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For event organizers and associations, one of the most prominent issues on the table today is the ability to provide relevant and measurable returns to attendees and members who commit to participate in an event and/or join an organization.
Whether it is networking, education, certification, or a unified voice on a critical industry topic, each conference producer is constantly seeking ways to create value that translates into both participation and attendance.
As a result of the Internet revolution, potential attendees can find so much information on their own that organizers are constantly forced to remind individuals of the benefits of Face-to-Face communication and live peer support.
Faster and faster connectivity puts searchers and the information they seek together in just seconds from just about anywhere in the world. On the surface, this is a tough act to follow. But from the viewpoint of a professional organization, this open-ended resource actually creates an opportunity.
Information is just that. Information. Verifying the factuality of the information and the author’s bias is another story. There are Blogs, listservs and chat rooms where millions of individuals profess their opinions, comments and claimed expertise. There are newsletters, newspapers, e-print magazines and industry portals where stories and issues culminate. But even the publishers inject viewpoints and bias. Everywhere you turn, there are both similar and competing issues on any given topic.
It is this very fray that event producers and association managers need to capitalize on. While many of the forms have evolved from pure print into digital ones and zeros, the saying “Content Is King” still rings true. Tackling a particular issue or industry and combing through the thousands of content fragments is a daunting task, but one that an organizer or association could benefit from, if the results demonstrated a vetted compilation of the most accurate and unbiased results of the study.
But culling the data is only one aspect of the content model. The other is the ability to present the results in such a way that attendees will related value, thus allowing the group to establish itself as the aggregate authority. Ironically, based on the current research, it might very well be that distributing the resulting content electronically is the best way to reach the majority of attendees and members.
According to Jupiter Research, over 43% of US households connect to the Internet via broadband and businesses offering even higher percentages, resulting in the statement the critical mass of broadband has arrived. It is predicted that by 2010, broadband will reach 80% of US households (69 million). Also shown in the study is that consumers are seeking both entertainment and customizable portals for news and information.
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