Open Password – Wednesday April 14, 2021
#909
Outsell – Event Management Platforms – Randy Giusto – In-person Events – Virtual Events – Hybrid Solutions – COVID-19 – Single Solutions – Bizzabo – Event Stack – Zoom – Plugins – Academic Markets – Conference and Poster Functionality – Customer Service – Magazines – Vanilla – Benchmarks – Integration Time – Customer Support – Net Promoter Scores – Essential Actions – Matchmaking – Workers – Unions – Amazon – Jake Alimahomed-Wilson – Ellen Reese – Luxembourg Online – Amazon Capitalism – One-Click Instant Consumption – Global Cloud Infrastructure – Logistics – Just-in-time logistics – Supply chain – Last mile – Amazon Delivery Service Partner – Amazon Flex – Logistics centers – Electronic and video surveillance – Rhenish capitalism – Trade union organization – Lockdown – tagesspiegel.de – Paul Nolte – Digital semesters – Canteens – Libraries – Hans-Christoph Hobohm – Elisabeth Simon – Frank Seeliger – Sebastian Nix – ZPID – Repository – Open Password – information infrastructure facilities
1.
Cover Story: April Contribution of Outsell – Virtual Event Best Practices – Event Management Platforms – By Randy Giusto
Think outside the box: Employees and unions are
irrelevant opponents for Amazon
heise online on April 10th, employees vote against the first US union at Amazon.
- tagesspiegel.de: At least open the cafeterias and the libraries – By Paul Nolte
Hans-Christoph Hobohm – ZPID repository
April Contribution of Outsell
Open Password’s International Partner
Virtual Event Best Practices
Event Management Platforms
By Randy Giusto, VP & Lead Analyst
Randy Giusto
Even as in-person events reemerge, companies must still use online event solutions they’ve already invested in. They must also fine-tune them or seek new ones as they move into hybrid events. We’ve seen interesting lessons so far among companies that have learned how to master these platforms.
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Methodology
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Outsell remains actively involved in researching virtual event solutions and talking with clients about past experiences and future plans. We help answer their questions, share their concerns, and help them think through strategies and identify best practices where we see them. In late 2020, we held 12 interviews with companies with substantial events assets as part of their business models, exploring their 2021 strategies for virtual and hybrid events along a number of topics. What follows is a summation of one topic in particular — event management platforms — and the collective lessons and best practices from those discussions.
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Key Practices
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Several companies we spoke with detailed the big learning curves they went through in 2020 as they scrambled to move in-person events online. For many, platform exploration, evaluation, testing, implementation, and training that would typically occur over a year had to happen in four to six weeks. Some companies already had a solution in place for webinars and tried to leverage that for larger events. Others went all in on new platforms that they thought could meet their needs for at least the next year. A few others selected a solution for a single event with the ability to move to something else for the next event if things just didn’t work out well.
We’ve heard many stories about the positive and negative aspects of using today’s crop of online event management platforms (EMPs) — specifically, where they sing and where they stumble.
Through our discussions, we have found that it’s best if companies don’t lock themselves into a platform long-term. So much is changing in the event space today, even as in-person events start to come back. The need to provide a hybrid solution for at least the next few years is real, and event management platforms were a niche market pre-pandemic. COVID-19 landed on the doorstep, and many stumbled as their underinvestment showed. They still have a way to go to become truly functional in the manner in which event teams need them to perform not only now but also down the road. In the meantime, companies need to think through their online event strategies and envision the kinds of tools they’ll need as they juggle virtual, hybrid, and in-person events ahead. Outsell recommends considering the following.
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- Seek a Single Solution with Customization If Resources Remain Limited.
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One company we spoke with moved to Bizzabo and found it a good, stable, and robust choice since the vendor will tweak things on the fly to suit their changing needs. They needed to focus on a single platform for most of their work and wanted to avoid the “wedding planner” approach with team resources so limited this next year. They now run peer-to-peer roundtables on Bizzabo and find the experience to be Zoom-like. This company also occasionally uses On24 and WebEx since large banks sanction the use of those platforms in the financial services space, one of several verticals this company serves.
Another company is moving away from Bizzabo after two years because they found it less flexible as their needs changed rapidly. What works for one company might not work for another, so make sure that the EMP chosen matches well with both present and future needs. It’s a piece of technology, and it must also scale as the needs of the event team and the company change.
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- Build an Event Stack If the Sales and Marketing Stack Is Already Diverse.
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Several companies we spoke with initially went for high-end solutions only to find out that they lacked flexibility and didn’t provide the data needed. As a result, they didn’t deliver on value, becoming just another black box solution. These companies run on pretty diversified sales and marketing technology stacks already. They are now building their own event stacks, much like these other stacks, to handle the intricacies of planning, facilitating, and executing a robust calendar of events.
One company is using Swoogo for registrations, virtual reality solution VIVE for award shows, and a Zoom plugin for most of its virtual events. Another is using Intrado for virtual events along with Brella for the networking component and a Zoom plugin as well. They find that a layered approach works best, made up of products that plug and play well together.
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- Find a Poster Solution That Works for the Association
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Among professional associations, especially in the science space, events revolve around the presentation of academic posters that function as a visual presentation of research findings. Not all EMPs address this particular need or cater to academic markets. One association we spoke with uses two solutions today — InEvent and iPosterSessions — but it will move to a single source this year. It is evaluating UnderLine, which might meet the teams’ new requirements this year for their science events, which must offer both conference and poster functionality.
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- Pay Attention to Customer Service Needs Up Front.
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Many companies don’t properly vet an EMP’s customer service reputation when shopping. When evaluating EMPs, don’t just talk to the sources that platform providers provide — talk to partners who use these tools, other peer companies in the same market, and Outsell Community members as well. Learn from them how fast they could spin things up and how adept these platforms are at customer service.
Find companies that really feel like their EMP providers act as partners or trusted advisors, not like just vendors. Look for one that not only offers customization and training but also makes customers look good. For example, one company we spoke with uses Unity Event Solutions as its formal virtual event solution and loves the platform and its level of customer support.
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- Plan Events Like Magazines, with Ramp-Up and Ramp-Down Modes.
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One company we spoke with advised that media businesses plan like magazines when running virtual and hybrid events.
For the first week, this company starts out with a series of 10-minute talks from sector experts and other thought leaders to warm up the audience. This happens a full month before the main event. It follows this up during the next week with a series of research related talks from its research and insights team, usually new reports or surveys. That leads into the third week, when it presents a series of how-to clinics focusing on educational content. Then comes the main event, which is no longer a three-day experience but just one day. After the main event, this firm offers a series of additional talks spread out over the next month that take several keynote talks and drill down on them further, with a smaller and more focused audience. It runs this schedule all on Vanilla, a community management platform that offers eventlike functionality. The company gets high commitment and satisfaction scores.
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Benchmarks
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Companies we spoke with articulated how they measure success when it comes to using EMPs for their virtual and hybrid event needs. These metrics include the following.
Integration Time . Simply put, this is the speed at which the company can swap out one platform solution for another or an older plugin for a newer one. For platforms, it’s often measured in weeks (hopefully not months). For plugins, it’s measured in hours or even minutes.
Customer Support . Companies measured this based on EMP service team response times and also the quality of support provided. For the latter metric, companies may survey their event teams several times a year to gauge their own satisfaction levels over time.
NPS. For many, net promoter scores across attendees, sponsors, exhibitors, and speakers are a key function of an event’s success. Overall platform experience and satisfaction on the part of attendees weigh into this as well, not just the quality of the speakers and the content provided.
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Implications
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Obviously, there’s no one platform that rules them all in the online event management platform space. Instead, there are dozens of solutions. The space is very crowded now, and investors have been pouring crazy money into the segment since mid-2020, as seen in the investments made in Hopin and others. Companies and event teams need to think through the tools they have and consider just how long they may meet their needs. Because the space is so underinvested in to begin with, new features and capabilities tend to take longer to roll out compared to other platforms in areas like marketing automation, CRM, and sales and marketing intelligence. Companies and events teams can expect holes in solutions for at least the next year or so. Many of the platforms mentioned above don’t handle one-on-one engagement and matchmaking particularly well. Plugins can fill this gap for now. EIPs will check this box eventually with further investment and new product development — they all know there’s demand out there for this in their platforms. As companies move toward hybrid events in the near future, the solutions they deploy both virtually and in-person will need to mesh well together, too.
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Essential Actions
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Companies and event teams need to constantly push the technology and providers to deliver a premium digital experience. They need to remain flexible as well when certain features or solutions fail. This includes switching out components or whole platforms quickly because the company’s image may depend on it. Here are four key actions to take while tackling the complexity of online event management platform solutions today.
- Consolidate Platforms, Not Plugins. For the larger companies we spoke with, the days of using four or five different event platforms across multiple event formats are over. Many don’t have the time, people, or money to operate more than two.Look at and compare platform use and costs and establish a baseline of functionality needed. Try to tier events into a good, better, best approach in terms of the platform flexibility needed. This kind of technology must scale in terms of the functionality, size, and complexity of the event, its audience reach, and business needs. Use a more barebones platform for webinars and smaller events and a more complex one for large-scale conferences and shows. Fill in gaps with plugins that test well. We’ve written about several of them, especially in the areas of engagement and matchmaking.
- Stitch Together a Best of Breed Solution . Find tools that help event teams stitch together a best-of-breed solutions mix. Make sure they’re interchangeable, too, and that they work toward the company’s workflow needs and the event teams’ requirements and purpose. Platforms ultimately need to be invisible to speakers and sponsors at some point, but the industry isn’t there yet.
- Roll Up the Sleeves on Engagement and Matchmaking. Expect to get more “hands-on” when it comes to actual matchmaking and one-on-one engagement efforts when using these platforms. Most EMPs don’t do these pieces well, as noted above, but don’t blame the platforms — technology can’t solve everything, at least not yet. The companies we’ve spoken with that have figured this out are more hands-on when it comes to this work. They use calendaring software as plugins but realize that a lot of facilitation work must still happen on their end. It’s high touch but also high reward when it’s done right.
- Get Out of the Way . Companies and event teams want to get more out of their platforms every day, but as one interviewee puts it: “You have to get out of your own way sometimes. If you use Drupal or WordPress for your company site, you can’t expect everyone on the team to be an expert in that tool.” Assign different people on the team to different parts of the platform and the various plugins. These platforms will all get to the same place eventually. It’s better to have a premium audience experience than a great technology experience with low NPS scores. Let specific team members develop specific platform specialties
Outside the box (36)
Employees and unions are
irrelevant opponents for Amazon
Interview with the authors Jake Alimahomed-Wilson and Ellen Reese, Amazon’s meteoric rise is a key moment in global capitalism, in: Luxembourg Online – Social Analysis and Left Practice ( www.zeitschrift-luxemubrg.de ), March 2021. The authors want to use the term “Amazon capitalism” points to the “new dimension of concentrated corporate power,” which, on the one hand, “manifests itself in size and influence on the global economy,” and on the other hand, “the costs associated with establishing the business model and the supposedly free shipping. These are borne by the employees, the municipalities and the environment.” Amazon has had a lasting impact on our shopping behavior through “the spread of “one-click instant consumption,” controls half of the global cloud infrastructure and is the world’s largest logistics company. The authors’ preliminary conclusion: Amazon “represents and drives many of the destructive forces inherent in capitalism: the exploitation and dehumanization of workers, tax avoidance, the extreme unequal distribution of wealth, obsessive mass consumer culture, surveillance, the erosion of privacy or the attack on the ecological integrity of the planet.”
So far, the company has proven largely invulnerable to the “working class.” Amazon currently employs 1.3 million people and will replace Walmart as the world’s largest employer in 2023. Its system is based on just-in-time logistics . “If you manage to identify critical points in Amazon’s supply chain and disrupt them through strikes or actions, considerable pressure can be put on the company.” The most vulnerable point is likely to be the last mile, i.e. the route from the distribution center to the customer. On the other hand, Amazon has a very complex logistics infrastructure, for example the ability to move order volumes from one department store to the next. With its services Amazon Delivery Service Partner (outsourcing of transport services to other companies) and Amazon Flex (self-employed people register as drivers on a platform), Amazon undermines attempts to organize unions. In the USA, logistics centers are often located in “colored communities with high unemployment”. There “is a high turnover, which has to do with dissatisfaction, but also with disciplinary measures and frequent dismissals. Electronic and video surveillance of workers, the pressure to work quickly and not have too much “free time” make it extremely difficult for workers to organize in the workplace.”
Accordingly, the “working class consists of defeated actors who are not relevant to social change? Such a view ignores “some important trade union successes of recent years. This includes the recent “Fight for $15” campaign, i.e. the union demand for a nationwide minimum wage of $15 an hour. This has been enforced in many cities and some states.”
Comment. The unfair treatment of employees by Amazon, which is unusual in Rhenish capitalism, is also well documented in Germany. When assessing the possibilities of changing this through unionization, interviewees confuse their own desires with what is actually possible. The entire interview can be read as an explanation why union mobilization processes, especially in the USA, can achieve little apart from occasional and mostly isolated successes. Even if we did not live in a time of continually weakening unions, all the structural factors such as local fragmentation and low skill levels would be in place to prevent sustained victories for the “working class”. Long-term improvements in the situation of Amazon employees would only be possible through political means (i.e. through the governments, possibly with the unions as junior partners, and as a prerequisite for success with a much broader program). The same applies to the other points of criticism, for example corporate “attacks on the ecological integrity of the planet”. By the way, Amazon is its customers’ best friend and ensured that customers continued to receive deliveries during the pandemic lockdowns.
heise online on April 10th, employees vote against the first US union at Amazon.
The union organizing campaign at a southern factory was supported by much of the liberal US, including President Biden. Amazon had argued that there was no need for a union because it already treated its employees better than the unions demanded. The trade unions responded that it wasn’t about wages at all, but about improving working conditions and reducing constant surveillance.
tagesspiegel.de
Start of the second digital summer semester:
At least open the cafeterias and the libraries!
“Whether in neighboring Potsdam or in Munich, with which Berlin likes to compete academically, students can eat there even during the semester break; the minimum is “to go” offers. The refusal of the Berlin Student Union, which after a year of pandemic has only allowed two food trucks to go to student dormitories (with which Berlin is already undersupplied as a result of decades of neglect), is a quiet scandal.
After eating, students need nothing more than a decent place to work. Many people rely on libraries because it is too restless in their shared room or with their parents – learning and studying behavior had changed in this direction long before the pandemic. Now the jobs are missing. Libraries are really trying.
But where is the initiative of the state and the large universities to provide such places in suitable locations with a well-thought-out hygiene and usage concept? Lots of space, table, chair, socket, WiFi – done. That shouldn’t be possible after a year of pandemic?”
Paul Nolte, Start of the second digital summer semester – At least open the canteens and libraries!, in: tagesspiegel.de, April 9th
Note from Open Password: Why not entrust the UBs with these tasks right away? Can you rent rooms and equip them correctly and even better thanks to comparable experiences?
Hans Christoph Hobohm
Laudations!
Retirement makes you restless. Another laudation in Open Password (#905 #908). Do I really mean that? Thanks for the great honor to Elisabeth Simon, Frank Seeliger, Sebastian Nix, @wilhelmHeinrich and many more!
In: Twitter
OpenPassword
“Perspectives of scientific information infrastructure facilities”
posted in the ZPID repository
tifier to cite or link to this item: http://dx.doi.org/10.23668/psycharchives.4752
Title:
Perspectives of scientific information infrastructure facilities using the example of psychology: trends, challenges, solutions
Authors:
Weber, Bianca
Bosnjak, Michael
Weichselgartner, Erich
Rosman, Tom
Issue date:
25-Jun-2020
Publisher:
OpenPassword
Abstract:
Science needs reliable information infrastructures. The article highlights the challenges and trends they face. The challenges are limited to the topics of (1) open access, (2) research data management and (3) information literacy. The challenges and trends that are emerging are then discussed using a concrete example of an information infrastructure facility from psychology. Psychology is suitable in this context because it established an infrastructure facility half a century ago and therefore has relevant experience. Finally, the relationship between libraries and infrastructure facilities is discussed.
URI:
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12034/4194
http://dx.doi.org/10.23668/psycharchives.4752
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