Thursday, February 28, 2008

InXpo

It's great to see the speed with which virtual event initiatives are progressing. Chicago-based virtual event organiser InXpo is impressive because of the breadth of its offer in what is really a young industry. Here's some take on that:

".... a new Virtual Seminar Platform and a new Virtual Media Center to our existing Virtual Trade Show, Virtual Job Fair and Virtual Community platforms. In addition all products now feature a universal new 3D experience."

Well we all know about the 3-D experience but combining these elements is what a lot of us have been waiting for.

InXpo offers public and private events, the latter "focused on promotional selling where the shows host customers and suppliers are the attendees and exhibitors."

We picked up on a couple of interesting examples. the Wall St Journal is hosting a virtual careers air - what a great partner to have. Read about it here. And InXpo's own virtual meetings world. The pace is hotting up. We know of companies, regions, cities, Governments who don't believe virtual events are going to happen. It's wake up time.

Virtual expos

As firm believers in virtual exhibition, virtual events, expos, and congresses it was heartening to find that the editors over at entrepreneur.com have begun to share our views.

This is their example:

"Robin Cowie, president of WorldwideBrands.com, a Maitland, Florida, wholesale and drop-ship resources provider, went from attending virtual B2B e-commerce trade show eComXpo to hosting a booth at the show. "We treat it like a normal convention," says Cowie, 35, whose company reached more than $3 million in sales last year. "We have three staff members dedicated to it. They're constantly chatting and exchanging information during the show, and I don't have to pay for travel."

Our good friend Pete Dunkley over at Depo Consulting now has a column at Events:Review - on the subject of virtual events:

"One of the more common misconceptions about holding events in virtual worlds such as Second Life is that they always involve avatars [your character within the virtual world] presenting to avatars," says pete. He argues thre are many ways to get started.

Stream content into Second Life, stream content from SL into a conference or event. "Having a virtual audience raises the possibility of selling incremental advertising, sponsorship and the floor space for trade stalls for the virtual offshoot." Worth noting!