This document discusses moving events from a monologue to a dialogue by expanding engagement and reach through digital marketing and social media. It proposes facilitating conversations before, during, and after events to increase participation of both physical and online audiences. Key aspects include generating interest in session topics prior to events, integrating live feedback and questions during presentations, and continuing discussions after through sharing content and resources online. The goal is to inspire more engagement and dialogue across channels to better leverage events.

1. Digital Marketing and Events 2.0Moving events from a monologue to a dialogueand breaking through the physical barriers to expand engagement & reach This is the PowerPoint companion to my Digital Marketing and Events 2.0 Document. Martin Walsh Digital Marketing Director http://twitter.com/martinwalsh Version 3.0 Last Revised: 28 March 2009

2. Events 2.0 In this era of digital marketing, social media marketing and distributed channel experiences, the opportunities to extend the reach of our typically physical only events is enormous. Rather than investing hundreds of thousands of dollars and thousands of hours of resources simply to engage a small group of 100 or even 3,000 physical attendees, Events 2.0 allows Microsoft to significantly extend the reach and impact of the event to a much larger audience across the web. One key component of successful digital marketing today is to think about marketing from an inside-out perspective and not simply from an outside-in perspective. It is extremely expensive and risky to just try and bring customers to our website when in fact with social media and larger digital channels we can actually syndicate the event and it’s content to where the audiences already are. Digital Marketing is shifting away from Outside In marketing…. Television Out Of Home Radio Internet Search Direct Mail Search Dealer Website Newspaper

3. Events 2.0 The conversation map is a living, breathing representation of Social Media and it will evolve as services and conversation channels emerge, fuse, and dissipate. If a conversation takes place online and you’re not there to hear or see it, did it actually happen? Indeed. Conversations are taking place with or without you and this map will help you visualize the potential extent and pervasiveness of the online conversations that can impact and influence our business and our brands. to Inside Out marketing

4. Events 2.0 Participants come to events like TechEd to learn more about specific topics / products / technologies and or speakers as well as network with others. Most of the interest and engagement is actually in the vertical content streams (tracks / sessions) and not necessarily in the horizontal messaging or positioning of the event itself.

6. Generate interest through some initial thoughts and information on the topic.

7. Inspire conversations by asking for questions & feedback.

8. Begin a narrative around the personal journey, development & build up to the session as well as an insight into feedback and a personal thanks post the session.

9. Facilitate discussion and feedback. What content is important? What answers are needed? What do they want to see?

10. Facilitate initial networking and word of mouth to start a groundswell.

11. Begin to build personal equity in the session / subject.

12. Syndicate the topic & session to where interest groups might be.

13. Leverage early adopters and evangelists - facilitate the syndication of the content, resources and invitations to influencers and interested people as well as encourage networking and participation.

14. Develop components / applications which encourage dialogue, word of mouth and syndication of the topic / event. Ie. Facebook page, LinkdIn, widgets, RSS, gadgets.

15. Include a Virtual Earth map demonstrating the locations of attendees and speakers.

16. Enable to ability to build, save, print and share intended event agendas.

17. Include an aggregation of relevant news, announcements, images / screen shots, videos, blogs, tweets, tweet clouds on the particular topic / session.

18. Utilise the social groundswell and interest to spread access to the content and rich media which will increase awareness, inspire interest and provide more detailed understanding and / or perception shift along with event registrations.

20. Contextual calls to action can be included in and around the live video stream.

21. Generally speaking on demand videos can be viewed by 10-15 times more than the number of people watching a live stream so making these available and sharable is critical.

22. Conversations will be happening during each session so embracing and integrating the chatter and conversations and utilising it to gauge sentiment and solicit questions and answers is very powerful and importantly it engages people.

23. Ensure specific questions and polls are being integrated into the presentation to engage the physical and virtual attendees.

24. Provide aggregation environments for the backchannel conversations, for example tweet clouds, hash tags, visualisation of conversations.

25. As near real time edit a wiki page for each session/track to add resources, links to downloads, case studies, related sessions, content, links and more questions etc. Delays here can reduce the power and effectiveness of the groundswell. If we talk about a download get the link out immediately both through the presentation and online.

27. As outlined, generally speaking on demand videos can be viewed by 10-15 times more than the number of people watching a live stream so making these available and sharable is critical.

28. Ensure the videos, podcasts and slide presentations are easily discoverable and importantly can be shared easily and embedded on other sites. (YouTube, SlideShareetc)

29. Ensure ratings and comments are enable to continue engagement.

30. Ensure relevant links to additional calls to action and resources are used.

31. Continue to energise the conversation by promptly answering questions and providing links and resources.

32. Ensure that we continue to maintain an aggregation of the latest news, reviews, comments and discussions happening around the session and the relevant topics, products and technologies.

33. Begin to introduce and highlight more persistent discussion locations for attendees to continue their interest and conversations.

34. Panel discussion at the end of the sessions bringing together conversations, questions and answers from the physical event and virtual participants using Twitter, IM, IRC and other interactive channels.

35. Facilitate the ability for the physical and virtual audiences to edit a wiki page for each session/track to add resources, case studies, links and more questions etc.

36. Facilitate and encourage people to share, rate and comment on each session.

37. Facilitate the ability for people to add, submit and contribute relevant news, announcements, images / screen shots, videos, blogs, tweets and their own experiences from the event both at the venue and online.

38. Either create or facilitate the ability for physical and virtual attendees to fuse their own memories or memorabilia from the event, snapshots, visualisations, mashup videos / photos and much more.

40. About Martin Martin is the Producer of the critically acclaimed and award winning The Battle of Long Tan documentary and from 2005 to late 2009 he was the Head of Digital Marketing at Microsoft defining, developing and executing Microsoft’s B2C and B2B global digital marketing and social influence marketing strategies & disciplines. Prior to Microsoft, Martin successfully led and grew the ecommerce division of a large Australian media & entertainment company from less than AUD$22 million in annual sales to more $AUD700 million in annual sales. Martin has worked in senior marketing roles across radio, film, music, games, entertainment and the technology industries for companies such as News Corporation, Village Roadshow / PBL, Austereo, Telstra, BMG (Bertelsmann), Sydney 2000 Olympics, Tabcorp & Microsoft. He specialises in B2C & B2B digital & traditional marketing, social influence marketing, social CRM, search engine marketing and online analytics. Martin has also advised organisationssuch as Australian Rugby Union, Cricket Australia, UNHCR, film distributors, games publishers, media and government on how to engage with consumers, commercially exploit their content and enhance their digital marketing capability & strategies. In parallel to Martin’s professional marketing career, he established Red Dune Films in early 2004 and acquired the film, documentary & story rights to the Battle of Long Tan from the seven Australian Long Tan combat commanders. In 2006 he produced the ASTRA award winning & TV Week Logie award nominated Battle of Long Tan documentary for The History Channel (FOXTEL) which was narrated by Sam Worthington (Terminator Salvation, Avatar & Clash of The Titans). Born In Melbourne but now living in Sydney, Martin originally began his career as an Actor before serving with Australian Army Special Forces - 2 Commando Company, 1st Commando Regiment and then studying innovation at Swinburne University earning a Master’s Degree and Graduate Diploma in Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

41. Thank you! mwalsh@reddunefilms.com twitter.com/martinwalsh