Here’s an interesting guest post by Doug Archibald, vice president, sales and service at Ungerboeck Software International- a worldwide provider of mobile event management software for conferences and venues. He’s talking more to the venue side than the meeting planning side, which is a different perspective than you’d usually see here. I hope you enjoy it.

As smartphones, iPads, and tablets take over the market share of wireless Internet devices, accessing the Internet at a conference or large-scale event is not only necessary, but expected by attendees. This expectation can be an opportunity for large venues to gain a competitive edge, and generate additional revenue through providing the wireless access while generating additional revenue. There are many options when it comes paying for wireless, and generating a revenue stream in the process is the norm for most venues.

The simplest and most popular way to generate revenue is to charge for the wireless itself or charge for additional services. A venue can ask the user (attendee) to pay to access the service itself, or charge a fee to access the service at a higher download speed. Another option is to charge the organization hosting the event, and they can pass the fee onto their attendees as they wish. Various options such as network speed, restricted site access, and data usage can be priced differently to increase revenue.

Some venue owners do not want to manage wireless access, and a popular solution to this issue is to allow commercial wireless carriers (such as AT&T or Sprint) to install access points for their services. Carriers pay rent for the access points, which provides revenue to your organization while servicing your attendees. Carriers install their own equipment and are responsible for maintenance and technical support. Many convention and conference centers are made of concrete and steel, and receiving a signal or maintaining one can be frustrating for the venue owner and attendees. With this option, managing wireless access problems is passed onto the carrier. The carrier can also sell directly to event organizers, eliminating the hassles of selling wireless service as well.

Even if the market demands a venue offer free service, then generating revenue through advertisers on the network is common and often the most profitable. Branded portals are available, and your venue can sell sponsored ads within this custom app. Branded portals can also be linked to social media sites, giving your venue even more exposure to potential clients and organizations.
Venue owners can easily profit from the new age of wireless by researching the options available, knowing their competitor’s wireless service options, and selecting the right combination of products and services. Conference or event attendees expect to have access to the Internet, and venue owners can easily turn this into a revenue stream with the right knowledge and some creativity.

As I was reading the always thought-provoking Hugh MacLeod’s thoughts on how to make the Internet squeal, this bit grabbed me big-time:

“As with any human endeavor, WHY you do something is ALWAYS more interesting than WHAT you actually do…The ‘Why’ is not your mission statement, it is not about ‘Best Practices’ – it is about the heart and soul of what you do – As Simon Sinak says, the ‘People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.’”

To further clarify, he says:

“Tony Hsieh of Zappos made several hundred million dollars selling shoes. Why? Because he understood that shoes were his WHAT, but his WHY was DELIVERING HAPPINESS.

“Rackspace, a ten year old hosting business, completely amazingly effectively against the titans of the tech world because they know that their what might be hosting, but their why is FANATICAL SUPPORT.”

This is so incredibly important, and yet I’d bet very few people have put serious thought into the why of what they do. Especially if it’s a product or event that’s been around for ages, the why can be lost in the mists of time. Or the initial why no longer applies, and the what is just limping along on its own with no real why to give it a reason for being other than corporate-speaky mission statements.

What’s your product/meeting/organization’s true why? It may be trickier and harder to figure out than I’d like to think for most businesses, which is pretty telling, isn’t it?

Maddie Grant thinks they are, and she makes a good argument that, when slapped onto a specific situation without tweaking to make it fit, they could easily cause some evil things to happen. But is that the fault of the best practice? Or is it more the fault of someone who didn’t use Maddie’s definition of a best practice when it comes to best practices? (Does your head hurt yet? Mine does.)

The argument rang a faint bell for me as something I once had deep thoughts about. Sure enough, we had a good go-round on best practices a few years ago, and upon further reflection, I still stand now where I did then on the subject: On the shoulders of Jamie Notter, who said at the time,

“Seeing something out there that inspires you to do your thing better is fine. But ‘best practices’ is more than that. It is a mindset. Best practices are answers. When you go looking for best practices, you are looking for answers, and you are likely not spending enough time thinking about your questions…I think if you are clearer about your questions, then the issue of ‘fit’ and ‘context’ with the best practices that you come across will be more immediately apparent. Then what other people are doing CAN inspire your own innovation.”

Some things you can adapt and adopt—to quote myself (definitely not a best practice!): Everyone wants “easy” without even adapting a form/template for their own work. Recreating the wheel isn’t always necessary; being smart and customizing is. Other things you need to start from scratch. Wisdom, methinks, lies in knowing the difference. Good luck with that!

Dan Loomis at the Great Ideas blog takes on the controversial issue of whether an association’s online content should be for free or for a fee (remember the big debate when MPI decided to charge for the online versions of its conference sessions a few years back?).

Rather than take a side, though, he points to the benefits of both, and instead gives a pretty useful set of questions to ask before you decide, and some more resources to help guide your policymaking. Good stuff.

Last week I heard about a cool research project the Velvet Chainsaw folks are doing with association learning trend research company Tagoras, and thought you might want to consider participating.

If you use industry and professional speakers at conferences with 500 or more attendees, you’re right on target for the survey, which I hear only takes about 10 minutes to complete. Those who participate get a synopsis of the results and the chance to win a $50 gift card, but I think the real prize will be that synopsis.

You can read more about the survey here, or click here to take it.

And one in which doing good can have ramifications that aren’t quite so good. Check out When Your Meetings and Events Cause Harm by Doing Good, in which Keith Johnston wades through a beagle puppy forest (you have to read the post, really!) of contradictions and complications involved in a Starwood/Coca-Cola CSR project. While the project itself produces good, you may or may not find some of the people and things the companies involved support objectionable.

Commenter Jacob Worek does a great job of outlining the options of how to respond to the dilemma:

“If you’re going to make business decisions based upon who or what a company supports politically, you need to go all in…every purchase needs to be scrutinized, and no business should be done with ANY offending parties. A letter of protest or reservation may make you feel better, but isn’t going to change anything at all. Withholding your money from them might.

“Or accept that doing business in America is inherently a murky pursuit, and trying to maintain ethical purity of your purchasing decisions will undoubtedly lead to decision paralysis or insanity. And counter any dollars spent with offending companies not with letter, but donations to those parties and groups you support.”

While this is all well worth talking about, ultimately today’s corporate world is so convoluted, with most companies supporting things we both agree and disagree with, that I think most of us just go with the immediate good of, in the case Keith talks about, the CSR project. Unless, of course, the company (or meeting destination, or other entity) is known for doing something so egregious to your attendees and/or something that has caused great public uproar that attendees would revolt. While I do know a few people who live their lives in accordance with the first worldview Jacob outlined, those who don’t end up with “decision paralysis or insanity” as a result are few and far between. I think most of us do the best we can to live and make business decisions ethically in a very murky world.

Update: And then I get a link to this article from Forbes’ CSR blog: Gender and Ethics in Advertising: The New CSR Frontier?. To the organizations the post calls out for their pathetic, sexist ads: Thanks for making it easy to decide not to do business with you.

We’ve had fake speakers, fake shows, and fake reviews, but this one I hadn’t heard of before: Actors hired to play enthusiastic users of a product at a product launch.

You know, fakery never works. I don’t know why people keep on doing this. My advice is, don’t. You will get caught.

While the advice Krys gives in her post, feeling achy? check for a curly tail!, is specific to what you can do to protect your attendees this fall from H1N1, much of it is just good advice for any meeting held during flu/cold season. She also includes a great resources list, including links to Mitchell Beer’s great columns on preparing for a meeting in the age of H1N1.

I remember reading on the listservs a while back about all the crazy demands some celebrities put in their contract riders (ah hem, Mary J. Blige, do you really need a new toilet seat installed just for your use?). Then today on BoingBoing I saw that there actually was a reason why Van Halen demanded a bowl of M&Ms with all the brown ones removed. Here’s the rationale, from Snopes.

The prize for the most interesting contract, though, must go to the Foo Fighters. Here’s a copy, courtesy of The Smoking Gun (warning: There’s some language that some could find offensive).

This post by Jeff Hurt makes me think that I’m one of the few left who go to conferences mainly for the content; it sounds like a lot of people are shifting their decision-making mainly to who they hope to connect with while they’re at the event. Don’t get me wrong, I love to meet up with those I only know from Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc., and to reconnect with old friends, but I’m mainly there for the sessions. Might have something to do with knowing I have to write about them later, eh? (All personal conversations are off the record, just in case you were avoiding me in fear that something you let slip will show up in a magazine or something.)

But it does make me wonder if conference planners need to put even more emphasis on the networking, and less on the content, than they did in the past? I’ve heard that mentioned a few times in conjunction with some meetings industry events, and have to agree that the social aspects could use some bolstering. Especially for the really cliquey events that are so terrifying for newbies. But I wouldn’t take anything away from the content in order to do it–it’s not an either/or proposition, as I see it. The ideal, for me anyway, would be to thread the content through the networking, and the networking through the content, so conversations and connections happen more naturally and focus more on professional development than the latest gossip or the cute thing the cat did the other day. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but if I spend a lot of money and take the time away from the office, I really do want to learn something.

Update: Extraordinary idea-rouser that he is, Jeffrey Cufaude made a comment on this post over on Facebook that really made me think. Hope he doesn’t mind that I share it here. He said: “But I do want us to drop the idea/frame of networking and focus more on the business of connecting: people to people, people to content, questions to answers, and interests to opportunities.” Kind of reshapes the whole discussion when you think of it that way, doesn’t it?