Understanding the Role of Podcasting At Events

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Yesterday’s conference had some interesting discussion about podcasting. It seems like such a long time ago since I did my last Beercast, but it’s been just a couple of months since the last conference we provided podcasting for.

It was during those discussions that I realized I hadn’t really captured the experiences in any form and thought it was a good time to start. We’ll be releasing a short white paper or two on Podcasting for Events soon. In the meantime, I’ll do a few different posts on the matter.

First and foremost, we should take a look at just what it is that we’re trying to accomplish with the use of podcasting. As it pertains to events, there are two primary opportunities that exist for podcasting:

Conference Content Archives - this is the process of recording and distributing the various speeches and presentations that occur during the conference, from keynotes to panels.
Attendee Experience Archives - this is the process of capturing the opinions of the attendees of the event on everything from the people they met to the sessions they attended.

Conference Content Archiving

Conference Content Archiving is really a modernization of the traditional audio recordngs that are done at events. This has provided a source of revenue for events for quite some time, but it's definitely not the top line item. Unfortunately, I'm not a huge fan of this format for a couple of main reasons:

Length - these recordings are often quite lengthy and are difficult to carve out the time for. It's no surprise that most podcasts call in the 30-50 minute range with many shorter ones.
Format - these presentations are largely supported by visual aids and intended for a live audience that has view of the supporting materials. Listening to a presentation that constantly refers to the slides on screen is hard to follow at best and confusing at worst.

Attendee Experience Archives

Attendee Experience Archives are an extension of the attendee surveys that are captured during throughout and after the event. They can be thought of as exit interviews in many ways, but they provide much more than just that.

Attendee Experiences are a critical component of every event. Positive experiences lead to repeat attendance and great buzz, negative experiences lead to negative press, poor impressions, and resistance to attendance. We call this form of archiving Social Podcasting.

With Social Podcasting, we engage the participants in dialog. This dialog is designed to surface the comments, questions and concerns that were raised throughout the event, from the seats in the presentations to the tables during the reception.

Naturally, this approach has many new, distinctive benefits:

Concise - with a minimal amount of coaxing, the audience sessions can cover large swaths of the material covered during the presentations - while also extracting the most interesting points
Conversational - unlike a standard presentation which features extended periods of speech from individuals, attendee sessions are often filled with the natural interruptions common to our everyday conversations
Colorful - the unique mixture of different voices drilling down on a discrete topic brings in a variety of opinions and objectives that entertains both the ears and mind
Viral - involving attendees in these sessions naturally leads to a desire to spread the word (or more precisely, their own involvement)

Conclusions

Regardless of the method chosen (though it's not an either-or situation) it's clear that the incorporation of podcasting into your event will clearly yield new opportunities for your organization.

Both mediums excel at creating lasting marketing pieces for your event. We’ve said it before and we’ll repeat it again - conferences are conversations. To date, we’ve done a poor job really capturing those conversations but the times and technologies are quickly making it possible for us to not turn our backs on the undeniable.

Conference Content podcasts bring the message to audiences that would previously have never had the opportunity to participate. Attendee Experience podcasts serve to extend and enhance this message and enable a new and exciting community development platform.