Virtual Events and Virtual Meetings Conference

Virtual Edge Summit 2010
the Summit on Virtual Events, Meetings & Communities
February 22-23 Santa Clara, California

Attend for FREE Real or Virtual and hear speaker from…

Today’s uncertain economy is forcing companies to cut travel, and downsize or cancel important meetings and annual events. Yet, companies still need to stay in touch with loyal clients, reach new prospects and collaborate internally. More and more firms are discovering ‘Virtual Environments’ can provide an answer to the new economics of business communications.

Virtual Edge Summit 2010 is your

Roadmap to Success in Virtual Environments

Why: Virtual Edge Summit 2010 is the only event that focuses exclusively on providing education, training and solutions for planning and producing virtual events, meetings and communities. Over 2 days, dozens of experts will share their expertise with you, and be available for one-on-ones.

Who: Virtual Edge Summit 2010 is designed for all virtual marketing and meeting professionals, as well as for those with expertise in producing physical events and in-person meetings that now need to expand into adding virtual solutions. The event also offers a rich program for digital, IT, and community support professionals. Attendees will meet other event, marketing and community experts from Cisco, IBM, SAP, Oracle, Intel, Disney and top virtual technology and service providers like InXpo, ON24, 6Connex, Stream57, CGS VirtualEvents365, George P. Johnson, Unisfair and Digitell.

To register & learn more visit ||Virtual Events and Virtual Meetings Conference ||.

The Value of Virtual Events – Virtual Worlds

If Events in Virtual Platforms interest you may i suggest you join the Special Events Committe on Association of Virtual Worlds

http://network.associationofvirtualworlds.com/group/specialeventscommittee

Post from Cisco  Virtual Worlds Blog –

The Value of Virtual EventsRecently there has been feedback from some folks that a virtual experience can not compensate for a physical experience. My first reaction was “really I had no idea?”. All sarcasm aside; yes physical and virtual experiences are different. The fact is they both offer different value for the attendees.

To use Cisco Live Virtual as an example…

Virtually you will be able to do things you might not have gotten a change to do physically such as:
1) Ask questions directly of Cisco SVP Carlos Dominguez and CTO Padmasree Warrior in the live executive chat sessions from 11:45 am – 12:15 pm PDT. The majority of our physical attendees will not have the opportunity to rub shoulders with our executives and ask them questions directly.

2) Participate in live interactive panel discussions on topics not covered at the physical event such as the Virtual University and the Sensor Networks. These events will provide you with the ability to ask questions and join the discussion with industry luminaries such as Dr. Richard A. Bartle who co-wrote the first MUD and Adam Dunkels the author of the uIP (micro-IP) and lwIP TCP/IP protocol stacks and author of the Contiki operating system.

3) All of this without traveling!

Physically you will be able to do things virtual just does not facilitate as well or as easily such as:
1) Access to distinguished engineers via the Meet the Engineer program for exclusive, pre-scheduled one on one meetings. The virtual attendees have access to Cisco and partner experts but not exclusive, pre-scheduled one on one meetings more a first come first serve experience.

2) Demonstrations of the Data Center of the Future which showcases an actual Data Center built on site in San Francisco for you to walk through and learn more about. Uh, can not really build out a Data Center in the virtual experience that you can touch, feel, hear, smell (?) and taste (if you are so inclined I suppose you could like a router? Yuck)…i.e. experience with all your senses.

3) Chance to see DEVO and the B52’s!

It is all about choices in my opinion. The goal for Cisco Live Virtual is to enable folks who can not or do not want to come to San Francisco to still get some of the Cisco Live experience from anywhere. Register now!

What do you think differentiates virtual and physical experiences?

Jack Morton launches virtual event platform | Market-interactive.com

APLINK thinks this is an awesome move by Jack Morton Events – what do you say ?…. what’s also very interesting – “We felt we had a responsibility to build our own platform, one that allows for easy customization and on-brand experience design for our clients,” he added.

Excerpt from Market-interactive see link below…

Regional – While not designed as a response to the financial downturn, Jack Morton Worldwide’s virtual experience platform, which allows customised online events, has gained client interest in light of travel budget cuts.

The new offering was motivated by a study conducted by the company among 400 marketers with 82% said their organisation could increase revenue by better leveraging experiential strategies to engage employees, business audiences and consumers online.

Jack Morton’s virtual experience platform allows brands to customise and have multiple looks in 3D spaces that integrates into social media networks such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Newly hired director of technology solutions and head of digital studio for Jack Morton, Chris Haff said the marketplace is flooded with templated solutions that simply swap out images and call it customization.

“We felt we had a responsibility to build our own platform, one that allows for easy customization and on-brand experience design for our clients,” he added.

Ben Taylor, managing director Asia Pacific for Jack Morton, said in Hong Kong, the financial sector showed the most interest in its virtual experience platform due to cost freeze in the business. A technology company based in Beijing has also expressed interest to organise an internal meeting for its 10,000 staff virtually.

Taylor observed that the virtual platform is mostly used for B2B and media events in the US but in Asia, the biggest interest comes from companies wanting to use it for internal or employee communications.

He added that the cost of activation for the virtual experience platform is on average a quarter of the cost of doing a live event, although budget still has to be accounted for building video contents but not for flying people in, accomodation and loss of time travelling.

via Marketing, Jack Morton launches virtual event platform, HONG KONG, ONLINE ADVERTISING, Event marketing, Experiential marketing, | Market-interactive.com.