Oversaturated on Events? What We Need is More (Quality)
I haven’t seen an official study yet, but if I had to guess, I would say that there are hundreds of marketing events each month for government agencies. If you attended them all, you could probably eat out every day, all day without fail. If you attended every webcast available to you, you could likely stare at your computer screen for hours on end until your eyeballs dry out. Yet despite all that, I assert that what we need is more events. Yes, I said more. And, no, I am not crazy.
Information Technology is changing more rapidly than any one human being can grasp. Heck, Van Ristau, our CTO, is one of the smartest human beings I know. He rarely sleeps and seems to work 20 hours a day, even on weekends. And, even for him, there is still more to learn. So if Van needs more events, then we all do. We need more QUALITY, educational marketing events to fill that need.
If done right, a marketing event should target a very specific topic intended to teach the customer a valuable piece of information they need. And, if publicized right, they will find your event rather than you shotgun blasting thousands to find the one or two customers who need that information.
I am pushing my team to start narrowing their scope to make their events better for the customer. We recently had some great educational webcasts that we did in partnership with the Forestry service that were a huge value-add for all involved. We want to do more events like that, and we are working on a Geospatial event in June that we hope hits the mark.
And, if making the event better for the customers means joining forces with others, we do that too. We are participating in two events built with government input during planning – MeriTalk 1,100 on data center consolidation in May and Symantec Government Symposium in June – because we think they will provide real value to our government customers. You can attend and be the judge of whether they meet the mark.
So, if you work for the government or a contractor and want a quality event, then please post a comment, send an email or give me a call (800-262-4358). We would be ecstatic to hear from you. Since the event is for you, you should have a say up- front in its outcome, and with your input, I am pretty certain we can’t miss.
In the meantime, get out there and find the right event for your needs. Here’s a list of websites where you can find government-centric events on just about any IT topic you can imagine:
- Gov Events
- Government Technology
- IT Events
- Processor Magazine
- Northern Virginia Tech Council (NVTC)
- GovLoop
- MeriTalk
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