Grounded

Many of us have experienced the dreaded announcement from the cockpit: “Ladies and gentlemen, due to inclement weather at our destination, we will have to wait just a short time (yeah, right) until we are given clearance for take-off. Our spot at the gate has already been taken, so please remain seated, with seat belts fastened, until further notice. If you’ll please draw your window shades to keep it cool …” Keep it cool? Typically these delays have allowed me to finish a book or more. How’s that for cool? Travel only seems to get more difficult. In fact, according to a recent air travel forecast, travel conditions and regulations aren't the only things getting tougher … airlines are eliminating unprofitable routes (domestic capacity has been reduced by 12%) and since April, 2009 alone, domestic, economy-class fares have increased in cost by 8.2%. Gas prices will continue to climb back up (jet fuel costs 58% more than in March, 2009) and the vicious cycle of a sluggish economy's effect on travel will continue. What say you, fellow conference planner? This certainly doesn’t sound like great news. At least, not great news in the short term until we develop a way to overcome enough regulation to follow China’s lead in pursuing standing room-only fares. Yikes.

The meeting lifecycle is such that many parts of the process are most beneficial when conducted in-person. In fact, all qualitative input I’ve ever had related to the meeting planning process indicates that people would much rather perform program and session planning activities in-person, even if the technology was competitive and conducive to allowing a remote planning session to occur. There must be something about gathering around a board full of cards or post-it notes that holds a certain, nostalgic charm. Or rather, there is something about simply being there that will never be replaced. I can’t imagine anyone ever uttering “I guess you would have had to have virtually attended” in lieu of “been there.” But in the future, this might actually be the mindset….

It is critical that the modern, cost-conscious association discover new options for preparing, planning, and disseminating their meeting collateral and program plan. It is also essential that the association create ways for their attendees to benefit and save time using technology. For an organization who has never worked with a packaged, robust meeting content management solution before, gathering awareness of how such a solution can provide cost savings and efficiencies requires education. Here are a few ways your association might consider helping those members and leaders, who will sometimes remain “grounded” in the future as travel becomes tougher.

If you have never heard of a digital poster before, then you probably don’t realize that not only can it save you exhibit floor space because it’s, well, digital, but it can also serve as content that may be accessed remotely and live on long after your conference. In many cases, if video presentation is captured well, feedback suggests that the digital poster is every bit as effective as attending a poster presentation in-person, from an educational perspective. A recent US Department of Education study presented at the annual CESSE meeting indicates that e-learning actually has better outcomes and retention than in-person. Don’t tell that to your on-the-ground attendees! The point is, digital posters are accessible, enduring multimedia and just plan effective.

One of the most common pre-conference, preparatory meetings is the program planning meeting. This meeting typically serves as the formation of the educational tracks of your conference. Although your association may choose to continue doing much of this work in-person, online session building tools exist, which allow remote attendees to see the updated session plan in real-time and even contribute session updates via the Internet. For even a modest-sized association, the session grid is not something that could be easily communicated any other way but visually. A well-executed online session builder allows meeting planners, both present and remote, to share in the collaboration of building a session plan. If you’ve never seen a digital session grid, you would be interested to know that you can observe a complete view of a meeting’s session plan in real-time through the Internet … and drag-and-drop to change your program plan, also in real-time. Sounds exciting? It is. A digital session grid is a different kind of collaboration than a post-it note board.

Finally, members need to benefit from the use of technology as well. For the increasing number of members who might choose to arrive on the first day of a conference and leave prior to the last networking reception in order to save a night or two on hotel costs, offering optimized program visibility and the ability to wisely choose how to spend their time is essential. If you already have an online view of your entire session grid, shouldn’t members be able to benefit from that data as well? Of course! An online view of “my meeting” is a concept that, if well-executed, can add value to an attendee’s time. For instance, navigating all available sessions, selecting those which look interesting, and accessing select session information on a mobile device or on a personal calendar can cut down on the amount of legwork attendees have to do on the ground. Furthermore, peer interaction and networking is essential at conferences; an online view of the meeting can foster peer and exhibitor interactions in order to make the most of limited networking time.

There are many software packages out there which can accomplish some of these tasks individually. It is important to remember that there are cost-savings to be had when you discover a solution which integrates many of these capabilities into a single solution. Benefits from keeping your meeting data centralized and having these types of features integrated into a “one stop shop” will save your association countless headaches when trying to bring it all together. Even more cost-savings can be had when you aren't required to task your already burdened IT department with implementing new software. A key component to consider in this regard is whether the software is available as a service. It takes a certain amount of experience to support an infrastructure that can make all of these technologies play well together and be delivered as a service offering. OASIS, by Coe Truman Technologies, has been bringing these solutions to life for hundreds of association meetings for nearly 15 years. OASIS is a service-based solution (SaaS) so benefits can be achieved faster than you ever thought possible. Your members and attendees will thank you. Even the remote ones.

Learning From Each Other

I had the chance to recently visit with a client of ours during their program planning meeting. The meeting attendance was impressive: a consortium of some of the best-and-brightest at one of the leading medical associations in the world. There were individuals in the room I’d met before: an austere, stern doctor from a local hospital who was somehow even able to remain gruff in communicating the great news that he’d received a position as a department chair at an East Coast university. I congratulated him and indicated what a great place I considered that city and university to be. “That’s not my motivator, he replied briskly before walking away. There was the ever-present Doogie Howser stand-in; a prodigal, man-child doctor whose colleagues kept highlighting how smart he was—ever exaggerated by the fact that he was the spitting image of college buddies during our sophomore year (and I can assure you, none of them were “prodigal” on a daily basis). Yet at twenty seven, he is a leader in a major medical society. Impressive. There was the diligent, steadfast Middle Eastern doctor who looked somehow saintly in her hooded veil, as she works until long after midnight (I can attest, I stepped out for a breath of fresh air before bed after reading, and she was still in the lobby working just as hard as when I left her at 6:30 that evening). It made me pause to appreciate how committed all of these individuals are at staying focused on the reason they flew across the country, perhaps world, to be together. To properly answer my own question instilled by the terse doctor of the group, "What is their motivator?” The answer remains simple: to learn from each other. And, in turn, to help others.

This is an association at its core. As a software vendor, it is often easy to become caught up in the fact that all of the bits and bytes can feel more important than the member-user of our product. In fact, for association software vendors, the problem of appreciating this realization is often compounded by the fact that our buyer is most often not any real recipient of the knowledge-based collateral which our system manages. The buyer is most likely the administrator of this system, serving the members, yet providing a barrier between the software vendor and the true heir to the value of the product. I can definitively state that any supplier of association software, at any level, should consider attending a true member-focused event at least once a year to be reminded of the diligent individuals who benefit from their product offering. Certainly, not all associations that are gathered in a room, exhibit hall, or tradeshow floor are in the business of saving lives like my doctor friends mentioned above. However, regardless of whether you are talking to über-skilled hypothalamus-only brain surgeons or a trade group comprised of change-sorting apparatus-operators (I made those two up; they very likely exist), it is imperative to remember that they are serving a group of committed members whose goal is to become more effective, more efficient, and more educated. Association-lead meetings could never have a bad outcome, if done effectively. They serve each other, and the general public inherently benefits as well.

This brings me full circle to my own role in this whole process. As a product manager for software which serves associations, it is important that I set some of my metrics and measures for success around some of the many intangible variables which I have described above. "Have I made my end-users more effective and efficient at reviewing and planning quality programs for their members? Has the content and collateral, which our system manages, been able to be distributed to the most accessible, syndicated, enduring content channels? Have continuing education credits-earned increased as a result of a process that our system has helped to impact? Were members, who were unable to attend, able to take advantage of any of this knowledge remotely, using our technology?” Many of these questions might be answered with a simple “yes” or “no;" however, it makes sense to search for ways in which the true success-metrics we bind to our product take some of these considerations into account. I think that I will have my work cut out for me. In this particular case, attending a member event not only helped the members to learn from each other… I most certainly learned something as well.

The Show Must Go On

Difficult financial situations will always remain depressing. We’ve all noticed the precipitous decline in market value, stability, and personal wealth over the past months. It’s not just occurring locally either; this trend has now spread worldwide. Wants and needs have suddenly become painfully polarized, whereas in better times they would have overlapped in a much more satisfying manner. Education and obtaining best-practice knowledge definitely fall within the "needs bucket" however, these budgets are typically some of the first to be cut. Can you imagine this scenario?

"Well, there is a technique available—albeit cutting edge—that could save 6% more lives a year if understood and used properly … but we just can’t afford to send you to the conference to learn about it.”

Suze Orman probably doesn’t need to be around to remind you that this would be a “good debt” to incur.

Never before have there been so many reasons to make an investment in opportunities and technologies that will streamline effort and cost required to stay connected, educated, and ahead of the competition. Demand for education has certainly not declined proportionally with market financial trends: ACCME reports that CME-related activities are up 20%, participant volume is up 5%, and credit issuance is up 4% in 2008 (outdated material -- anything for 2009?). These trends certainly don’t describe a recession. Nevertheless, Las Vegas has seen 402 conferences cancelled from October, 2008 to mid-March, 2009 (at a cost of $166 million to the local economy) and the city has suffered a loss of an equivalent 95,000 hotel rooms. Now, these trends certainly do describe a recession. What is the gap? Where is this demand going? (Hint: It’s probably not to Atlantic City, just because it’s a little less chic.)

The fact is that the demand for knowledge and education will never change. However, the way in which people approach getting this information will change in a highly reactive fashion. Technology has enabled many advances in the ability to not only conduct research, to network and to attend “virtually,” but also to reduce costs like print and travel. Sounds like a solution, right? However, how many association events can you name that are suddenly taking place on Facebook with a overwhelming success? The proof is in the reality: it is much easier to identify ideas that feel like slick wins than to actually execute and deliver.

“You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.”

– Warren Buffett, 2001

Proven technology is hard-to-come-by since technology is always changing. The organization that I work with, OASIS, has been the leading provider of abstract submission, invitation, and event content planning software for over twelve years. That is a long time! Although the initial benefits that are apparent from using OASIS include gained efficiencies, such as reduced staff involvement and travel cost from an online abstract submission and review process, the visible member benefits are clear as well. OASIS offers tools such as Digital Posters, which offers the ability to have access to multimedia presentation content without ever leaving home. Remember the Facebook example? In comparison, associations are using and loving Digital Posters today. In fact, the European Congress of Radiology is not only using it to allow attendees to participate from home, but also to show their poster long after the congress. This is a concept that works immediately.

Another consideration when making a reactive change in a volatile economy is choosing your battles wisely. If the strength of your organization is not running complex technology, why bother to start now? OASIS is delivered as a service, meaning that your already stretched-thin team will not have the burden or overhead of additional IT infrastructure and cost. It seems smarter to focus energy on delivering the best programming content possible, which is what your members need now, more than ever.

In a chaotic world, being idealistic about how to stay afloat simply will not work. Your organization and members require substance that is proven and allows your organization to retain the essence of what an association stands for: access to community and collective knowledge. OASIS can help you save cost and gain efficiency to survive the storm. Send me a note or a comment today. I’m excited to share all the different ways in which OASIS is preparing to help your association stay not just afloat—but ahead—in these trying times.