Get More Impact From Your Annual Conference



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How can you get more attention for your conference and your association? Use some of these Power Marketing™ tips and ideas. It won't cost much. It just takes a creative approach. The payoff can be huge. First, see everything as a marketing opportunity. Second, enlighten all staff and every member to realize their responsibility in marketing the association. Third, read "Secrets of Power Marketing".

There are many ideas here. If you are already using some - wonderful! Try some new ideas this year.

Before:

Contact the local media. Offer the press interviews with your expert members - about the association issues and importance to the local community. Send your media package to the media before you arrive. Include information about your association, your publication, your conference outline, and key contact names for interviews. Ask the local convention bureau to help establish contact. Then follow-up.

Get more value from your speakers. Ask your high profile speakers to donate a speech to a school, charity group, service group, community association or city hall. You might be spending several thousand dollars for their presentation and travel. Ask them for a little bit more. Offer the speaker a token amount to do this additional community work on behalf of your association. Make sure the attendees to this community speech know you are the sponsor. And tell the media.

Ask your speakers to do media interviews. Get a media kit from each. Give them your media contacts and encourage them to contact the media directly. Remind your speakers to talk about your association when they are interviewed.

Connect with the local community. Invite local students from the high schools, college or university to attend (free) portions of your conference. Make contact with teachers, professors, or department heads. Ask your host chapter to arrange this. The teachers might select the students or you might hold a contest to pick the winners.

Arrange an event with a local school, group or charity. Contact the university, college, high schools, Junior achievement, Chamber of Commerce or charity. Ask what you can do for them to help their cause and issues.

During: Send post cards to your members who did not attend. Give every attendee five post cards to mail. Buy local tourist shots or custom print them. "Wish you were here."

Feed the media. Write a news release each day. Collect advice and quotes from your speakers and attendees and send it to the media each day. Send information to the local radio and TV hosts - all of them - especially the weather announcers - they are always trying to be entertaining. Conduct interviews of the person in the street. What do they think of "members of your association?" Publish these comments in a news release and on your web-site.

Make it easy for the media. Post a "Media check in" sign at the registration table. Assign one or more of your people to help the media when they arrive. Pick up the local papers and magazines. Add the names and addresses of editors and reporters to your media database.

Create a newsworthy event. Plant a tree - plant 100 trees, offer free financial advice to unwed mothers, clean up a park, give a seminar for small business, give advice for the unemployed. Do something in a public place that gets attention. Grant an honorary membership or award to some distinguished member of that community. Get all attendees to sign a gigantic thank you note and present it to the mayor for being such a wonderful host. Think photo opportunity.

Give each of your attendees business cards to distribute that read - "Hello - I am a member of the xxx Association attending our annual conference in your fine city. I gave you this card because your smile, service, attention, helped make my day."

Make local contact. Arrange for your president and executive director to meet the mayor for lunch or breakfast. Arrange breakfast or lunch between some of your high profile members and prominent members of that community. Visit the President or CEO of local companies who may have or should have members in your association.

After:

Encourage your attendees to call three members who did not attend and tell them what they missed.

Summarize the conference - the highlights and best ideas. And why the location was perfect. Send it to the local media, your members and post on your web-site. Write letters to the editors of the local media. What you loved about the location and people or what you disliked. Encourage your attendees to do the same. Make copies of all media coverage for next year's media kit. Put in on your web-site. Log all media coverage you received and post on your web site.

Ask the mayor to write a letter of introduction to the mayor of next year's conference.

And you thought it would be a vacation. It is a marketing opportunity!



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This is a guest blog post written by Dave Kawula, a Senior Consultant with 1E. Dave was the guest on our January episode of the AlignIT Manager Tech Talk where we talked about how IT managers can take the risk out of their Windows 7 deployment projects. Here Dave outlines a key strategy to employ at the very beginning of your project and some of the tools that you can use.

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As the clock keeps ticking towards end of support for Windows XP we need to find ways to accelerate our Windows 7 Migrations. Just because you accelerate your Windows 7 Migration you don’t have to increase your budget. In fact what if you could do the opposite…accelerate the project and reduce cost.

Wait a minute – this is an IT Project. The words “reduce costs” don’t really exist in a typical IT Project. Well maybe they can…

Most Windows 7 Projects I have seen project over 80% of the costs for that project on Application Packaging and Remediation. What if there was a way to have an organization quickly rationalize their deployed applications. What if there was a way to remove unused software from a desktop prior to the migration.

I can sum it up in one word: “Rationalization”.

Well there are a couple of tools out there that can help us out with this. One is the Application Compatibility Toolkit “ACT” from Microsoft. It is a great tool that allows us to gain insight into our organization. This unfortunately requires an agent to be deployed on the workstations and requires us to scan them to see what is installed. Then pull the information back to a central database and try to analyze what is deployed.

The second tool is one that many of you will already own and have probably deployed. Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager has a software metering component that will allow us to use simply scan the machines using the Configuration Manager agent. One problem this requires a lot of configuration and won’t automatically pull back unused software to keep licensing in check.

The third tool is one from 1E Software call AppClarity. You can checkout a link to this product here: 1E AppClarity I have personally seen AppClarity give money back to an organization in less than 60 Days after the acquisition of their software. Think about it…why waste money getting shelfware or unused software ready for your brand new Windows 7 Desktops. Once again “Rationalize” not only the amount of software that needs to be migrated to the new platform but also the amount of work.

Checkout the screenshot below of this software package. It has revolutionized the way I approach Windows Migrations.

image

So in my perfect world that I live in I need a tool that will do the following for my Windows 7 Project:


Product


Rationalize Applications

Provide Detailed License Utilization Information


Provide an intelligent Reclamation Engine

Quantify the amount of Wasted Software for Management
System Center Configuration Manager Yes — but requires customization through rules Yes – there are good built-in reports for Microsoft Products // Need to build reports for third party software No – It can be done but needs to be manually configured or customized with Scripts No – It can be done but reports would need to be manually configured

Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit

Yes – Built in Database and Rules from Microsoft are extensive and give a good snapshot of an organization – Requires anNo agent to be deployed on end workstations No No No
1E AppClarity Yes – Connects to existing SCCM database information and almost instantly provides a snapshot in a readable format Yes – Extends on existing Configuration Manager information and has an intelligent import wizard to allocate licenses an organization owns. Yes – Extends the functionality of SCCM by providing uninstallers for software that has been identified as unused or prohibited. YES – Built-in Reports quantify the amount of software waste organizations have. Most organizations can fund a large portion of their Windows 7 Project by simply reducing Software Waste.

If you can drive cost savings at the start of this project you will be well on your way. Gartner has estimated that it costs on average between $1000.00 to 3000.00 + per desktop to migrate to Windows 7. Most of this cost comes from the work required to migrate unused applications. What if you could get back all that time and save hard dollars by removing shelfware before your projects starts. This makes your project sponsors very happy and allows you to accelerate this project.

Deployment costs reduced by 30 % simply by “Rationalizing” the number of applications that need to be ported to Windows 7 and automating the delivery mechanisms for the images. You could easily save over $90,000 in soft costs out of the gate.

Reduce the amount of Software Renewals, Support, Deployment, and licensing costs. Once again we “Rationalize” all of our apps. Assume a 50% savings for your organization what does that return? How about an estimated 1 /mil + savings in hard and soft costs. By the way – now that you have a tool that helps rationalize this – think of the savings the next time the licensing police come visit you.

I hope you have enjoyed this post and I welcome any feedback or if you want to share your experiences with your Windows 7 projects thus far.


About Dave Kawula

clip_image002Dave Kawula is an MCSE and CNE with over fifteen years of experience in the IT industry and a senior consultant with IE. His background includes data communications networks within multi-server LAN/WAN environments. He has experience with project management, network strategic planning, network design and integration. He has led the architecture for NT, SMS/SCCM, Exchange and Internet Gateways, including managing migration paths and issues as well as implementation. He has supported a variety of network infrastructures as well as architecting and defining technical standards.

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