CROWD PLEASERS: High spirits and high- quality education marked EventCamp NYC 2010,which grewout of an online commu- nity. Founder Christina Coster, below, organ- ized the conference with a volunteer planning team that included Jessica L. Levin,CMP, Seven Degrees Communica- tions; Jeff Hurt,Velvet Chainsaw Consulting; Mike McCurry,CMP, Experient; and Mike McAllen, Grass Shack Events&Media.
Welcome,Campers! F
OR MEETING PROFESSIONALS nervously wondering if social media’s power to connect commu-
nities online might siphon attendance fromtheir own live events, David Adler, founder and CEOof the media and events company Bizbash, has some encouraging words. Social media is the beginning of
events—not the end, Adler said during a session at EventCamp NYC 2010, held on Feb. 6 at the Roger Smith Hotel in NewYork City. “There will be an explosion of face-to-face events,” Adler said, “as a way of extending social media.” EventCamp itself proved
Adler’s point: It grew directly out of EventProfs, a year-old digital community of event professionals who meet twice weekly via the Twitter hashtag group #eventprofs. Last summer, EventProfs member Christina Coster, a NewYork
14 pcma convene March 2010
CONVENE ON SITE
EventCamp NYC 2010 brings a virtual community face-to-face
City–based independent meeting planner, suggested that the group hold its own unconference-style meeting to discuss social-media strategies and events. Four more EventProfs members volunteered to help plan the meeting. The day-long conference drew more
than 70 registered attendees—and heavy-hitting presenters such as Jason Falls, a Louisville, Ky.–based consultant and author of the Social Media Explorer blog (www.socialmedia explorer.com), which Advertis- ing Age ranked first on its list of the top 150 social-media blogs, and Deirdre Breakenridge, author of PR 2.0: NewMedia,
NewTools, NewAudiences. The conference’s buzz also came
fromits reliance on attendees to gener- ate content. Conversations about pro- posed sessions began online weeks before the event, shaping the conference
schedule.Some of EventCamp’s liveliest discussions were sparked during ses- sions that themselves used interactive methods, including a “fishbowl” tech- nique that allowed attendees to move in and out of a ring of five chairs in the mid- dle of the room to speak. The conference also was a real-time
experiment in blending virtual and face- to-face attendees. Sessions were broad- cast to a larger virtual audience,whose members had watched a total of 330 hours of conference programming online within two days of the meeting. And, not surprisingly for a conference born on Twitter, there were lots of tweets, with more than 200 contributors posting under EventCamp’s hashtag, #EC10. Online discussion on Twitter and blogs
continued after the conference, including talk about EventCamp 2011 (planning is already under way) and the No. 1 take- way from EventCamp 2010.A growing consensus echoed Adler’s words: “Social media will not replace F2F events. It will create them.” To learn more about EventCamp NYC