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Jaime Gottlieb
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A south Florida native, Gottlieb is a Creative Writing graduate from Florida State University and was a freelance Arts and Entertainment feature writer before joining ADOTAS in 2004.

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Canvassing Virtual Tradeshows: The Praise, Criticism and Hurdles Facing the Web Meet-and-Greet

Written on
February 15th 2006
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by Jaime Gottlieb  |
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That being said, Schonfeld deduces, “the expo was a learning experience. While it was easy to use, navigate, meet people, and keep records, it took out the face to face element that is crucial to a successful partnership between any two people or companies.”

While Schonfeld will be attending April’s eComXpo, which he says he “wouldn’t miss for the world”, many people have shared that same concern about human contact — or lack thereof. Even the virtual tradeshow speakers themselves have to approach their audiences differently, and in doing so, get different results. During the eComXpo last October, speakers could send in their Power Point presentations along with audio for the attendees to watch. This upcoming show, however, will feature a live Q & A session with the speakers among other things. This may be just the thing to change one speaker’s first impression.

In speaking with author and self-proclaimed “agent of change” Seth Godin, who experimented with virtual tradeshows at the October eComXpo, the holdup is not simply meeting people in person, but has more to do with human nature and real reaction to in-person conversation which changes your perception of each other. “The interesting question I think is why in a world where we can virtually hook up faster and cheaper do we need live events and I think my answer is that live events cause people to temporarily put aside some of their defense mechanisms,” he explains. “When someone is in a room with you or someone is pushing you in a certain way, you have to respond and if it’s online, there’s that piece of glass and you can be reading your email or whatever and you don’t have to confront a new idea the same way. So for me I thought it was an interesting thing to experiment with… but what I found afterwards is nobody sent me an email that said ‘your talk changed blank for me’ whereas that happens almost everyday from my books and my speeches in-person because the tactile interaction is different.”

From the speaker’s perspective, the issue is really about the novelty of meeting a big name in person. When the idea of a virtual tradeshow first made its debut, Godin’s ears certainly perked, but after further thought, he made some of his owns assessments. “The speakers that I work with got very excited about the Internet and they were going to have us all do Internet speeches and make us all rich,” he recalls, “and I said ‘Don, that’s not going to work’ because when I show up in person it’s a souvenir; people say ‘wow I can’t believe you persuaded Seth to fly here,’ But when I show up on the Internet, it’s just a talking head and so people treat it differently.”

But Jeff Molander, CEO of Molander & Associates, says the criticism is a bit unfounded for such a nascent platform. In fact, he believes the negativity could translate into publicity. “Virtual trade shows have been openly criticized and that’s a good thing in my opinion,” Molander claims. “After all, boisterous critics usually only appear when something has serious potential to disrupt the status quo. Some suggest that personal contact is too valuable… it can’t be replaced and perhaps that’s true. That stated, when it comes to educational opportunities, virtual tradeshows cut right to the chase in my opinion … in that there’s less distraction around the professional education element. Sorry fun-seekers, but the “noise” (i.e. late night parties, sometimes circus-like exhibit halls) generated by traditional “in the flesh” shows can offer serious distraction.”

As the debate ensues, the apparent holdup for virtual tradeshow development simply boils down to a need for more advanced technologies, something that would ease the pain of those who need that personal touch, while at the same time allowing busy worker bees to continue their daily careers without having to fly out to some disparate . “I believe over time online trade shows need to include more of a face to face aspect,” Schonfeld offers. “As technology grows and more live video chat and feeds are enhanced, this aspect will gain prominence and is inevitable.” And with newer and more easily accessible technologies like these, the idea of meeting face-to-face could completely change meaning altogether.

But with the need for people to get a little bit closer, what are events like Grosshandler’s eComXpo doing in terms of their technologies? “Our focus has been not on the technology but on the show itself,” he argues. “For example, iCongo [provider of hosted e-business solutions for business and consumer applications] actually had good technology, but their business is selling the customer technology and saying best of luck. InXpo’s business - and it’s reflective of working with us - is that they have very good technology, but they use their 5 years of experience to make sure the event itself is a big success.”

Whether or not eComXpo plans to expand their technologies going forward, they’ve already added features to this year’s event that weren’t present before, like that aforementioned ability to chat live with the speakers—panels will take the singular speaker’s place this time around. As for how they are measuring success, as Grosshandler explains it, it’s not currently tallied in dollars. “The last one we charged attendees, this one is free. It’s paid by sponsors and my bank account. Eventually, we’ll make money out of it, but now we want to grow the audience.”

The real challenge in his mind is educating the masses about what a virtual tradeshow really is and why they’re an effective way to connect with people despite the Internet constraints. “I’d say the challenge is twofold,” Grosshandler adds. “One is, if I’m trying to get an exhibitor or a presenter or an attendee on board, they just have no context to understand it. They quickly sort of turn off. Once you open up your mind and get your arms around it and see a demo of it, you see “Wow, there are some cool possibilities here.”

“So our challenge has been one of educating people on what a virtual trade show really is. That’s the biggest challenge.”



Reader Comments.

Ziff Davis Media has been producing virtual trade shows for the IT community for the past two years. We have tackled the “hand-shaking” and “lack of actual face time” interaction by including technology from a relationship marketing vendor - Intro Networks - http://www.intronetworks.com/introNetworks_content.html

Sponsor feedback has been overwhelmingly successful.

Posted by eric biener | 2:44 pm on February 16, 2006.

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