We’ve finished the Speaker Agreement for 2008 event. Because we’re paying our speakers next year a percentage of the profits, we’ve added in quite a bit more language about how they need to perform in order to get paid and what we are expecting from them. Yet, like any contract, you have to decide how much is really necessary to put in there to make sure you get a session that meets the expectations of your attendees and yourself.

We’ve added in language that says how long their actual presentation must be, and the maximum number of minutes they can dedicate at the end to a Q&A period. This is because one of our speakers this year ended their one-hour session after 30 minutes. I didn’t think we’d have to be specific about this, but apparently we do.

But I also heard from several attendees that one of the panelists appeared to be on drugs during the session and disrupted the flow of the workshop. Wonderful. Do I need to now put a clause in the speaker agreement that they won’t be intoxicated or high during their presentation? We haven’t, of course, because I think it was a rare enough event that it won’t happen again. The detail side of me says I need to put as much stuff as possible in their to ensure a great experience for the attendees. But the realistic side of me knows I can’t account for every single thing that may go wrong. But I take it as a reflection on our company and the event when a speaker screws up. For that one-hour - they ARE the show and representing our company.

In the end, I have to set the expectations as best I can and choose our speakers wisely. Needless to say, that speaker won’t be invited back.

Getting attendee feedback seems to be a standard practice in the tradeshow business. Learning how we can do a better job by asking the attendees what they liked and didn’t like, in theory, is suppose to help us improve our events so that more attendees are satisfied and more come back in the future. Yet I’m finding that 99.99% of the feedback is useless to us, either because the attendees simply don’t understand our business (”Make the conference sessions free next time”) or their suggestions are things we know about, yet have no control over (”The WiFi Internet sucked - you need to do a better job of that - you’re a technology conference!”).

Regular readers of my blog know that last one angers me every time - Internet providers at hotels and convention centers simply aren’t up to the task of providing stable wi-fi to 500 modern Internet users in one room at one time. We have meeting after meeting with the providers prior to our events, where we specifically warn them about what they are going to encounter, and yet the Internet goes down or is nearly unusable about 75% the time. And yet we, as the organizer, are blamed for being ill-prepared. Even on the exhibit hall floor, you’d think that paying $1,000 per connection would ensure rock-solid bandwidth - instead it’s a crap shoot - and I’m sick of it.

Anyway, back to the surveys. I’m finding more and more, that most general attendee feedback just isn’t worth the hassle. Feedback like, “It was too cold in the room” followed by the attendee in the same room saying, “Are you guys too cheap to turn on the air-conditioning?” are enough to drive any event organizer mad. Individual opinions simply aren’t consistent enough to make any changes that would please more people, and it’s a waste of our resources to even ask for it. So we won’t be in the future.

Yes that’s right, we’re not doing any general surveys for future events.

What we DO plan on doing, is feedback for individual speakers about their workshops. Even though we know speakers will get feedback ranging from “Terrible speaker” to “Best Speaker at the Expo!”, there are probably a few things the speaker can learn from and improve for the next presentation.

So is it possible that we’ll miss the .01% of the suggestions that might actually be worthwhile because I’m not willing to sift through the 99.99% of the feedback that is worthless? I suppose, but as a small company we have to dedicate our resources to where they are best used, and filtering through all the nonsense to get to that piece of information just doesn’t make sense.

We just launched our speaker proposal page for the 2008 New Media Expo in Las Vegas. We made a few changes to the submission process for next year including A) not taking requests for panelists and B) we’ve decided to pay our speakers. I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. Although many people are happy and willing to speak at the event for the exposure we give them, there has always been a quiet grumbling about how trade show organizers charge for the conference and don’t pay their speakers.

I don’t know that we will make the change to paying our speakers at all the different events we produce, since the New Media Expo is more of a “how to” event, I think we will get higher quality presentations from those we do select because we have decided to pay them.

In trying to determine exactly how much to pay, I researched and pondered everything from a flat fee to a fee based on attendee satisfaction surveys - the happier your audience, the more you would get paid. In the end, I decided to go with a percentage of net profits from the conference. 20% of the net profits will be divided among the workshops equally. Another 5% will be allocated based on how many attendees (free or paid - doesn’t matter) the speaker brings to the event based on their own efforts (email blasts, website banners, etc.). Emile (our CTO) has built a pretty sophisticated tracking system that will make this very easy to calculate.

This also ups the ante for our speakers, who must agree when they submit their proposal, that even a subtle sales pitch in their session will result in not getting paid their percentage. Like everything else, it’s a work in progress, but the goal is to deliver the most compelling content possible so that attendees walk out saying it was the best conference they’ve ever attended.

Update: I’ve worked it out with pc/nametag. As I expected, it took calling American Express and initiating a chargeback to get their attention. When they realized they weren’t going to get paid anything, and that we might be going to court over it, they decided to give me a call. We came to an agreement about how much of a discount I would get for the lanyards. I was never looking for a total refund, but I did feel a partial refund was fair. I’m pleased that they did the right thing.

I’ve learned quite a bit about printing in the last few years. We trade show organizers love to print - from brochures and programs to lanyards and badges, we print a lot of paper. We just finished up the Podcast and New Media Expo, and for whatever reason we had a terrible experience with our printers this year.

First up: pc/nametag printed our lanyards this year and they were awful. The logo we needed to print on the lanyard this year was very detailed, so we had to go with a screen printed lanyard rather than a sewn lanyard. The proof looked great and I was impressed with their “Actual Size” proof layout. But I knew we were in trouble immediately when I opened the box three days before the Expo and pulled one out. It looked nothing like the proof (see photo below). The proof above the lanyard that approved said “Actual Size.” Does the final product look anything like actual size to you??

Obviously the lanyard did not print actual size. I gave pc/nametag every opportunity to make it right, even overnighting them one of the lanyards so they could take a look. All they could say is, “looking at the lanyard, it did in fact imprint according to specifications.” So I guess now I’ll be dealing with American Express for a chargeback. I hate to do business that way, but pc/nametag has given me no choice.

Lately I’ve noticed another disturbing trend with printers - being charged for overruns. Both pc/nametag and our directory printer charged us for additional units that were printed beyond what we ordered. We ordered 2,500 directories, but paid for 2,600. We ordered 2,000 lanyards, but were charged for 2,095. So let me get this straight. I order a specific amount, but you decide to print a few more and charge me for them. Can you imagine this in other industries?

“I know you ordered a half sandwhich, sir, but the chef decided to make you a whole sandwhich so we’re charging you for a whole.” Or how about this one: “I know you ordered a 10×10 booth, but we gave you a 10×20 so you’ll need to pay for the 10×20.”

Charging for overruns has got to be the most absurd thing I have seen this year. If your machine can’t accurately print the number of items I ordered and it prints more, THAT’S NOT MY PROBLEM - IT’S YOURS. Any printers out there who are reading this, feel free to somehow justify your overrun charges in the comments. I’d love to hear how you think this is fair and a necessary business practice.

Everyone who has ever launched a trade show has been in the “chicken or the egg” conundrum. Sponsors like the idea of your show but don’t want to commit until they see who else is committing. But no one is willing to be the first to jump into the pool. I’ve seen many an unscrupulous trade show organizer (usually someone brand new to the industry who has never organized an event) outright lying about who is sponsoring the event. They launch their website with several impressive logos. Yet when asked, the sponsor has never heard of the event and has no idea why their logo is on the event site. The inexperienced organizer’s hope, of course, is that the company is too large to find out what is going on and by the time they do, they will have secured their largest competitor based on the false information and they will come on board anyway.

But it never works that way. Every time I’ve seen this happen, the event implodes after the first show or never happens at all. And why wouldn’t it - if that’s how they handle their business you can imagine how they’ll treat their exhibitors down the road.

The ethical way to get that first big sponsor to come on board, of course, is to play the “if” game. “If I got XYZ company to come on board, would you do the same?” Get two big players in the industry to come on board together, thereby, alleviating the “I don’t want to be first” nervousness.

But what happens when one of the “big boys” gives you a verbal YES but needs a week to get the CFO to sign off? This is a dangerous time. Two choices here: announce it and pray the paperwork gets signed so that you can capitalize on it NOW and bring in other exhibitors, or, hold your tongue - as hard as it may be - and wait for the signed contract.

I don’t know if this is what happened with E for All, the show launched to replace E3, but it looks like they may have taken the first choice and got burned. The trouble is, when you go ahead and announce a verbal commitment, if they don’t come on board you end up doing more damage than not announcing it all. In this day and age, when bloggers and online news websites can post in minutes, you may simply fan the flames of talk about how your launch isn’t going as well as hoped, and how several large companies aren’t coming either. All of a sudden, you find yourself worse off than if you had never announced the big guy at all.

In the end, we’re better off waiting until the deal is official. The damage done by having them back out would outweigh any benefit gained by announcing it early.

I’ve attended a lot of keynotes at tradeshows and conferences and unfortunately, most are disappointing. It’s unfortunate because when someone has the spotlight for 45 minutes or an hour, the opportunity is often wasted on Powerpoint slides or they simply make it a long commercial for their company.

There are a handful of times I have been absolutely engaged by a speaker. Steve Wynn, of Wynn Las Vegas, kept about 250 us riveted for about 90 minutes a couple of years ago at the Society of Independent Show Organizer CEO conference. Without a single Powerpoint slide or notes, he walked on stage and talked about how he built his empire. It was fascinating.

But few people have that magic ability to capture the attention of an audience for that long. I think it’s truly a gift.

It doesn’t mean that most speakers are uninteresting - it’s just that they don’t have the speaking skills to convey their thoughts well to a large audience. I’m a big fan of Charlie Rose because in the interview format, he’s able to bring out the interesting points from his interviewees - no matter who they are. Most of the time, there is just something more interesting about a conversation between two or three people than a monologue.

Now, I’m no Charlie Rose, but this year I’ve decided to make our keynotes interviews. My goal is to interview the keynoter as if we were having a frank talk in a coffee shop - with the attendees in the surrounding booths listening in. I’ve been interviewing people for several years through our podcasts and I’m getting pretty good at it.

It means a lot more work for me because of the research and preparation I’ll need to do to make this work, but in the end I think the attendees will have a better keynote experience.

It’s pretty cool to see your name as an author on Amazon.com. The Podcast Academy The Business Podcasting Book: Launching, Marketing, and Measuring Your Podcast is now on pre-sale at Amazon.com.

I enjoy writing but it’s hard work. I now understand when authors say they have to force themselves to allocate time every day to writing - and I wrote just a small portion of this one!

If you’re looking for a one-stop shop for business podcasting - this is the book to buy.

Oprah I’m available for your show when you’re ready. My number is on my blog.

Sponsorship levels have been around for as long as tradeshows and I think it’s time for a change. I went to a conference a few months ago that had two Silver Sponsors. Apparently they didn’t sell the Gold or Platinum levels but two companies bought Silver levels and so that’s what they had. Except it looked a bit odd, and I overheard an attendee actually wonder aloud about whey there were two Silver sponsors and nothing else.

I see the reasoning. On paper and in theory the more a sponsor pays, the more exposure they get before, during and after the show. But it’s been a real struggle for us to differentiate all the different levels and show the differences in value to potential sponsors between all the levels. Often times we’d be in meetings with companies who, when faced with the myriad of choices, became indecisive because they had “paralysis by analysis” trying to decide which level to take. Then, once the decision was made, they wanted to pick and choose which items to take, which to leave out and which to substitute. (”We don’t need the banner outside meeting room 312 but we’d really like the dedicated email from this other sponsor level.”)

By the time we were done, the sponsorship didn’t look anything like the original level and was completely custom. That’s fine - most of the time the sponsorship levels are simply a starting point for the conversation and we want the sponsor to have the things that are most valuable to them in the package. But the process has been tedious and frustrating for both parties.

So I decided to totally revamp our sponsorships for 2008 for all of our events. There will be just two sponsorship levels - “Event Sponsor” and “Title Sponsor.” The event sponsors get branding and logos and exposure everywhere for one set price and the “Title Sponsor”, (at a much higher price) actually has their company name embedded into the show name and logo (”New Media Expo presented by ABC Company”). I’m hoping the simpler choice will allow the process to move faster. I’ll keep you updated.

After three years in Ontario, California we announced last week that we will be moving the Podcast and New Media Expo in 2008 to Las Vegas- king of tradeshow cities. I’ve been considering it for nearly two years but wanted to make sure the event had solidified itself as the leader in this new space before we made the jump. The pros and cons of moving to Las Vegas are worthy of a separate post so I’ll address that later.

But this post is about something else I’ve discovered over the past week - the blogosphere is not what it claims to be. My gut has always told me this is so and deep down (another way to describe my intuition) I’ve known it for a long time but only this week have I really seen it in action. Friends and business associates I have discussed this with privately have all said, “This is news to you?” And yet very few bloggers and podcasters are talking about it publicly.

Here’s the issue: bloggers, “powncers” and “twittereres” are moderating their comments not just for spam and foul language, but for honest, legitimate posts that tend to disagree with their views. I knew our move to Las Vegas would not be welcomed by everyone. Most humans dislike change, like routine and it’s impossible to please everyone. As an event organizer you have to research and study what’s best for the majority of your attendees and exhibitors and then make a decision.

I knew our decision to move would be welcomed by most everyone - and it has. And for those bloggers, podcasters, and online publishers that disagreed with the move and posted on their blogs about it, I took comfort in knowing that I had dedicated the next several days to leaving explanations in the comments of any negative posts. I mean the New York Times in countless articles has told me many times to simply “join the conversation.” PR experts around the world talk about “joining the conversation.” After all, the blogosphere prides itself on allowing dissenting opinions to be heard and take part in the conversation right?

Wrong.

In the past four days, most of my comments where I have started by saying, “John Doe- thanks for your thoughts on our move. I understand why you may not like it but here’s why we made the decision so you can understand the background” have not shown up in the comments. I never attacked the commenter or even so much as said “you’re wrong.” I simply offered a more detailed explanation in the comments of their post so that I could offer an explanation of the move, an alternative view or in some cases correct blatant errors of fact (wrong dates of the event, etc).

6 of my 8 comments have yet to show up on these blogs or pownce conversations - blogs that talk about priding themselves on being “transparent” yet are anything but. When I’ve been able to find an email address for the blogger, I’ve sent an email with basically the same comments as my comment in their blog and additional information - not one response yet. It’s happened a few times in the past year but not until this week has it hit home for me that the blogosphere is not about “a conversation” if you want that conversation to happen in the comments. The only alternative is to post the responses on your own blog and link to the posts.

Bloggers have every right to moderate comments as they wish. But the “transparency” of the blogosphere seems pretty opaque to me right now.

I read on the Expo Magazine website (great podcast for tradeshow organizers by the way) that the The American Fly Fishing Trade Association is launching The Fly Fishing Expo at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, placing it in direct competition with an existing consumer event, The Fly Fishing Show scheduled for the same weekend - also in Denver.

This is just plain silly.

Competition is great in every industry as it makes everyone up their game to the next level in order to grow. I don’t always like it when it happens to me, of course, but deep down I know it will make our events even better for the exhibitors and attendees. But when you try to compete with an existing show in order to kill it by launching it on the same weekend, everyone in the industry loses - exhibitors, attendees and the show organizers. By forcing both exhibitors and attendees to make a choice about which event to go to, you simply fragment your own industry. You also significantly decrease the chances your own event will succeed because you will immediately shrink your pool of potential sponsors and exhibitors who will decide to just “walk your show this year” and see how it is. In fact, you make it a slam dunk to do so because they’ll probably just “pop over” to check out your new show when they have a break from their booth at the competitor’s expo.

Granted, I know nothing about the fly fishing industry and perhaps the Association feels they can pull this off. But at what cost? Do you really want your members to have to decide every year which show to support? The attendees don’t care who wins - they just want to go see great fishing gear. By launching it on the same weekend, you are effectively putting your exhibitors and attendees in the middle of your personal battle and forcing them to choose sides. Not good.

As Gordon Gecko once said in the movie Wall Street, “Showdowns bore me Larry. Nobody wins.” I’ve quoted the movie Wall Street several times -probably because I know every line. But Gordon Gecko would have been a great tradeshow organizer.