Methods and Procedures

Who Develops the Content?

This page is a Method and Procedure Guideline for pulvermedia's content team.  The answer as to who develops content is actually everyone.  Our customers, our audience, our research.

Where does it start?

Venue and length of conference is a good answer to this question.  The location of the event, drives alot of the choices of speakers.  Additionally the subject and the partner's resources such as advisory boards are a good example.

Research should be done with the following tools

1. Our internal system VON Registration system.   Besides the proposals that may have come into the system.  It is possible to extract out all names and from there find previous speakers,  You can send a general mailmerge email Mail Merge Tool .  A good email is SingleSubject and requests a simple action. For example... Subject:  Need your advice.  Body Hi $(First), we are going to be holding an event on a this date and this location.  We are looking for your guidance.  Has there been a speaker, topic or event in your area that you feel we should include in our content?
2. Competitive shows are always good to learn from, but it is always better to hear about the show before believing the website and literature.  IIR USA , Communicasia and Informa are good resources for telecom. You can also look at things like Om Malik's Gigaom, Mike Arrington's Techcrunch and Digital Hollywood
3. Who does this serve. This is primarily Internal. One thing that is good to do when looking at competition is to determine if you can find a connection to their speakers through linkedin, facebook, etc.

What is an Event Resume?

After the data collection and research is gathered, the next step is to verify the opportunity in the marketplace. The Event Resume then has a number of audiences,  Internally it is a sales tool and a starting point for the marketing's advertising campaign and website.  Externally it can be shared with key customers to gain further understanding and validate the research done in phase 1.

An example of an event resume is the FMCEventResume.doc

 and an outline for the resume is here Event Resume.doc

Who writes the Sessions Descriptions?

This stage builds on the first two and its important to discuss the needs of marketing.  Marketing is looking for copy that represents the descriptions and the speakers. Particularly the big names that draw audience.  These names should be chosen as early in the process as well.  At this point we should follow the guidelines of the marketing due dates.  However the reality is that the work we do to automate the work should align us with the marketing department requirements.

My normal objective in writing a session title description is

Find the Catchy Title

Then write three or four sentences that describe the current state of the topic, the audience, and what you will learn.  This works well for the way we print our marketing materials, but the truth is that we are different then most of our competitors.  Should we be more like VoiceCon or InterOp?  Does their use of partners help in the work?  My view is they help alot, but they can not be relied on initially to follow the due dates.

For the descriptions of the sessions found at Spring VON Europe June 2008 Spring VON March 2008 and Virtual VON May 2008, it took me about 2 weeks to identify the sessions and the probable speakers or their companies.

What comes next is the Speaker Coordinators job?

The aaumption here is the assignment of a speaker coordiantor has been done. A whole report should be built inviting the companies.  For me having knowledge of the contacts it took me 3 days to get the spreadsheet in operation.  This is a copy of a document that matches to that springsession08.xls My expectation is that this part of the process takes a week for a speaker coordinator.

In using the format above I used the Mail Merge system. The result was that I sent over 200 invites in one moment with a personal single subject email with a success of 25% response.

I used this template.  Most importantly the result is a dialogue is now trackable at a master level.

Hi $(First),

I would like to invite $ (Company) to speak $ (Conference).

The session I have in mind is titled: $ (Title), which I describe below.

$(Description)

Bill Kelly and I are also looking at the proposals still being submitted and would offer you opportunity to offer alternative sessions, titles, and descriptions.

With Fall VON nearly complete I will be working on the content for next year over the next two weeks and would like a reply by Novermber 12th.

I look forward to hearing from you,

Kind Regards,

Carl

So its a Cycle at this point?

Yes, its a cycle,  It's pretty safe to say that the due of two weeks to response is a good number.  Most responses come within the first 48 hours.  In the lessons we have learned about single subject email here are the other rules that we should adhere too.

The ideal time to send the invites is Monday morning (specifically after Midnight on Sunday which is AM in Europe up until noon EDT)

Tuesday should be the start of data collection from the responses

Wednesday's should by early afternoon an updated whole report should be done and reviewed with the Content Manager.

Thursday should be a day for researching any new contact information

Friday the spreadsheet should be updated and ready to send out Monday morning again.

Invites should be 2 weeks for new, 1 week for the non response reminders. 

What do we do with confirmed speakers?

After the data collection and research is gathered, the next step is to verify the opportunity in the marketplace. The Event Resume then has a number of audiences,  Internally it is a sales tool and a starting point for the marketing's advertising campaign and website.  Externally it can be shared with key customers to gain further understanding and validate the research done in phase 1.

An example of an event resume is th

 and an outline for the resume is her

What do we do with speaking requests?

After the data collection and research is gathered, the next step is to verify the opportunity in the marketplace. The Event Resume then has a number of audiences,  Internally it is a sales tool and a starting point for the marketing's advertising campaign and website.  Externally it can be shared with key customers to gain further understanding and validate the research done in phase 1.

An example of an event resume is th

What happens with completed panels?

After the data collection and research is gathered, the next step is to verify the opportunity in the marketplace. The Event Resume then has a number of audiences,  Internally it is a sales tool and a starting point for the marketing's advertising campaign and website.  Externally it can be shared with key customers to gain further understanding and validate the research done in phase 1.

An example of an event resume is th

What do we do with confirmed speakers?

After the data collection and research is gathered, the next step is to verify the opportunity in the marketplace. The Event Resume then has a number of audiences,  Internally it is a sales tool and a starting point for the marketing's advertising campaign and website.  Externally it can be shared with key customers to gain further understanding and validate the research done in phase 1.

An example of an event resume is th

And now its showtime

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