Working Smarter By Hunter R. Slaton

Take Away

Just theTicket

Ticket Summit’s month-long Twitter-based trivia contest shows that it doesn’t take a ton of money to get good ‘ROG’—return on game.

Last month in Convene, Senior Editor Barbara Palmer interviewed gamedesigner JaneMcGonigal, and askedwhether therewas an affordableway to add games to meetings. “What we fail to see a lot of people successfully doing is just using regular socialmedia as a platform,” McGonigal replied. “YoucandoaTwittergameusing a hashtag; Face- bookgroups are runninggames.Youdon’t have to have a full-featured video game.” This DIYphilosophy is something thatTicket

Summit, a biannual conference and trade show for the live entertainment industry, embraced through-

slight change of schedule, it was announced exclu- sively throughTwitter.” After Las Vegas, Ticket Summit decided to

double down on its social-media emphasis. One manifestation of this was“Trick orTweet,”which was intended to get people more engaged with TicketSummit. Mérez said,“We’ve been ... asking our audience specific questions about the upcom- ing show, trivia about theWaldorf=Astoria”—in NewYork City, where the Ticket Summit winter conference will be held next month —“and the winners of some of our EnterpriseAwards.” As an incentive to play along, Ticket Summit

offered prizes in the form of conference swag— branded coffee mugs, polo shirts, notebooks,mon- ey clips, and so on. Andwhere could the answers to the trivia questions be found?On Ticket Sum- mit’swebsite, of course.Mérez said:“Wewanted to have them really dig through our site to learn more about the show, to get an answer.” A dedicated Ticket Summit team continually

out October with its Twitter-based “Trick or Tweet” trivia game. In an interview with Convene, Ticket Summit Executive Director Molly Mérez, Ph.D., said that, while the conference has had a Twitter account for some time, “it wasn’t until July”—inLasVegas, whereTicket Summit’ssum- mer conference takes place — “that we started being extremely proactive [onTwitter].” Mérez added: “We had people tweeting all through the conference. If there happened to be any

monitors and manages the organization’s social- media channels (including LinkedIn and Face- book; see Take Away for more). But other than that, Mérez said, monetary investment in the Twitter effort has been minimal—andthe bene- fits have been striking. During October alone,Tick- et Summit saw its number of Twitter followers more than double, to more than 600. (EachTick- et Summit typically draws 600 to 700 attendees.) But it’s not all fun and games. After grabbing

attendees’ eyeballs with the trivia contest, Ticket Summithas been free to slip in reminders about reg- istration and hotel-roomdeadlines, as well as pose conversation-starter questions such as “What’s your favoriteNYCnightclub?”Theconference also has tapped the knowledge of the online communi- ty it has cultivated,Mérez said, to allowattendees to “suggest panel topics, trade-show components, or general ideas to enhance the show.”

ON_THE_WEB: @Ticket_Summit’s Twitter page is www.twitter.com/ticket_summit; its LinkedIn Group is http://linkd.in/ticket-summit; and its Facebook page is www.facebook.com/ticketsummit. To read Convene Senior Editor Barbara Palmer’s interview with Jane McGonigal about games and meetings, see www.pcma.org/Convene/Triple-Shot.htm.

42 pcma convene December 2011 ILLUSTRATION BY GREG MABLY

Switching Channels Ticket Summit uses bothTwitter and LinkedIn (and, to a lesser extent, Facebook) to com- municate with its audience — but for different purposes. “For LinkedIn we definitely use it more for networking, for starting new busi- ness conversations,” said Molly Mérez, Ph.D. “We have got- ten in touch with vendors and gotten leads for keynote speakers.” In contrast,

“Twitter we definitely use to engage a broader audience,” Mérez said. “We want it to be more exciting and less business-focused, getting them to learn about who we are and about what Ticket Summit is.”

Hunter R. Slaton is a senior editor of Convene.

Working Smarter is sponsored by PSAV Presentation Services, www.psav.com.

SURVEY SAYS: A snap- shot ofTicket Summit’s Twitter page on Monday, Oct. 24, during the conference’s month-long “Trick or Tweet” trivia game.