Motivation Show 2009 – Experiment in Social Media

I was hoping that social media would have a big impact at the Motivation Show. For me – the idea of enlisting the thousand or so folks attending the show to enhance my experience – and through my own efforts enhance theirs, held a lot of promise.  I posted on my strategy for the show here.

Unfortunately, I may have misplaced the industry's location on the adoption curve.  Every industry adapts to new ideas at different rates. 

I spent time at the HRTech show (operating concurrently in the same building) and they had a pretty active twitter stream.  But they're HR TECH folks so it makes some sense they would be further along. I know I appreciated the tweets since I couldn't get into some of the breakout meetings – but vicariously I got a taste of what was going on.  Also, a few of the folks have blogs and I got updates on their experiences from my hotel room each morning.  Nice, very nice.

So the HRtech conference gave me a small vision of what I would want from the Motivation Show. Maybe next year we'll hit that magical tipping point but in the meantime here's my assessment of social media at the Motivation Show.

Twitter @ The Motivation Show

In my head I saw a twitter stream highlighting new ideas, encouraging me to see specific exhibitors, highlighting meetups and parties – in general providing a crowd-sourced point of view on the show.  I didn't get that.  I did see some toes in the water.  There were a few early adopters out there that gave twitter the ol' college try.

• @elitemeetings gave it a great go – using twitter to announce meetups in their booth and highlighting the champagne and Heineken. 
• @toddhanson did a yeoman's job of updating the show on his efforts for ROI of Engagement
• @sjknutson provided multiple updates on the show
• @helphandrewards was very active from a tweeting and RT perspective
• @hinda_incentive provided some needed updates
• @greenA_V was visible throughout the show
• @360lbs while new to the twitterverse gave us some nice tweets
• @donnacutting helped with RTs and updates
• @brightendeavors updated regularly
• @hmki rose to the occasion
• @anthonyderico jumped in to add value
• @ROIofengagement was present and profuse

Thanks to all of you for your efforts and for your commitment to connecting with your audiences.  If you're on twitter and in the motivation/performance improvement industry – follow them and reinforce their efforts.

Maybe twitter isn't a good tool for this industry.  Maybe timing is off and twitter will take off next year.  Maybe because the pre-show promotion was scarce twitter just didn't make it on to the majority of attendees radar screens.  In any event – twitter wasn't a factor. I'll check back next year on this.

Flicker/YouTube

I'm guilty on this one. I didn't take a lot of pictures – mostly 'cuz I forgot the good camera and was relegated to my phone.  I could have done more and that would have been helpful.  But like anything new – it required I change my behavior and I just didn't do it.  But I'm not alone.  I searched Flicker for motivation show tags and came up empty.  My bad.  Again – next year? 

Youtube - Same.  No one posted anything from the show – no interviews, no end of day recaps, no special announcements – nothing. I did post a snippet from a press conference on this blog the other day – but again – I didn't have the time or the skill to edit video quickly and to the quality I wanted.  Maybe I need to lower my standards and just get the content out there next time.  More prep work would have made a big difference.

Blogs

Didn't see any blogs updating the attendees (other than my own) – maybe I'll see some recaps over the next few days.  It would have been great to see what others were thinking as they walked the floor of the show. There were some hard-copy updates.  Engagement Strategies Magazine had a quick-print update for day two.  A companion piece on a blog would have been good. 

Net-Net

It may be too early for the incentive industry.  I believe however, there is a huge value in connecting with audiences and social media is a real-time, interactive way in which to accomplish that.  I may have to wait another 365 days – but I'm not giving up. 

I've connected with clients via our blog, I've increased subscriptions to this site and met some very interesting and helpful people through twitter – I KNOW it has business value.

If you attended either the HRtech conference or the motivation show – hit me with your comments on how social media either enhanced (or not) your experience at either. 

Count down to 2010