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+ Hybrid Meetings Case Study: eBay

SAE: Using the YouTube Model


SAE International, an association for mobility engineers, has never been averse to technology. The century-old nonprofit organization counts among its former officers such innovators as Henry Ford and Charles Kettering and has long been a strong force for standards development and the free exchange of ideas within the aerospace, automotive and commercial/heavy duty vehicle communities. So five years ago when SAE sought ways to expand the reach of its face-to-face events, it began providing a virtual component for remote attendees. The association began capturing video from small conferences and a few larger conferences and management programs, according to Darlene Waychoff, program manager of Engineering Events Development and Management at SAE. At first, the association posted video of its management panels free of charge to anyone. In the beginning, the number of customers accessing these videos wasnt very high due to the newness, Waychoff explains. However, as more videos were added, viewers increased. Though a small number of real time streamed videos from hybrid conferences continue to be offered free of charge, most of the captured video from these events is now available after the conference, on-demand for a fee. The average price for a 20-minute presentation is about US$19. Of 41 conferences SAE will produce this year, 26 will have a virtual component. Half of those will take place in Asia or Europe, according to Waychoff.

conferences and offering those recordings on-demand after the events had ended. In addition research suggested SAEs average customers preferred an offering of face-to-face events with on-demand videos. As its audience matures, the organization seeks to appeal to Generation X and Y, a group that is even more drawn to video, Waychoff says.

Digital is Deliberately Differentiated


SAE began videotaping the keynote/panel at its 2009 World Congress. The length was an hour and a half. The SAE team discovered that viewers preferred much shorter videostechnical presentations no longer than 20 minutes. From the beginning Waychoff and the SAE team strategically chose certain portions of the live event to make available digitally. They did not live stream the entire event because they didnt see the video as a replacement for it. The organization wanted to exclude certain components such as Q&A and networking to differentiate the remote access from the face-to-face experience.

Charging for On-Demand


SAE has always been a resource for technical papers, standards and books of interest to mobility engineers. However, captured video from the organizations hybrid events has now added a new source of content to its database while meeting customer expectations for multi-media content. The organization has developed a strategy for marketing the videos that features 30-second previews posted on YouTube. The previews are designed to catch attention and point viewers to the SAE website where the full-length videos are available for purchase. We positioned ourselves well with responding to our customers in offering technical content in a variety of ways including video, Waychoff says.

STRATEGY: Reaching a Global Audience


In the face of tighter travel budgets and lower face-to-face attendance at events, SAE sought to reach a more global audience and extend the visibility of the events by live-streaming portions of certain conferences, recording video from those

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The SAE team learned that people werent willing to pay for the video of management panel presentations. However, customers were willing to pay to access more technical information. So the organization continues to offer the management panel videos free of charge as an enticement and service to its members/customers while other videos are paid technical content. Thats the carrot that we dangle in front of them to let them know that SAE is producing content in video format, she says. Anyone can purchase the videos from the SAE website. The organizations Premium and Elite members receive 45 days of complimentary access to every video that is newly posted. After the 45 days, a purchase is required at a discounted price. SAE has also been approached by organizations seeking to obtain access to a large volume of their video library. The organization is considering how such interest can be delivered, packaged & bundled in the future.

7 Tips for Managing a Video Program


Effective content capture and management has led SAE to a whole new method for deriving revenue: content monetization. Here are a few tips gleaned from the SAE experience. 1. Create and Implement a Marketing Strategy for Captured Content. Consider the media through which your content is presented and market it accordingly, SAE has posted short preview videos of the video content they wish to distribute/sell on YouTube. Do as much as you can to maximize search engine optimization (SEO). 2. Create an Attractive Package. Consider different ways to package your content to make it attractive to different customer groups. For instance, SAEs ondemand viewers tend to prefer shorter presentations. Thus, videos presented for sale are typically limited to 20 minutes at most. SAE is planning video/written presentation pairings and smartphone access. 3. Make It Easy For People To Purchase Your Content. Set up a system on your site that makes it easy for people to view your products, choose and pay for them. Visitors to the SAE website can easily view and purchase a wide variety of captured video content and related resources. 4. Make Sure Everything is Legal. Make sure that you cover your legal bases by getting written permission from all speakers whose content you will be sharing, distributing or selling. Create standard forms and make sure to have them reviewed by a legal expert. 5. Consider Opportunities for Sponsors. Your content may be the perfect place for sponsors to share their message. Consider offering a short 30-second to one-minute spot in your captured videos to potential sponsors. Consider sponsorship opportunities in other forms of shared content such as written summaries and audio podcasts. 6. Consider Charging for Data Access. Over time, you may collect a vast database of captured content to which certain individuals might like unlimited access. Consider charging a set fee for such access to last anywhere from a month to a year based on the number of potential users or other measure. 7. Make Sure Your Content is Priced Right. Consider carefully what you will charge for your captured content. Make sure you take into account the prices you are charging for any other products on your website, as well as the prices other websites charge for comparable content.

Sponsorship
SAE has begun to create new revenue from the videos through sponsorships. A company contacted the organization expressing interest in sponsoring two of the video presentations. The company requested that the videos be made available at no charge to the public and offered to pay SAE to add a 20-second infomercial at the beginning of each video. Additional companies eager to sponsor other videos in the same manner have since warmly received SAE.

Marketing
SAE has hired a social media manager who will partner with Waychoff and the organizations marketing department. Together they plan to assemble a comprehensive marketing plan that will include more targeted promotions. Waychoff says they plan to include targeted promotions that push information out. SAE will also continue to post 30-second previews of its videos on YouTube.

PRE-PRODUCTION: Lessons Learned on the Ground Floor


In the five years that SAE has been producing hybrid events, Waychoff and SAE have learned a lot through trial and error. Based on her experience, she offers the following tips for dealing with hybrid event suppliers: Consult with all stakeholders and determine your long-term objectives. Seek suppliers who mesh with your long-term objectives. Partner with companies that want to lead and educate you. One way Waychoff was able to identify suppliers who met the above criteria was to schedule a meeting to which she invited SAE leaders to hear pitches from technology suppliers they were considering. The experience proved educational for her and for the organizations executives and it helped Waychoff and the team to find service providers that more closely matched their needs.

ONSITE: What Engagement Looks Like


An SAE Voice of the Customer focus group study indicated that remote attendees clearly wanted to interact with video content. So whenever SAE produces a live webcast, the remote and live

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audiences are encouraged to ask questions via text. Waychoff says that in the future she would like to offer the ability for remote attendees to communicate prior to a session; recommend different topics or questions; and talk with the author or chat with an expert.

will most likely be captured on video, assuming that the speaker gives permission to record, she said.

Under 20 Minutes
The format of most SAE sessions is well-suited to the on-demand format, as each is usually 20 minutes long with a 10-minute Q&A session that is not videotaped. Even when we get into the more in-depth presentations, which are the symposia, we will still attempt to keep it to a short time frame because of the feedback that we received from our customers. Most people can only take in so much in that 20 minute time period.

New Technology Aids the Process


Over the years, SAE tried different vendors and processes for capturing their sessions for online viewing. Working with multiple vendors syncing the video, audio and PowerPoint was very time consuming. Once they began using Sonic Foundry, which syncs the video, audio and PowerPoint in real time, they were able to save a lot of time. Who would have ever thought that we could have this little briefcase thing synced in and a few cables hooked into the audiovisual thats already there and boom, youre set up, Waychoff says. The convenience, the time, the access is just unbelievable. TIP: Waychoff has found that viewers often dont really care about seeing the person who is speaking during a presentation. They just want to hear the content and see the presentation. So, in many cases, the video camera was eliminated and the PowerPoint presentation was synced with audio alone. This change has allowed SAE to cut out a large expense without losing anything in the presentation, according to Waychoff. The organization has received a great deal of positive feedback regarding this presentation format. This year SAE also plans to provide access to its videos via mobile device. The younger professionals, this was a request of theirs, she says. They want to be able to see videos on a phone.

Speakers Permission
Speakers who are videotaped (mostly voice over PowerPoint) by SAE must sign off on a speaker agreement before the organization may share videos of their presentations. Some of these agreements give SAE permission to host and distribute the videos and others give the organization permission to share the public domain videos with the stipulation that there is no charge. The presenters are granted complimentary access to their own videos.

TAKEAWAYS: Be Patient and Guide Your Audience


It may take a while, but by patiently guiding your customers as they adapt to new methods and technology, you are likely to see them eventually appreciate and adopt it, advises Waychoff. Within a few years they love it. They wont want to turn back.

Make Sure You Align With Other Departments


As SAE attempted to determine how to price the on-demand video presentations, leaders found it extremely useful to communicate with other departments in order to determine if the pricing is in line with other organizational products and services.

POST-PRODUCTION: Measuring Success


Waychoff measures the success of SAEs efforts by monitoring the number of views of the videos on their website. Currently, SAE gets a few thousand hits to its video page per month and this number is increasing. A total of 546 videos are posted on the SAE website, of which, 388 are derived from captured event content. All of the event videos have a preview posted on YouTube. The videos have not yet produced much revenue for SAE. More importantly, we are providing content in a variety of ways, and the views/hits are clearly increasing, Waychoff says. And its very interesting. If I look at our live webcast of last years conference, having those videos online throughout the year following the event more than doubled the amount of hits we received, she says. Its interesting that more people touched upon it after the fact than during. And thats exactly what we want.

Study Your Customer Base


Conduct focus groups of your customers or members to more accurately determine what types of media they appreciate most. Take into consideration that younger generations may prefer a very different way of receiving information than those who are more mature.

Take Advantage of Educational Opportunities


There are so many webcasts out there today, many of them free of charge. Take advantage of that, Waychoff suggests. When you go to ASAE, IAEE, PCMA and MPI, it seems like theyre including many sessions that are video or different-medium related. Be a sponge and take in as much as possible.

Content Capture & Management


Initially, SAE hired a company to develop a program specific to its videos and the videos were hosted on the hired companys website. Since then, the organization has hired a web strategy manager, and last fall, all the videos were moved onto the SAE website with an e-commerce system. Waychoff anticipates SAE will add 200 to 300 new videos to its database in the coming year. The organization is also considering how the videos can be packaged with other products such as articles, books or papers. In the future SAE hopes to package the videos with written technical presentation summaries. Presentations with no written component

Look at What Comparable Organizations Are Doing


Waychoff says she did a lot of benchmarking of how comparably sized organizations were capturing and using content. I went out to find out what they had available and learned a lot. You just have to be open to taking in as much information as you can. There are so many different models and some may be more applicable than others to your organization, she says.

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Supported By
Mediasite Events is the trusted market leader for conference webcasting, hybrid meetings and video management solutions. Powered by the patented Mediasite webcasting platform, our expert technicians provide the highest quality webcasting experience to organizations who seek to complement their events by streaming to viewers on any computer, tablet or mobile device. Mediasite Events empowers meeting professionals to reach new audiences, build instant archives of video presentations and explore new revenue streams online. Visit http://events.sonicfoundry.com to learn more. TNOC | The New Objective Collective brings ideas to life using live and digital communications. The collective is specialized in crafting Live, Hybrid and Digital Events and training teams to deliver them effectively. Collective contributors use modern collaboration techniques to provide objective-based services. The projects are managed in online collaboration spaces enabling geographically dispersed team and their supply chains from around the globe, each with a distinct specialty, to collaborate. Whenever possible, the collective uses open source methodologies and innovative collaboration partnerships to consult and deliver live and digital event experiences for corporations, associations and open source communities. Interactive Meeting Technology, LLC is an event technology consultancy, which creates digital interactive experiences that transform attendees into active participants. It helps clients develop a strategy around their digital initiatives. Then, it brings their vision to life. The company works across Web, mobile, social, digital signage and hybrid meetings. The Meeting Support Institute is an association for companies and individuals with products or services on the content side of meetings, offering a wide range of tools from art to technology, AV to facilitation, knowledge to science. Its goal is to help meeting professionals design the content side of meetings and events. The institute informs and educates about available tools in the market via its knowledge base, presentations, dinners and conference. Here, suppliers meet each other and their clients. The University of Derby Corporate is the corporate training and development division of the University of Derby. The school works with a wide variety of organizations to deliver work-based learning programs and accredited qualications that improve key capabilities, such as service, innovation, leadership and problem solving.

The Authors
Jenise Fryatt Fryatt has a background in journalism and communications and more than 20 years experience in the event industry as the co-owner of U.S.-based Icon Presentations audiovisual company. An avid meeting industry blogger, social media consultant and former community manager for Engage365.org, Fryatt also has extensive experience leading virtual discussions, creating and distributing content online and studying and participating in virtual-event experiences. Ruud W. Janssen, CMM A digital global nomad, Janssen is an online collaboration and bespoke new media specialist for events, as well as speaker and trainer. With a solid background in conference organizing and hospitality marketing, he has a curiosity and appetite for slow food and fast media. Living in Basel, Switzerland, he is the founder of TNOC.ch, an unconventional marketing collective specializing in crafting live, hybrid and virtual experiences for international, organizations. He is also founder and curator of TEDxBasel and co-founder of Event Camp Europe. Richard John As workforce development fellow at the University of Derby, John brings academic perspective to the project. The university makes a virtual events simulator, the eAPL (Accreditation of Prior Learning) process and a body of research available to the team. John is also a course director for the Chartered Institute of Marketing and a guest lecturer on events management programs at universities in the U.K. and Germany. His articles on face-toface communication have appeared in more than 50 magazines, and he is a regular columnist in a number of MICE magazines. Rosa Garriga Mora Rosa is an ROI consultant for meetings and events and serves as marketing and media manager for the Event ROI Institute. She holds a masters degree in international events management from Stenden University in the Netherlands and London Metropolitan University. She is a certied meeting architect and is editor of the book The Tweeting Meeting. She currently lives in Barcelona, Spain, where she also works on projects related to meeting design. Samuel J. Smith Smith is a thought leader, speaker and award-winning innovator on event technology. In 2011, BizBash Magazine named him one of the most innovative people in the event industry. In 2010, Smith co-founded Event Camp Twin Cities, an innovation lab for events that rewrote the rules for attendee engagement in hybrid events. Smith judges the annual EIBTM Worldwide Event Technology Watch Awards in Barcelona, Spain.

MPI Staff
Marj Atkinson, research manager Jessie States, editor, meeting industry Jeffrey Daigle, creative director

Editorial Support
Jennifer Juergens, president, JJ Communications

About the MPI Foundation


The MPI Foundation is committed to bringing vision and prosperity to the global meeting and event community by investing in results-oriented initiatives that shape the future and bring success to the meetings and events community. For more information, visit www.mpifoundation.org.

About MPI
Meeting Professionals International (MPI), the meeting and event industrys largest and most vibrant global community, helps its members thrive by providing human connections to knowledge and ideas, relationships and marketplaces. MPI membership is comprised of more than 23,000 members belonging to 71 chapters and clubs worldwide. For additional information, visit www.mpiweb.org.

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