technical team, because they have consistently delivered with only one thought to guide them - how to make the online event participant's life easy. I almost see their work to be in the realm of air traffic controllers. The only difference between an air traffic controller's work and our technical crew's work I suppose is that instead of real lives being involved, there are real livelihoods involved - real marketing folks take part in our online events. They are very stressful. [ A shout-out to our technical and support team would be most appropriate here! ] However, the real help to the help-line begins at the design stage. While it is inconceivable to visualize every potential problem, impossible to predict every instance of users getting confused with the user-interface even though we could have vouched that the event is made to be highly intuitive, the more time spent in thinking and planning the user-experience and navigation before-hand, the lesser the strain on the support lines.

As we ramp up to the live online event, and even in the heat of a live online event, we have to stay nimble about our approaches to a resolution, sometimes being willing to modify user-interfaces to contain the spread of a support problem even as the first complaints are being invetigated. Every problem anticipated and avoided amounts to precious time saved for an end-user. Every potential issue nipped in the bud means a friend made in the online visitor. It is about making life easier for the customers. Consequently, it also makes life easier for the support line.

The first infographic that we got designed for explaining our company's offering depicts our role in a control tower. When it was designed in 1999, little did I know that the metaphor is true and timeless. Check it out below.

The pursuit of pain

We began our startup inspired by first-hand experience of the pain felt in international business when an export company in Mumbai (then Bombay) tried to market its products to overseas buyers. The quest, ever since, has been to find the best way to find and help others who have been feeling the pain of reaching faraway markets in an affordable manner.

Among the first things that an advisor to our startup told me was to find the pain that an end-user is feeling and then address that pain. Or like someone I know said, you are better off being a pain-killer, than a vitamin.

Ever since, we have been in pursuit of the pain felt and mentioned by our customers and prospective customers. I suppose, we also chance upon new markets based on accidental discoveries by markets feeling the pain and finding out that our product can indeed alleviate their pain.

Often, the ones feeling the pain may not necessarily have the influence or the voice to demand our offerings even if they are aware of its benefits. Perhaps the 'drugstore' or the distribution channel is unwilling to carry our offering because they don't see a justifiable margin to carry it in their inventory. The problem is similar to the one that Dr. Victoria Hale of OneWorld Health is trying to address. There are diseases in the world that giant pharma companies will not address because the markets for them are so specific and scattered that it is does not make economic sense to their shareholders. Incidentally I have had the privilege of being introduced to Dr. Hale during her startup days, so it is a great success story to reference here as an analogy to our startup. OneWorld Health now has the backing of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

I believe that our quest is to find the pain being endured by exhibitors and attendees no matter what kind of business fairs or consumers fairs they prefer. Our quest is to find the best way to reach fellow sufferers. We are in pursuit of that pain. Our quest is to deliver the best product-mix to address that pain.

Along the way we are making possible new channels where none existed before; new ancillary service providers where none existed before (this is already happening on its own), digital producers of content serving a market that did not exist before. We believe we have the means to alleviate the pain of those who have not had the resources to take part in business fairs or consumer fairs. Every time a marketing budget line item is questioned by the accountant, every time a business or any organization tries to grow and get the word out, they feel the pain. Our mission is to track, target and eliminate that pain. However, we will have a flourishing business model only when we pursue, locate and influence large pools of such pain. With the growing reach of the Internet internationally, that goal is now within reach.

A cure for Webinarrhea

Also perhaps spelled Webinarrhoea, depending on which side of the pond you are located, this topic came to mind because my last post was about webinars. Given my varied personal interests, over a period of time I seem to have gotten onto the subscription lists of a variety of publications. Almost every single publication, it seems is on the webinar bandwagon.

I suspect that publishers are bundling webinars into the media vehicles that they take to their advertisers. I get inundated with invitations to webinars on a variety of topics. Typically, they are hour-long webinars. They come with a single-click mechanism to add them to my Outlook calendar so that I remember to stop multi-tasking (now that qualifies as a topic for a separate post by itself), and focus on an hour-long webinar. With so many webinars turning out to be advertisement vehicles, the task of building credibility for a webinar is becoming increasingly difficult. I can foresee webinars getting commoditized. They are at risk of turning into cyber-debris.

Webinars have another inherent flaw. They require a fairly well-sized audience to synch up their clocks, drop everything that they are doing and show up online at the appointed hour with undivided attention. Webinars do not give their potential audiences the flexibility of even a range of time to attend. Shouldn't one be able to, in a manner of speaking, 'Tivo' [TM] a webinar, and still be able to ask questions to the speaker and receive instant responses? That is precisely what a virtual tradeshow can do for you. It helps your online visitors 'Tivo' [TM] your presentations in your virtual booth. Possibly to overcome this issue, On24, a webcast technology provider is now offering Insight24, a permanent site of webcasts.

A virtual tradeshow, I believe, is that and much more. If one could take home a piece of every trade show one liked, then the virtual tradeshow would be the way to do it.

We delivered a trans-Atlantic virtual tradeshow for a very large company in the healthcare space. We first tried it with live webinars followed by the opening of a virtual exhibit hall. Exhibitors had recorded their presentations, but were also available for instant responses to questions. The technology used was a simple combination of MS PowerPoint [TM] and a combination of voice-over-IP and Instant Messaging. Exhibitors were from countries such as Belgium, Israel, Australia and the U.K. Attendees were divisional heads from various parts of the United States. The results were outstanding. In fact, there was greater participation from the distributed worldwide audience in the virtual tradeshow booths than when the same content was presented in live webinars launched at an unearthly morning hour to accomodate various time zones. Eventually the customer dropped the webinars and stayed with the virtual tradeshow format.

Want a cure for Webinarrhea? Try a virtual booth at a virtual tradeshow - where exhibitors will accomodate your schedule - not the other way round.

Webside manners

Having hosted, moderated, or spoken at several webinars, let me try to come up with some rules of etiquette for webinars. I myself may be guilty of having broken some of these rules on occasion, but mistakes are a part of the learning process.

1. Be considerate to your users and test the webinar tool for every aspect of the user's experience. Do the invitation templates make the recipients scroll up and down on a 1024 x 768 resolution before they can see the sign-up form and the 'submit' button? Are the reminder settings reasonable in their frequency or will they become a turn-off for the person subscribing to your webinar? Have the dial-in numbers been tested? Did you conduct a test webinar with a few of your friends to know in advance how the webinar tool behaves? I was once listening in on a webinar where the nation's largest advocacy group for a certain category of businesses was launching a new online member database system. The lack of preparation was obvious when they stumbled through the various features of the webinar tool that they were using rather than focus on the subject of their webinar. Further, every time a caller joined, the audio conferencing system announced the arrival, and every time a caller quit or dropped the call, the same system announced the name of the person who left the call. I have never experienced a more chaotic online experience. If you are using an outside service to manage your webinar, request to sit in on any of their other webinar productions to make sure that your audience will enjoy the experience that the provider offers.
2. Be considerate and keep the webinar crisp in content and style. Keep things informal as much as possible so that the speaker or panelists are at ease. Have a moderator to steer the conversation. Conduct a dry run for the panelists. De-emphasize power-point slideshows. Encourage the speakers to talk without the crutch of a slideshow. There is no point in showing slides that are full of text. If the speakers have a lot of content, then offer them as a download before and during the webinar. Use the live-time for engaging the audience. Keep the talk going for no more than 20 minutes. It helps keep the entire session very focused. See a sample video (I must caution you that the opening music on this video is needlessly loud) of a presentation by marketing visionary Seth Godin from the TED conference, or a TED conference presentation by Julie Taymor, who translated the movie 'The Lion King' to Broadway. TED conference presentations, I believe have an 18-minute restriction on each talk. The short duration of the presentation however, seems to be working quite well. Leave 10 to 15 minutes for questions. Have some blank slides available, and have someone available to type in any special information that the panelists are sharing on the fly, so that the audience can view it on their screen, e.g. an email address, a phone number or a website address that the speaker(s) may want to highlight.
3. Be considerate and have webside manners: A moderator is there to steer the discussion. The moderator is not there to talk or add his or her own view to the thoughts of a speaker. The audience must be on mute. While some may be doing it because it is a job requirement, most of the audience members on a webinar have spared precious time to listen to the speaker and learn something new. I have been on webinars where the audio is un-muted, subjecting listeners to a variety of sounds such as interference from a blackberry, dogs barking, and even the flushing of a toilet. Mute them. Letting the panelists know beforehand that they will not be interrupted or heckled by a remote audience will help tremendously. Test the audio a few minutes prior to showtime, and monitor it continuously signed in as a member of the audience. On a recent webinar, even though the opening audio was supposed to be live for only the moderator and the panelists, they were all on air much before showtime. If there is a glitch with the technology, which is not very uncommon, manage it gracefully with a short apology and keep the show going on. Have more than one person prepare a deck of slides to display so that you can switch computers if needed. For the Question/Answer portion tell the audience members that all questions will be handled anonymously. This will encourage people to be willing to ask questions without the fear of publicly making themselves appear uninformed. This will also prevent self-promoters from stealing the thunder of the speakers. Moderate all questions because that way you control the tone of the entire session. If the questions are being submitted online, then have someone engage the audience promptly with all requests and side-bar questions. Encourage follow-on questions by taking them out of turn to help the audience member get the complete answer to a previously addressed question. That helps complete conversations between the panelist and the questioner. If you have to be running polls to keep the audience awake then it is possible that your content is not compelling enough. Post-event, keep your survey as short as 1 open-ended question. My personal preference is a single question with an open text-field for answers where the audience can type in any feedback they like.

In our webinars, we ask the panelists, who typically are subject-matter experts in their industry, a question - "where can our audience members meet you in person in the near future?". If your web conference does not lead to the hope for future human interaction, then you are limiting its true potential of making the world a smaller and friendlier place.

Defining what (and how) we do.

It is hard for me not to think about or not to talk about virtual tradeshows. I actually spent some time this afternoon to see how Oprah Winfrey did her virtual classroom with a combination of compelling content (by Ekhart Tolle), existing technologies and a global audience that cared to stay up even late in the night to video-skype into the live event. It is really a nice feeling to know that the phrase 'virtual event' has now become so mainstream and is touching so many lives. So here are some Sunday thoughts on iTradeFair.com's virtual tradeshows.

At iTradeFair.com we have worked hard at defining an effective virtual tradeshow. In 1999, we made sales calls which soon turned into educational sessions because not many had heard of virtual tradeshows. We had to define what we meant by virtual tradeshows. We ran demos after demos, explained benefits, answered questions, and found several early adopters. My founding partner, Professor Ramesh Sharda is a visionary. Anticipating the need to shorten the learning curve, he incorporated into the design the metaphor of a real-world trade show. We published some white papers that have been downloaded by thousands of marketing and trade show professionals. We even had an article published in the Marketing News, which I later learned is considered a noteworthy publication among marketers and academicians.

Our early challenges in messaging came not just from the fact that often the word 'virtual' creates images of 'virtual reality' in the minds of listeners, but also from a trade show organizer's web-master creating a listing of exhibitors and calling it a virtual tradeshow. No definition was wrong. Lately even web-conferences, or webinars are labeled as virtual tradeshows if they offer some downloadable content from sponsors. I have even heard of one that had a virtual break-room complete with virtual toilets on which you could click to hear them flushing (could that be the sound of money going down the drain, or is it a sign that my sense of humor is overdue for a tune-up?)

We have come a long way in terms of creating awareness about what virtual tradeshows can do. The market has changed as well. Inquiries that keep coming our way lately come with preconceived notions of what their virtual tradeshow should look like. They sometimes want a panoramic view of the exhibit hall, even if it is not the best for navigation, even if it imposes upon them the limits of a 2-D environment, even if it is not the best for large trade shows. They sometimes want the noise of a real-world trade show floor even though online attendees sitting in offices don't like to disturb their neighboring cubicles.

However, I don't believe we have found the precise term for defining what iTradeFair.com's virtual tradeshows do for its customers. There seems to be no phrase for the sheer simplicity and utility of what we offer as a virtual trade show or virtual event. Virtual tradeshows now come with simulated 3-D visuals, which I think undermine the intelligence of users, because at the end of the day they simply provide a combination of instant communication capabilities camouflaged in a wrap. They mean nothing to the user of a virtual trade show beyond the initial sense of awe. In my experience, if a virtual tradeshow does not pave the way for meaningful human interaction among properly qualified people then it is a waste of precious time, and often of money. If you get a call from a telemarketer for a cheaper long-distance telephone service at 8 p.m., would it make a difference that you took the call on your grandfather's telephone or your grandson's iPhone? It is wasted time trying to pay attention to an irrelevant message regardless of the medium through which the message was delivered. In the world of business virtual fairs - be it for procurement, marketing or recruitment, for the business professionals, for the students and for other job seekers who take the time and the effort to show up online the decision-making power of the online participant or the virtual exhibitor is all that matters. Finding them online at the promised hour with the click of the mouse is the only thing that matters.

That brings us back to the unanswered question - what do we call our brand of virtual tradeshows and fairs? Lately when we have been receiving calls from businesses, they often ask us, "when is your next itradefair?". We also hear positive feedback from business users who refer to certain clients' (name withheld due to the inevitable corporate non-disclosures that bind us) virtual tradeshows as, the XYZ itradefair. Perhaps therein lies the answer. Maybe we should just call it an itradefair. Would that dilute our brand over time? I do not know. If it helps separate us from the crowd and identifies us as a sensible company that delivers effective yet simple and sensible online trade fairs or other specialty fairs such as job fairs etc., then it may not be so bad after all.

Then again figuratively and philosophically speaking, rather than try to define our service or product, perhaps we should let what (and how) we do define us.

Without positive cash flow, there is no leadership. And vice versa.

I used to run a couple of student bodies when in grad school. The energy-levels were very high. The groups were very inspired. We used to whip up exciting projects to give ourselves a sense of purpose. However, everything boiled down to having or not having funds. When one schoolmate asked me for a quote on leadership that she wanted to incorporate into some presentation to her department, I came up with "leadership is positive cash-flow".

As I think about it now, that fact is timeless in its application. A business leader is all talk and no action without positive cash-flow. One can hire and retain the best of resources with postive cash flow. One can fuel a team on passion and purpose only for a short duration. To run the race for the long haul, one needs stamina of all kinds - physical, mental and financial. Sen. Barack Obama's case with the way he funded the primaries is a recent example. Flush with funds, he could keep his team focused on the larger goals of his campaign.

Having said the above, I must add that only when the positive cash-flow is consistent, and when it is sustained through operations, does it make a leader a clear winner.

Right hat at the right time

The (original) name of the blog (fimarkepreneur) does seem corny but in a way it describes the twists and turns in my life starting as a financial accountant, a cost accountant, a marketer, and an entrepreneur.

Each of these callings are representative of a certain mindset. When the various functions blend within a single role, it is an amalgam of mindsets and behaviors, a multi-faceted attitude and an interesting management style. One learns to appreciate the importance of attention to detail, the joy of seeing perfectly balanced books, the adrenalin rush of releasing a new product or service out into the market and the perpetual curiosity that makes one see opportunities in every problem. The hard part is to know the right time to switch to the right hat - to think like an accountant and count beans, soar like a marketer and spread one's wings, or dream like an entrepreneur and figure out how to make that castle stay up in the air until one is able to make it a reality. Any confusion in the choice of hats could prove counterproductive.