Is your event ready for BOBtv?
Thursday, August 16th, 2012
I don’t know if Tony Lorenz of Proactive-Freeman-bxb-Online fame can pull off BOBtv or not, but if he does, he will forever change our industry – and, indeed, the business world itself.
Brilliant. Inspired. Cutting Edge. Transformational. These are just some of the accolades heaped on BOBtv last week when Tony unveiled it at ASAE in Dallas.
In a nutshell, think of the oft-used sporting analogy. Sporting games began as physical events – attended by sporting enthusiasts and local fans. Broadcast television came along and opened sporting to a global audience and really created the “industry” of sports.
BOBtv wants to do the same for events. Today, our events are attended physically by people in our specific industry – mostly on a local to national scale. Imagine BOB coming in and putting content from dozens (hundreds?) of healthcare meetings on a healthcare “channel.” A brain surgeon in Dubai could customize his own channel “programming” to include the very best content from all the major brain surgery meetings and conferences. He can watch it when he wants, where he wants – and, he can keep and refer back to it. At its apex, the channel would have thousands of other brain surgeons on the same channel, interacting and collaborating with one another.
Ambitious? Unbelievably so. Doable? Nearly anything’s doable with enough money, time and backing. Tony’s always been a big thinker. If anyone could pull it off, it would probably be him. And he’s got ASAE, CEIR, IAEE and VEI behind the effort. Skip Cox at Exhibit Surveys is also promising to work with Tony to create a robust measurement system.
I don’t know all the details. I wonder if Tony even does. But think about it. We’re talking about a network targeting 500 million professional attendees.
According to Michael Doyle, Executive Director of the Virtual Edge Institute, “BOBtv addresses a major bottleneck that’s slowed the adoption of virtual technology and kept many from enjoying its real benefits. Virtual event platforms take event content and place it in another envelope. BOBtv will instead take that content to the world.” (Full disclosure: I am a consultant with VEI.)
Check out BOBtv yourself and let me know what you think.
Being the diehard face-to-face guy he is, you gotta love Tony’s tag line for BOBtv: “The second best seat in the house.”
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2 Responses to this article
Thank you Donna. Toward the end of an extremely busy and productive week, that post especially put a smile on my face.
It also accelerated my motivation to get this done. I have never in my career been more determined, or more convinced that the work we are doing as a team is going to make a huge positive difference.
As an industry, we need to craft our strategy, work hard to activate it, and believe that if we do great things will happen.
And in this case, we need work from a unified place as an industry as we do.
If we execute above, I like our industry’s chances to be forever elevated in the global business community. And if that happens, everyone in this industry wins.
I also don’t have all of the answers. Please reach out with any thoughts or direction you may have. 312-543-5162
Thanks for being an objective advocate Donna. I appreciate the vote of confidence.
I think one of the biggest challenges for most event organizers to reach people outside of their existing community. It’s a “marketing” challenge for many organizations. Here is an opportunity to reach…really reach. And what an opportunity for learners across the world to experience content they most likely they never even knew about.
What I really like about this product is that it appears to not take away from anyone already in the industry – organizers, vendors, anyone. It’s an “add on” to what already is in place.
Is it any surprise why ASAE, CEIR, IAEE and PCMA are excited?
I’ve not known Tony Lorenz for long but I do think he has the experience, has built a great team, has been and continues to be very open to collaboration. This is big, and will take a lot of smart people.