Steering Commitee June 2018
In Attendance: Mike Provard, Jessica Taylor, Mike Booth, Tessa Keough, Ann Staley, Lorilee Wagner,
Janet Hovorka, Katherine Wilson
Virtual Exhibit Halls. Katherine has started the Virtual Genealogical Society and there has been overwhelming response. They are organizing a Virtual Conference in November 2019 and they would like to involve vendors.
Ann offered that the Florida State Genealogical Society tried to have a virtual vendor’s hall for their conference last year but services that offer such a setup were in the $20-30,000 range. So they resolved to set up squares on a webpage where vendors could operate a booth and offer special deals for the day. The Society didn’t finish setting up the hall in time for the conference. It would have looked similar to the vendor hall map that FGS and NGS use and the webmaster would have linked the map to websites. Ann said they looked at Online Events by Inxpo and Virtual Career Fair (see Ann’s notes). Janet mentioned that she had been involved in a couple of virtual conferences as a vendor almost a decade ago but it was more on a webinar basis. 5-10 minute presentation with chat and a conference
special. She said it wasn’t terribly successful. It felt like people used the ‘commercial’ time to go to the fridge.
Tessa said that Christine Woodcock was involved in a group in Canada that did a virtual conference however Ancestry, FamilySearch, RootsMagic and Family ChartMasters were not involved nor aware of the conference.
Mike B felt that a virtual exhibit hall doesn’t work. Just like when an in person conference venue was a ½ mile away from the classes, people don’t see the value of expending effort to go to the vendors. The current model is that people come for the classes. Vendors are an afterthought. And online especially, it is too easy to move on to something else. In order to be effective, the vendors need to be tied closely to the classes and instruction. Vendors need to make presentations.
Katherine—What kind of draw can we create to bring people to the vendor’s hall? That seems to be the big challenge.
Mike B suggested prize drawings, teaching classes, we need to do anything we can to grease the pathway to the vendors and reduce the friction. Coupons are still friction. Vendors are looking for bodies.
Tessa suggested poster sessions that are 15-20 minutes long. Users don’t want to pay for ads. Perhaps if there were several poster sessions at the same time, they could choose who they wanted to go to. Katherine asked, what if we opened with the vendor for the first 15 minutes? Janet suggested that one of the real values for vendors would be if they could chat with customers. Mike P mentioned that RootsTech is looking at doing a virtual vendor’s hall in 2019. They are using the company Communique.
Go Exhibit looks like it is a good company with a small monthly fee. It is a second life type experience. Something needs to make it more interesting than the company website. Otherwise, in a virtual environment, it is easier to just go to the website. Then, the vendor’s hall just becomes a google search. Vfairs.com and On24 are also virtual vending hall suppliers. Acoexhibthall.com is a sample. Tessa suggested that there could be a prize for visiting each booth. It seems that it would be easy for us to tweak the QR code system that GBA used at RootsTech 2018 and just use links to each vendor’s questions instead of the qr code.
Jessica suggested that another value would be to chat live with the participants. And get leads. It would be nice to have a system where the user had already entered their contact information so that giving the vendor a lead would just be a click. Katherine mentioned she would have to look into the GDPR implications.
Tessa mentioned that one of the benefits she gets from a vendor’s hall is to find new smaller vendors. There is value from being grouped together. Katherine agreed that it should be marketed the value of coming to find new things. Marketing is key. The way the vendor’s hall is marketed can make a big difference.
Mike B expressed frustration that some conference organizers expect vendors to do the marketing. Vendors need new customers, not the customers they already have. Conferences with a unique audience are most valuable.
Katherine said they had been scheduling monthly webinars and they wanted to talk about vendors in the months to come. They’d like to have a AMA-ask me anything panel. They want to make the Virtual Genealogical Society appealing for vendors.
Lorilee said that there is a 2018 International Family History Expo put online by Holly Hanson for Family History Expos Inc. that is planning a conference for October.
Katherine asked why vendors should have to pay for booths and then give discounts and prizes on top of that. Most conferences are funded by vendors. That isn’t the business model for the Virtual Genealogical Society. Janet said, the less we have to pay, the more we can turn that into benefits and incentives for clients.
Mike B said he’d rather pay more for a booth and make it cheaper for clients so that we can get new people in the door. New people are key for vendors.
Katherine said there is no building here and there wouldn’t need to be as much marketing. She said that there are currently about 1200 members. Randy Whited’s webinar had 285 registrants. Ancestral Tourism’s webinar had 75. Randy’s webinar was in a better time zone for working across Europe and the US. Ancestral Toursim’s webinar was really only good for US time zones only. They are doing 3 webinars a month that are recorded. Right now, membership is about 50/50 international vs. US. Jessica said that MyHeritage’s tech support was from 11am to 8pm Israel time which seems to cover Europe and the US well. Katherine said that of the 50% international Virtual Genealogy Society Members about 1/3 was from Australia and New Zealand. They are planning for the VGS conference to
go from 7am to 11 pm Eastern time with multiple tracks.
GBA best practices already suggests that vendors like it when there can be a Vendor track at a conference. But Tessa suggested that they need to be informational presentations rather than just sales.
Katherine said many of the VGS members have accessibility issues that keep them from regular conferences. They have been working with Jaws software for the visually impaired.
Action Items:
Katherine will look into Virtual Vendor’s Hall suppliers and then follow up for the committee. She will especially be looking for interaction and accessibility.
She will also ask her membership about what they would like for a virtual vendors hall as per Tessa’s suggestion and then share that with the GBA committee.
Summary:
Benefits to vendors include getting leads, being able to chat with customers, and getting new eyes/bodies.
Benefits for attendees to the virtual vendor’s hall could include lectures/mini lectures, drawings, passport prizes for visiting each booth, finding new companies.
Virtual booths can include short videos, downloads such as a brochure or data sheet, chat, window to website, company overview, prizes/coupons and a way to capture leads. It is valuable if there can be reporting about who visited each booth and their level of engagement.
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