To Attend or Not to Attend….

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With tight budgets, a lot of thought needs to go into deciding what events to attend, exhibit, or sponsor to make the most of time and funds. But where do you start? There are events that bill themselves as "must attend," those where you know all your competitors will be, ones you truly enjoy, and there are untested events that have dynamic speakers. How do you decide where to spend your time and money?

As this article states, first consider your goal for attending. What do you want to get out of event attendance? What can these events provide you that you cannot get anywhere else? This could be one or a combination of the following: Continue reading →

Measuring the Thankfulness of Attendees

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Most events provide some type of feedback mechanism whether it is hard copy surveys left on chairs, post event email surveys, or open ended questions on social media. A post entitled "Do not poke the conference feedback bear if you are not willing to act" made us laugh and then got us thinking. How should we gather feedback to ensure we're able to act on it?

One key to getting effective, actionable feedback is the timing. How do you get people's fresh, raw opinions? Low tech paper surveys may be the quickest way to get an immediate response, but they are not terribly effective. Most people pick them up at the beginning of the session and have either stashed them away or taken notes on them by the end. How else can we gauge response right after an event or session while it is fresh in attendee minds? Continue reading →

Making the Social Network Real

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With the recent news of the cancellation of FOSE, we wanted to reflect on why an institution like that event is suddenly gone from the landscape. While the reasons are numerous, one key factor is that big tradeshows and conventions tend to be one-way conversations. While the speakers may be high profile and interesting there is no way to interact with them. In the social media age of instant gratification with retweets, likes, and replies, attendees want more than a bullhorn approach to communication, they want a dialogue. We've done some thinking on this and came up with a couple ideas on how to bring the interactivity of online social networks to real-life social networks.   Continue reading →

Make New Friends: How to Attract First Time Attendees

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In some of our more recent posts we have provided ideas for changing up regular events. From unconventional venues to slowing down event pace, to changing the content delivered--we've found a lot of inspiration for how to make changes. One more change you can make is attracting new attendees. A new group of people will bring different perspectives and will view your content (be it old or new) with fresh eyes. So how do you find these new people? This article in BizBash provided some great ideas that got us thinking. We wanted to expand on some of the ideas that are most applicable to government events. Continue reading →

It’s official: FOSE is dead — for now

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From time to time GovEvents will come across information we feel our members and audience would benefit from. Here's something we wanted to share:

Originally posted on FedBiz

It's been a long time coming: Murmurings of the demise of government technology conference FOSE are officially confirmed -- just as its owner, 1105 Media, shakes up its leadership.

GovLoop's Chris Dorobek, who is also the former editor of 1105 Media's Federal Computer Week, wrote Monday that the 37-year old event won't happen in 2015. Mark Amtower, a government contracting consultant and host of his own radio show on WFED, posted an obituary to LinkedIn Tuesday: "After a long coma, FOSE has passed away. Efforts to revive the once healthy computer show were, well, unsuccessful."

I wrote a blog in 2011 about the changing FOSE landscape, noting that "what used to be a primary gathering of federal contractors has become dominated by mostly small product manufacturers peddling their latest gadgets and software applications."

So, yes, this has been a long time coming. Continue reading →