Number 1 » July 2, 2008

• Sharpen Your Competitive Edge
• Lose Control: Unconferences Put Your Customers in Charge
• Blogs, RSS Feeds and Videos—What's the Real Impact?
• Captive Audience: Reach IT Buyers in the Air
• Tech News Briefs: New Analytics Tools Drive Incremental Revenue for Channel Customers, and more...
• Meet IT Buyers and Solution Providers at the Top Tech Events

Sharpen Your Competitive Edge

Top

As a valued partner and member of the marketing community, welcome to the Global Technology Marketing Edge, a new resource designed to help you sharpen your competitive advantage. Each month, we will highlight innovative marketing opportunities across all media platforms to reach technology markets domestically and worldwide.

Our goal is to share best practices, exchange ideas and present cutting edge marketing solutions that will enhance your team's efforts to engage with the business technology community (see our story on Unconferences below). Within our technology media divisions, and across all of UBM's $2.4 billion global media units, we are continuously investing in new brands, platforms and markets to help you with your communications strategies. In this newsletter, you will get the inside edge on these new opportunities, and learn about how they can make you more successful.

We look forward to your feedback and collaborating on future editions of the Edge. Enjoy your premiere issue!

Anne Marie

Anne Marie Miller
Corporate Senior Vice President Sales
831-642-0748
amiller@ubm-us.com

Lose Control: Unconferences Put Your Customers in Charge

Top

David Berlind joined United Business Media at the start of 2008 to build new media events with TechWeb's Live Events Group. We recently spoke with him about "unconferences" to find out what they offer attendees, vendors and marketers.

1. What is an Unconference?
They are events created by the audience, for the audience.  We call our Unconferences "camps"—Startup Camp, Mashup Camp, SOA Camp—because they bring together people with common interests, and then let them learn from each other.  There's no better source of information than talking to a peer who is working on the same issues you are.

2. How does an Unconference work?
We use something called the Open Space methodology, where we take the best parts of regular conferences—the coffee breaks, the after-hours events, and the 5 minutes of Q&A after those long sleepy presentations—and turn them into the event itself.   Most of the event's agenda will be determined at event-time by the attendees themselves, which ensures the relevance, timeliness, and vibrancy of that content.

3. Sounds kind of chaotic.  How do you keep it productive?
We use technology in advance of the event.  For each Unconference, we build a wiki that attendees can use to start brainstorming  the discussions they'd like to propose.  Once everybody gets onsite, we ask participants to identify themselves if they have expertise in a specific area of interest, and then make them the discussion leader for that topic.  It's pretty amazing how quickly people organize themselves to maximize the value of the time they have together.

4. It sounds great for attendees, but is there a place for marketers to get involved?  How do you make it work as part of a marketing program?
We've had vendors like Google, IBM and Sun work with us because these Unconferences are one of the most powerful ways of connecting with an audience.  By participating in a Camp, you are embedding your brand with the discussion your customers are having in a way that is very intimate and can have a long-lasting impression in the market.

What's counter-intuitive for many marketers, however, is the notion of giving up control of the message.  You need to let the audience own the event, so the key is to weave your objectives into the format of the event to engage the audience.  It's also important to bring a team to participate in the event—you won't be on a stage, but you'll be part of the event itself, which is much more powerful.

Another bonus:  Unconferences tend to attract a lot more press coverage than traditional conferences because the raw content is inherently attractive to the blogosphere.

5. So what should a marketer do if they're interested in exploring how an Unconference can work for them?
Contact your UBM global accounts representative and they'll put you in touch with me to brainstorm ideas.  We'll have a conversation about your marketing objectives and explore ways to connect those objectives with a community.  We've almost filled the calendar for 2009, however, so don't wait to get in touch if you are interested!

Blogs, RSS Feeds and Videos—What's the Real Impact?

Top

What are the latest trends in emerging media usage among business decision makers? The Rise of B2B Applications-Based Media, TechWeb's new research study, includes in-depth data on media usage and consumption among B2B audiences, and provides marketers with best practices for leveraging new media applications to engage and activate business technology decision makers. The upshot? Your customers are relying heavily on emerging media platforms—so make sure you use these platforms in your marketing. Some key facts:

» 64% of TechWeb Network visitors read or contribute to blogs to obtain information for their job

» 51% of those receiving RSS feeds plan to access even more feeds in the coming year

» 43% consider video content important to stay up to date on technology information

» TechWeb Network visitors connect with peers on social networks: 43% are connecting on a weekly basis, 17% of which are networking daily

» 55% of all mobile browsing is for business

» 78% of Executive IT Management use video programming to get business information

To get all the facts, download a copy of the entire "Rise of B2B Applications-Based Media" research study. For a walk through of the study, contact Scott Vaughan, VP Marketing at TechWeb.

Captive Audience: Reach IT Buyers in the Air

Top

When you're holding your next summit, customer or partner gathering, reach your audience coming and going with MultiVu's CNN Airport Channel monitors and in-flight video packages on major US airlines. Cost effectively communicate with attendees in captive environments, reinforcing and highlighting your message. Visit MultiVu or contact us for more details.

Tech News Briefs

Top

» Next Level acquisition adds analytics, sales management programs and marketing services that will help drive incremental revenue for Everything Channel customers. (Details)

» Top keynote speakers from IBM, including Agile Development Practice Leader Scott Ambler and UML Evangelist Terry Quatrani, will be featured at Dr. Dobb's Architecture & Design World 2008. (Details)

» IBM sponsors the launch of Internet Evolution's new Green IT Video Tutorial, designed to educate IT buyers about environmentally sustainable technology. (Details)

» See North America's top technology integrators and executives in Everything Channel's VARBusiness 500, a list that reflects the robust growth of the technology reseller channel. (Details)

» Find high performance marketing solutions at CreateYourNextCustomer.com, a next generation marketing website from the InformationWeek Business Technology Network. (Details)

Meet IT Buyers and Solution Providers at the Top Tech Events

Top

Contact Us

Top