far-flung members while also modeling the use of cutting- edge technology. “I thought, ‘We have to do this,’” he said. “‘We just have to take the bull by the horns and do it.’” And so they did—at GMC’s Sept. 30 educational meet-

ing, at McCormick Place in Chicago, where the Disney Insti- tute’s Sharon Pleggenkuhle spoke to an audience of 200 people. Her presentation, “Disney’s Approach to Inspiring Creativity,” was alsoWebcast to a remote audience of about 200 more, and was fully interactive, with plenty of give-and- take with the audience, and virtual attendees encouraged to participate via Twitter. Their comments and questions were displayed on monitors in the meeting room, where live atten- dees could read them. McCurry acted as the event’s tech moderator, helping to bring the live and virtual audiences together by periodically relaying questions and comments that were sent via Twitter. The results? “It was a virtual home run,” McCurry said.

TheWebcast allowed GMC to double its average meeting attendance and greatly expand its geographic reach. People from 25 states participated virtually, including in five “pod” locations, where they gathered together to watch theWeb- cast. The option to attend virtually boosted the percentage of planner members who attended, McCurry said, and feed- back was overwhelmingly positive. Not that hosting the hybrid meeting didn’t demand extra

effort. A task force began working on it months in advance, McCurry said, and coordinating the details “took about a zillion conference calls.” Plus, there were added expenses, even accounting for the fact that theWebcasting technology services were donated. But, still, the chapter has already decided that it will

present another meeting blending face-to-face and virtual elements this year. “It’s kind of one of those things,” McCurry said, “that once you go there you can’t turn back.” But it probably won’t look exactly the same: “There is new stuff coming out every week, and as new technology comes along, we are going to embrace it.”

EXPERIMENTING ON THE EDGE

Meeting: The Virtual Edge Summit, May 28–29, 2009, Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, Calif.

WhyWe Like It: Virtual Edge brought together sea- soned pros and newbies—lots of newbies—to share, learn, and develop best practices for integrating virtual technology into meetings and events.

ON_THE_WEB

To learn more about the Virtual Edge Summit, visit www.virtualedge summit.com and www.virtual edge.com.

Michael Doyle began organizing the 2009 Virtual Edge Summit—a two-day conference to educate event producers, meeting planners, and marketing professionals on how to plan and produce virtual events—in September 2008, amid early ripples of the economic crisis. As the ripples turned into waves,

and the waves crested, swamping travel budgets and wash- ing out meetings, “People who I’d been talking to about vir- tual events for four or five months suddenly got it,” said

www.pcma.org

MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE: About halfthe attendees at the Virtual Edge Summit last May were physically present at the Santa Clara Convention Center. The other halfattended virtually.

Doyle, executive director of the Virtual Edge Institute. Since then, interest has only grown, Doyle said, with

demand for virtual event and meeting technology services skyrocketing by 40 percent to 50 percent last year. Yet the virtual events industry is still in its early stages. Said Doyle: “Everybody is still just figuring it out.” That’s where the Virtual Edge Summit came in. The inau-

gural conference—which brought together nearly 600 in- person and virtual attendees for two days of presentations, case studies, and experimentation—was the first virtual- meetings event to focus on planners, said Doyle, who for- merly worked as a publisher and event director for the Reed Elsevier publishing company, where he organized conferences around business magazines. Virtual Edge’s keynotes and workshops addressed topics

ranging from virtual-event methodology, to social-media strategies, to measuring the ROI of virtual events. Only 10 percent of participants had experience with virtual events, while another 50 percent were actively involved in planning their first one. The remaining 40 percent, Doyle said, were trying to figure out virtual event strategies, asking, “Do we do this? And how do we do this?” The meeting also functioned as a laboratory—a very big laboratory, with participants from five countries, including China—blending live and virtual environments in experi- mental ways. Some speakers presented live at the Santa Clara Convention Center, addressing in-person and virtual audi- ences simultaneously. Other speakers presented in virtual environments, which were projected onto screens for audi- ences in the convention center. About half of the participants attended in person, with the

other half participating in virtual environments or watching the conference live viaWebcast. And some of the participants could be considered both live and virtual attendees, Doyle said, since many of them physically left the convention center to join sessions from their laptops in their hotel rooms, so they could experience the event virtually. Virtual Edge has a shelf life beyond the initial two-day

conference. In October, the Virtual Edge Institute announced a partnership with Loyola University in Maryland that is intended to increase understanding of the effectiveness and efficiency of virtual meetings and events. And just last month, Virtual Edge 2010 was held in Santa Clara and online, with a program that expanded upon many of the topics addressed at the first conference.

Barbara Palmer is a senior editor of Convene. pcma convene March 2010 59

COURTESY VIRTUAL EDGE INSTITUTE