Help us help you… Have your say about Internet World 2009

As an IW Blog “early adopter”, you have enjoyed periodic access to what goes inside our brains here at Internet World Towers. We’d like to reward your close interest in all things IW by giving you a chance to get ahead of the game and start thinking about content you’d like to see at next year’s show.

So, we will be running a total of 7 theatres next year, which will be:

Keynote
Enterprise Content Management
Online Advertising and Search Marketing
Email, Mobile and Web Analytics
Design & Build – Usability & Web 2.0The Masterclass Theatre (incorporating Hosting/Connectivity and cutting edge technologies)
E-Commerce

We will be sending out our official Call for Papers in early September, but in the spirit of user-generated content we would like to give you, blog readers, a chance to suggest some of the hot-button topics our audience will NEED to hear come April 28th next year.

This can either be a topic that you want to hear about or one that you can speak about

Quick tips for getting your proposed content on to the final agenda

Before you send in concrete ideas in response to the official Call for Papers, we would like to suggest some tips for you to maximize your chances of securing one of these prestigious speaking opportunities:

Think about how compelling a session this will be from the layperson’s point of view – YOU may know that Rupert in Marketing is the best public speaker since Winston Churchill, but how can we get that message across to our audience?

Take some time to ask, do we have any clients that we’ve had really strong results in this area from? Would they be willing to come along and spend 30 minutes co-presenting? Our experience shows that sessions featuring prominent end-user client-side speakers get much better response, and also help us as organizers build a buzz that Internet World is THE place to find out what companies are actually doing in the digital space. Not that it isn’t already of course…

Finally, are you thinking of submitting the same presentation title you did last year, and the year before that? Of course, we welcome many many first-time visitors, but try to think about the one thing your company has done (or will have done) since this year’s show that you’re REALLY thrilled about, and then refer back to points 1 & 2 to ensure that you’re giving yourself a fighting chance of making it through the final cut.

So for suggestions, please leave a comment but if you want to submit a proposal, click here

That’s all for now – watch this space for regular updates as we pick up the pace to put together the show the internet space needs, and deserves. Thanks for your time today.

PS – make sure you give us your feedback on the newsletter winging its way to you later today – not that we blow our own trumpets, but we’re rather impressed this month…

Super Crunchers for Super Crunchy Marketing?

I am currently reading a gem of a book, “Super Crunchers”, by Ian Ayres. It’s a book that’s not a million miles from Steve Levitt’s “Freakonomics”, but in my humble opinion makes a more cogent and compelling case for learning to live by numbers and statistics.

For a digital marketer, and indeed anyone involved in marketing, customer service or sales (anyone involved in communication with customers and prospects), Chapter 2 of this book really sets the framework for a fascinating look at the competing demands of “magic” and “logic” in making decisions about how to market, who to target and how to target them. From an Internet World standpoint, what is really very interesting is how the internet opens up so many new possibilities for optimizing a marketing message, and offers and promotions, almost in real time. There are ramifications for e-commerce specialists here as well of course in terms of website design and how this can minimize abandoned shopping carts, but, if you’re not already looking into website optimization, read this book (or just Chapter 2) and you soon will be.

We were fortunate to have a presentation from LOVEFiLM at this year’s Internet World show, where Craig Sullivan spoke about how his organization optimizes their website to maximize revenues. Craig is a client of Optimost (now part of Interwoven) - if you would like to find out about more examples of this “multivariate optimization”, make sure you join us at Internet World 09 (where Interwoven will be exhibiting), or check out this book. It’s had me thinking all weekend about how we can do things better, and new content for next year’s show. Do you have examples of organizations who have applied this methodology and achieved measurable results? If so, please share…!

On a separate note, we’ve now got power points and audio files for most of the presentations from Internet World 2008. Click here to view…

Post Show Post

First of all, sorry it’s taken so long to get a post show post up. As is always the way, we’ve been dealing with the usual (and some unusual) post show activities.

What a week it was at Earls Court for Internet World! We thought it would be tough to beat the award winning 2007 show however I have to say that was one of the best shows I’ve been involved since I started organising events 9 years ago. There were periods when I thought it might take me half an hour just to walk the length of the show, there were so many attendees. The crowds outside the seminar theatres proved we hit the nail on then head with our educational program and for those who didn’t get the chance to see all the sessions they wanted to, we will be updating the seminar pages on the website with the slides and audio from many of the sessions over the coming weeks.

In addition to this, I am excited to announce the launch of the Internet World Video Player. We filmed all the keynotes and few other sessions at the show so if you join part of the Internet World community (which is free), you will get access to keynotes from the likes of Travis Katz, International Managing Director of Myspace.com, Ashley Friedlein, CEO of E-consultancy and Peter Mercier, Head of Mobile from the BBC. Please keep an eye on the website and The Buzz newsletter for further details.

2009 is already looks set to be another superb event in our new home at the illustrious Grand Hall, Olympia. As you will have seen if you attended the show this year, we were at capacity in Earls Court 2 and the move to Olympia will give us the chance to build bigger seminar theatres, locate them in their natural homes in the various zones around the show and will greatly enhance the attendee and exhibitor experience. Also, with the weight and resources of our new owners CMPi behind it, you can expect Internet World to come back next year with an even better marketing campaign, greater content and even a bit of a facelift… We’ve got a few exciting features lined up for next year including plans for a showcase area of some the most exciting and cutting edge technologies and solutions around.

What was great to see at the show is that online is undeniably the driving force when it comes to many marketing strategies. Whilst the show has always been the natural home for online, digital, new media and ecommerce professionals is was great to see the continued increase in the top marketing decision makers (Marketing Directors/Heads of Marketing/CMO’s) at the show. I remember a few years ago when it was a real struggle to get these people to engage in online. Increasingly these days they are the first through the doors of Internet World and the last to leave. This year there was one Marketing Director (who shall remain nameless) from one of the world’s biggest brands who told me he only intended to pop in briefly on Tuesday and ended up staying all day and returning on Wednesday and Thursday.

On a different note the cricket season has started and as I write, England have started their reply to New Zealand’s first innings total of 277 in the Lords test. I hope Strauss and Cook do better than my personal performances so far this season: 2 matches - 2 innings - 9 balls - 0 runs. As D:Ream pointed out in 1994 and the Labour party reminded us in 1997: “Things can only get better”

And finally you’ll be pleased to hear that I have also managed to book my first holiday the year: a week in Corsica at the start of June. Can’t wait!

Upcoming Seminars At Internet World

Two interesting-sounding seminars in the Enterprise Content Management stream caught my eye. Both customers of Swedish web CMS vendor, EPiServer which is exhibiting at the show.

On Wednesday Cian O’Donovan from Setanta Sports will present the company´s web strategy, experiences learned from implementing EPiServer CMS and the impact of Web 2.0 on the business. For those of you who aren’t sports fans, Setanta is the fastest growing pay television operator in Europe providing premium sports TV channels. Their website is updated continuously by 25 journalists covering the latest news in the world of sport.

Then on Thursday Amanda Neylon, Web manager for Diabetes UK, will share how the organisation developed the website that scooped the prestigious “Best site” award at the 2007 Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) Excellence Awards. Diabetes UK is the largest charity in the UK devoted to the care and treatment of people with diabetes.

But apart from them, there are hundreds of other exhibitors with interesting news to tell you – I’ll update you on those as and when I can, but in the meantime keep an eye on our cutting edge news for more.

Reformed Industry

With only one week left to go before the best digital marketing exhibition of its kind begins, I notice another news story rearing its head regarding behavioural targeted marketing. Phorm had already put up a massive PR-offensive wall inviting debate with people not happy about a previous story mentioned in this very blog way back here . It looks like the general public aren’t too happy with being advertised products that they might actually be interested in.

I’ve been so busy organizing the event that I have almost let slide my multimedia collection. How remiss of me! Thankfully there’s a new beta release around at the moment that seems to work pretty well with all the major online media outlets like flickr and facebook. Looks like you can now drag and drop your media between all these apps and make your online media library look better than ever before.

Anyway, back to the grindstone. Still lots to do before all the speakers and exhibitors arrive. My holiday snaps from Bournemouth will have to wait. See you next week!

Apple Beating The Crunch

The power of the digital realm seems to be overtaking the financial world, according to a story I noticed online today, which sees Apple as more valuable than Citigroup. This is obviously related to the international credit crunch, but highlights a time when a technology company selling a lifestyle through its fancy gadgets and media library can overtake the largest bank in the world. All based on potentials, and the bleak future for the banking sector cannot be ignored. Who knows if it might eventually start overshadowing our own areas of industry?

Speaking of rich media and selling a lifestyle, I spotted an interesting and thought-provoking video on the web too… It’s nice to see useful and intellectual content on the web rather than some of the things that end up on Youtube, eh? Come along to Internet World for more of the same, and keep reading this space to make sure you know who has been added to the list of attendees and speakers. I believe I can reveal Google University will be joining us at the event. We’ll be seeing you there, too.

Internet Overload

An interesting story this week on BBC News (ironically enough) about UK ISP’s complaining that the iPlayer is overloading internet bandwidth and potentially forcing them to invest large sums in upgrading networks. The ISP’s are going so far as to suggest that the Beeb should foot some of the bill for doing so – which raises all sorts of interesting questions. For one thing, there are loads of sites out there offering TV over the web, including of course YouTube and countless other copycat sites. But, of course, the BBC is underwritten by HM Government (and all of us saps here in the UK paying the annual licence fee) – so makes for a very attractive target.

There is part of me that says the whole basis for the claim these ISP’s are making is ludicrous – the reason people are flocking to the iPlayer is that it offers content they want to watch, so to blame the BBC for putting something in the web sphere that is popular and compelling is almost like blaming a new theme park for increased congestion on the roads around. But then, I think to myself, people DO blame new shopping centres, schools, attractions etc for increased traffic flows, and expect developers to invest some of their profits in ensuring good transport links.

All of which leads to inevitable calls for the Government to step in and broker a deal. Well, whatever the solution, chances are that web users will pay – either through increased monthly subscription charges, reduced broadband speeds, limitation on accessing web TV services – or some kind of Internet Tax (shudder!). This topic is sure to run and run – it comes off the back of a number of increasingly dire warnings that the internet could come apart at the seams – so what do you, our expert community, think the solution should be?

Well Connected

The wealth of technology we have at our fingertips to do any number of digital tasks is impossibly overwhelming at times, and requires some higher level qualification to avoid stepping in any potential pitfalls or otherwise. While we continue to position ourselves at the forefront of digital technology as a whole, we try to practice what we preach. This is why we can now offer a plethora of ways to keep your clicking-finger on the pulse of Internet World. You’re reading one of them right now. And then there is the website which is our main resource for updating you on new speakers and developments at the show. Our monthly newsletter (have you signed up to receive it yet?) provides more thorough insight into the current affairs in the digital arena with our thoughtful articles. And for the slightly more web-savvy interested party, we also have a Facebook group and now a brand new LinkedIn presence too.

The last two developments aim to connect together and provide a more thorough presence on the internet. By appealing to you on several levels we’re hoping to provide something for everyone, so join the groups and let’s get connected. If you can think of any other ways we ought to be reaching out to the digital community, then please drop a comment on here or email me.

We’ve even got one of the most-played games on the web on our site, made just for us by the kind people at Tamba Internet. Go on, have a play – you know you want to!

Looking Forward To A Web 2.0 Electorate

It is interesting to see where web 2.0 and social networking pops up around the place before the event starts. It has been touted for some time that government should embrace newer technologies in order to evolve and respond better to the needs of the country at a faster pace. It is all very well stating the ways of progress and ushering in a more direct method of communicating with the electorate, but will it actually benefit anyone anytime soon? I for one believe it is essential to modernize, but it is also unlikely it can be done effectively and with real gusto by any government of the foreseeable future. Sadly. But please try. I think voting through Facebook might get a higher turnout from a more informed section of society.

Going from open source to a slightly more closed arena, it seems that Apple have been crowned most influential brand. Good news for Steve Jobs, as Microsoft didn’t fare so well. Possibly next year the winner will come from someone attending our “How To Build An e-Superbrand” presentation….

The Next Challenger

Here we have an interesting article highlighting the evolution of portals. We have here another viewpoint (different to my touting Firefox as the main upstart) that plants Facebook as the next challenger in the internet, and taking on all-comers. Can a social network really pile on enough pounds to compete in the same weight-class as Google or Microsoft? With a few useful additions it possibly could, and messaging and email are being looked into as I type. Would your boss allow you more Facebook time if it was somehow more productive?

Here at Internet World we are certain that social networking is firmly linked to a successful digital business, and therefore urge you to watch this space and get yourself signed up for the event if you haven’t already. Our top speakers are covering all manner of Web 2.0 issues and social networking topics, so get yourself booked in and sign up to hear the future.