I know what I would love to do the next one and a half weeks. Starting today I would be attending the NetImpact Conference in Michigan until Sunday and then fly to New York to get to the BSR 2010 conference starting on the 2nd of November.
Unfortunately I can not attend. I, like many others I believe, have a lot of other commitments for this time period but at the same time are highly interested in listening to and watching several speeches and sessions via a livestream. We in Europe would be an ideal target audience for this kind of livestream because we could participate online during the evenings our Europe time (I am living in the UK and the time difference would make this possible).
But there is no such possibility to do so with these really interesting upcoming events. And this is a real shame.
Conference organizers are missing a trick here in my view
Imagine the scenario that NetImpact or BSR would provide a fairly inexpensive livestream ($150-300 USD) for some selected sessions during the conference such as the key note speeches and Q&A sessions. I am not asking for a live feed for every session but just the ones that have the best global appeal.
Financially this livestream possibility could also be very lucrative for conference organizers in my view. They might not be able to charge vast amounts of money as they do for the actual participants (which is another topic for a post) but from what I know is the Return on Investment (ROI) for online participants at the rate mentioned above is not really something I would turn down as a conference organizer. In my view conference organizers at these two conferences are really missing a trick here. Both financially and in terms of participation.
It can be done – Sustainable Brands 2010
This kind of online conference participation can be done as some other conference organizers have shown this year. One example was the 2010 Sustainable Brands conference which had this possibility of a live stream. I used this and I really enjoyed it.
We are living in exciting times when you look at the technology we already have at our disposal. It is therefore a shame that these two leading conferences do not provide and even attempt to engage a wider audience via this online participation even though we now have the technology at fairly inexpensive costs to do so.
This is my view on this and I hope some of the leading conference organizers will follow the examples of the last Sustainable Brands conference in 2010 and try to embrace the new age of technology by providing a livestream.
What is your view?
Picture Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/4389124180/
