I like the way you think James… very creative and very “outside the box.”

My question is with the recent conference you did (Virtual Edge) was there a twitter feed attached to the event as well? If not that could be added using a hashtag and would further extend the reach of the event!

Thanks for contributing your ideas and participating in this discussion.

Mike

We recently partnered with the Virtual Edge conference and we broadcast the event into a 3D virtual environment and they offered access to the Virtual Free. There were 200 live attendees and over 250 virtual attendees. Some of the virtual attendees, who attendee day one virtually, drove to the meeting on the second day. The engagement level of the Hybrid event was like nothing I had ever experienced. Everyone who attended the live event received access to the entire meeting content as an online library.
I see this as becoming a standard for all general sessions. Create a Hybrid Event that allows the members who can not attend live to attend virtually and then create the whole meeting as an archived event and provide it free to the live attendees and provide the virtual members with the ability to order the archived at a rediculously low price. This should be looked at as a service to your members and think about the level of educational distribution you would achieve.

Non-members pay a premium!

Dave, thanks very much for insight and creative thinking.

So it sounds like you are suggesting the Virtual fee for the nonmenbers would be an enticement to become a member, driving membership upward. Very interesting…. what do all the rest of you think…????

I agree with you that orgs not drawing at least 25% of their members to their top shelf events should be concerned….. or at least have the issue on their radar screen

Thanks again for keeping the conversation going!

Mike

I think the big opportunity here is for associations who are attracting less than 20 – 25% of their membership to their marquee events (or associations whose member attendance is declining). These organizations need to really worry about their value proposition and long term membership retention.

One model that makes sense today is to offer virtual attenance at no charge to Members and to charge 50 – 100% of current annual membership dues to non-members. A model like this helps quantify the value of membership. There’s a lot of associations that need help doing that today.

Dave Lutz
Velvet Chainsaw Consulting

Hey Jeff, just want to add one more comment to the ones I made previously…

In my opinion, in order for an organization to charge premium pricing for virtual educational content, I believe it needs to be unique, or not available elsewhere. Since education is so widely available on the Internet these days, a topic needs to be cutting edge and the delivery of that information needs to be done while the “iron is hot.”

Just further thoughts for consideration.

Mike

Hi Jeff, Thanks so much for your post.

As usual your insight and perspective is right on.

A possible middle ground may be to offer some sessions free of charge streamed as a means to introduce folks to the content and whet their appetite, and then for other sessions to charge, once their interest has been captured.

Hopefully the business goals of the organization are correctly aligned with the needs of their customers as a misalignment in this area could prove disastrous.

Thanks again Jeff for contributing!

Mike

Hi Cathy,

Thanks so much for your response and comments. I also read your blog. Your point is well taken that someone should be available to respond to your challenges. I am going to post a tweet myself on your behalf requesting their assistance. One person I know of you could go to is @MPIRandyC who is an avid tweeter and an MPI employee (also nice guy) Are you going to post all your learning lessons from your VAP experience? I hope so.. all the best

Mike McCurry

Great points to consider.

I think it boils down to what are the goals of the event or conference. If the goal of the event is to make money, not just break even and is considered an additional revenue stream, than free virtual access may not make sense. If the goal of the event is to share content with as many people possible and have as many people possible engage with that content, free virtual access makes a lot of sense.

Here’s a comparison of a paid virutal access session and free virtual access session’s Twitter reach of the content. I think the statistics show some interesting results. http://jeffhurtblog.com/2009/07/13/free-versus-paid-event-live-streaming-a-twitter-comparison/