Inaugural GoWest Conference – Day Two!

Day Two …But First, Coffee!

Rise and shine #eventprofs! Day two is an equal split in between educational sessions and the experiential hall. But first, coffee because it’s 8:00am and coffee is mandatory! Coffee was served in the hall outside the educational room, where we could all catch up and reflect on the previous day while sipping on coffee served by conventions Regina. They were serving up the Royal Regina Roast by Regina’s Caliber Coffee Roasters. 

Caffeinated? Good, ’cause this was too good to miss!

Our first keynote speaker of the day was Shawn Kanungo who focuses on innovative disruption. Disruption is what causes change within industries, so is there really a safe industry? Doctors? Engineers? Lawyers? Accountants? Have no fear event profs – you’re safe! Accountants however …yikes!

Shawn pointed out to us that the market isn’t there to care about us. The market is constantly evolving and that the future of attention is everything moving forward. Any company that focuses on nostalgia, more than how to evolve, get left in the dust. One of the best examples was Blockbuster and we all know how that ended. Overall, the best companies, are the ones that are self evolving, and always learning. The most established companies, tend to be the least prepared for market disruption.

Look at examples of how we’ve evolved in communicating. Group chats are huge these days and there’s one for everything – family, different friend groups, work chats, etc. Ever used a a gif in one of these chats? Are are you more of Kimoji person *cough* Shawn, *cough*. We use these as ways to communicate without using words, and to get a point across and Giphy is a company that is now worth $600 million dollars with little revenue stream. That’s crazy! And that is just based off how we’ve evolved in our ways to communicate!

Even in a “safe” industry such as event planning, we need to make sure that we’re constantly learning, evolving, and using experiences as experiments so we’re not staying stagnant. Testing new practices or ideas at an event you’ve planned, is a good way to gauge human interest.

You can follow Shawn on LinkedIn and Twitter

Social Makes the World Go Round.

Social Media: Websites and applications that enable users to create and share content, or to participate in social networking.

I’m sure we all know, and understand the importance social media plays in our lives and our industries, but are we usually social media to the best of our ability? Pop quiz! What was the earliest form of online social networking? Classmates. Yep – bet you forgot about that! Classmates was founded in December 1995 – back in the day with slow computers, and even slower dial up service! Ok, one more pop quiz. Which came first – the chicken or the egg? Just kidding! Was it LinkedIn or MySpace? I’ll answer that one later.

With social, it is very easy to think that we need to speak to everyone, to garner as much interest as possible, but Kelly Doody, from The Social School, had to remind us first and foremost that if we’re speaking to everyone, we’re speaking to nobody, and that quality reigns supreme to quantity. Make your content amazing, and target it to a specific audience! With this being said, make sure you’re playing the right content to the right platform. People tend to go to Instagram for visuals, and LinkedIn for business articles. Use the insights from your social media management tools to see what is working well and where. Not performing well? Perhaps a different platform needs to be used? Have.a post that’s performing amazingly well? Boost it!

Anyone remember the four P’s from marketing classes? According to Kelly, the standard four P’s are behind us. Consumers are less loyal these days – as much as 70x less loyal! We need to first master the art of people falling in love with you by providing content to nurture and build trust. No one wants to hear a sales pitch right out the gate #turnoff. Only once prospects through social are comfortable and trusting you, then you can “swoop in” with a pitch.

Oh, and the answer is LinkedIn, established May 2003. Good old fashioned MySpace wasn’t until August 2003. Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerburg was about to blow minds with Facebook in 2004, although was not available to the general public until Fall 2006.

The Social School

Get S*&# Done!

Derek MacDonald of Boom Goes The Drum, spoke to us about principles for an elevated vision and his G.S.D. mentality.

You have a long list of things to accomplish in a day. You tell yourself you’re going to get it all done, come hell or high water. Derek points out that our G.S.D. mentality is clouding our judgment when it comes to our strategy and vision, whether for the company or our events.

What should we focus on?

1. Our vision
2. Our overall goals
3. Our objectives
4. The strategy
5. Tactics

Oh, and G.S.D = Get Shit Done.

Boom Goes the Drum

Personal branding is just as important.

Did you just cringe a little? Perhaps thinking that shouldn’t everything be about the event and not me? We need to ensure that we are seeking out personal development and branding, along side our companies/events. By putting yourself out there, prospective clients/attendees get to see you. Think back to social media with Kelly. We are spending all this time nurturing prospective clients/attendees by getting them to learn to trust us as people, and building relationships with one another.

Hailey O’Bright is with The Idea Hunter, and she really wants to promote us working on our personal branding. Build your brand on social, and keep it separate from your company/event/business.

• Post daily and on a few different channels
• Keep all images across your brand, consistent
• Join various LinkedIn and Facebook groups
• Study and connect with influencers
• Perfect your public speaking
• Reach out to an old prof / editors
• sing up for contests/award submissions

The Idea Hunter

Event Branding vs Corporate Branding

Olivia Pilip from Boutique Collective was on deck to discuss event branding and experiences. Each event has its own identity and Olivia was here to discuss how to carry that through your event, and how branding can carry on, even after an event is over. This brings the F word to the forefront of the conversation …

Yep. FEELINGS.. People won’t always necessarily remember the words associated with the event, but they’ll always remember the feeling an event gave them. Feelings ties into everything that revolves around building relationships and trust. In order to build those things, feelings must be involved.

Olivia brought an example of how they had an event and the invite was a very nice quality wooden box, and inside was hot sauce and tequila. Talk about impact! Not only did you get a wicked cool invite, you had the event brand in your view and even if you couldn’t attend, you still had the experience of the event invitation. This is branding carried on well after the event, and leaves such an impression on our minds.

Boutique Collective

Last, but certainly not least …TECH SHOWCASE!

Tahira came back up on stage to moderate the Tech Showcase with this cool box in her hand called a catchbox. After our speakers had a chance to give their five minute presentation, Tahira threw out the catchbox which is a soft square microphone that can be tossed around between those that want to ask questions to those on stage. Nifty tool I was pretty excited too see in person and in action.

Back to the techy part …

PheedLoop

First up we had Pheedloop showing and discussing their all in one event management and engagement software. Pheedloop is:

• Event app
• Speaker dashboard
• Mobile check in/ticketing system
• Event website
• Schedule manager
• Has custom forms/surveys

See your event through from the beginning stages, until after the event is over. Rumour has it that there will eventually be an area for sponsors and exhibitors, in addition to the attendees/speakers.

PheedLoop

Roy Jackson Design

These guys have some wicked cool stuff when it came to lighting!  Have you ever wanted to use LED kinetic balls at your events? The things you can do with these balls is amazing! There were also these cool RGB pixel balls are brought together to form a video light curtain effect.

Fireworks are cool, right? RIGHT! But they’re also dangerous and extremely expensive.

Enter in the spark EFX which is a different take on good old fashioned pyrotechnics. Height ranging from 3 feet to 15 feet, and you can get the same, if not better, than standard pyrotechnics. This also eliminates safety concerns, and is far more cost effective than traditional pyrotechnics.

Roy Jackson Design

EventMobi

Gavin was up next to discuss EventMobi, the sponsor of the event management app that was used at GoWest2018. Eventmobi is an app solution for every stage in the event lifecycle.

Good for organizers, attendees, speakers, sponsors, and exhibitors.

• Alert system
• Good for multi-event management
• Registration and check in
• Live polling and surveys
• Analytics and reporting
• Gamification (the networking game we had was so much fun!)

As Eventmobi was one of the sponsors for the event, and we were using their app, I do have to say that this app was very user friendly and easy to use.

EventMobi

FMAV

Another sponsor for this events audio and visuals this year was FMAV. They are a Canadian AV and event technology company made for those who plan any type of live event.

Anthony did what he could to cram a 20 minute presentation into 5 minutes 🙂  He discussed 360 degree video streaming for virtual attendees and how using that can increase your future attendees from afar.

He went into Augmented Reality for events  as a way for information delivery, way finding and visualization. Augmented reality is going to be the main focus of eventprofs moving forward as it takes the virtual and puts it in real environments. Augmented reality can be used to help attendees in future events, as we all become more involved in how AR can improve our day to day lives.

FMAV