As we prepare for Event Camp, next week, Chris Uschan and I (Sam Smith) have been exchanging plenty of voice mails, emails and having a ton of conversations. Recently, I sat down with Chris to capture some of those conversations and share them with you.
Sam: When we first announced that we were doing Event Camp in the Twin Cities. You immediately Tweeted me and said – we support this project and want to help in any way that we can. Why did you want to get involved in Event Camp? What does it mean to you?
Chris: I like adventures as well as meeting new people. EventCamp is just that – trying and learning in an unconventional setting. My experience with this event will allow me to share new ideas to our large association and meetings industry customer base. I also felt we should offer our Conference 2.0 event community as a way to support the meetings industry as we did for first EventCamp in NY. Finally, I have built a lot of good online relationships with many interesting and smart people through #eventprofs, attending ECTC10 allows me to expand my relationship face to face.
Sam: You didn’t attend the first Event Camp in person – but your colleague Tony did. You were watching online. What was the experience like? How did it make you feel to be included in the event?
Chris: Well, let’s say I was a little jealous. Tony and I talked while he was there. You could hear the excitement in his voice about the people he was meeting and the awesome education. Following online allowed me to connect and keep tabs on things. It’s never the same online, but it helped me stay connected. Then to watch webinars about that event and read about it months later really made me feel connected.
Sam: I think most of us will admit – if we are honest – that we don’t have much of a Post Event Strategy for redistribution of content. In fact that is why Eric St. Angel is doing her session on post event strategy ideas. Yet, you, Ray and I talked about a strategy for re-purposing the content of this event back in June. Now that we are a week before the event – I feel great knowing that we have a plan in place. Can you tell the readers what that plan was and what we are going to do?
Chris: You always hear of organization capturing their events and then sending out a DVD or link to huge library of recorded content 5 to 8 weeks later. Or worse yet, a link to a bunch of PDF slides. This is an ineffective and lazy approach, not to mention a huge missed opportunity to extend the event to non-attendees. With SonicFoundry recording the sessions and having The Conference Publishers, provide summary write-ups, we have content to share in multiple formats. No one can watch all the recordings and read about sessions at one time, so it only makes sense to distribute the sessions over a 4 to 5 week period after the event (like webinars). Promoting and sharing one topic at a time in bite-sized learning chunks. We can get the presenters involved to chat online about the topics and keep the EC buzz alive. We’ll use Engage365 and Event Camps as distribution outlets and leverage those networks to get the message out. And since, Engage365 is home to many resources, the EventCamp learning becomes a permanent part of Engage365 knowledge.
Sam: Awesome Chris. Thanks for taking the time to talk. I look forward to meeting you next week.
Chris: Thanks Sam, I’m also excited to finally meet in person.
