Author Archives: immixGroup

More Event Cancellations + Something to Share with the Corporate Office

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Originally posted by Allan Rubin on immixGroup

First, here's some news on continued government event cancellations. Word on the street is that GFIRST 2013 will not take place this year "due to all of the budgetary/travel restrictions." Scheduled from August 25 to 30, the Government Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (GFIRST) "is a group of technical and tactical practitioners from incident response and security response teams responsible for securing government information technology systems and providing private sector support." There's no official posting yet, but expect one soon. That's too bad, as this has been a successful event for many of our clients in the past. Hopefully it will be again in the future.

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10 Tips to Make Your Government Events More Successful

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Originally posted by Allan Rubin on immixGroup

Several weeks ago I participated as a panelist at two events for government marketing professionals. At both theMid-Atlantic Marketing Summit, and the GovMark Council's panel on Life After Tradeshows Part II, much of the conversation focused on how marketers were dealing with decreased attendance from government attendees at live events.

Those in attendance shared common questions and angst. How long will the events drought last? What impact will Sequestration have? How do I get government speakers to commit and government employees to attend? How can I use money that was earmarked for cancelled trade shows to support my sales pipeline? Will virtual conferences replace in-person events? What should I tell my sales team?

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More Cancellations for Government Events

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Originally posted by Allan Rubin on immixGroup

My wife may disagree with this, but I take no great joy in saying "I told you so."

It's no secret that events targeting government employees have fallen on tough times. We've used this space repeatedly to encourage immixGroup clients and channel partners to re-evaluate their event marketing plans. Unfortunately, we're seeing more and more examples to prove this re-evaluation is necessary.

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Air Force IT Conference is Dead

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Originally posted by on immix Group Blog

R.I.P., AFITC.

As many of you know, the Air Force IT Conference held each August in Montgomery, Alabama was cancelled this past year. It had been held annually since 1983 and was the largest IT conference within the Department of Defense.

Now it looks like it's not coming back.

According to an announcement on Friday by Montgomery AFCEA President Joe Besselman, "the Air Force has no plans to ever restart an Air Force-led conference like AFITC." Besselman continued: "...the earliest one could expect a conference similar in nature is 2014. AFCEA International is working with the Air Force to gauge the need, content, and potentially the location."

This provides further evidence that DoD in particular is looking to consolidate trade shows and conferences to eliminate duplication and save taxpayer money. I'm all for that, but this takes a great marketing vehicle off the table for those looking to pitch their offerings to the Air Force IT community. This show was always a source of qualified leads and great relationship-building opportunities for us.

For those immixGroup clients who need to find a way to stay in front of this community, please contact us and we'll see what we can do. The Montgomery AFCEA chapter hosts a number of other events, including MITS 2013 in June. There's a tentative Air Force Industry Day event planned for the same time.

As I said in a previous post, keep your marketing plans and budgets fluid this year to accommodate changes like this. More are coming.