360 Vision

It used to be good to have normal vision, then it was about good peripheral vision. Now it seems like you have to be 360.

Now what does 360 vision mean? Well we need to to envision and understand everything around us. We need to know what other events are doing. We need to know what our customer groups are doing. We need to understand all of their businesses.

We need to interact with the media, trade associations, other event within the industry sectors we address. We need to understand our vendors, what they can do and what they cannot do.

We need to understand the destination and all of groups that we will need to work with to ensure our events are sucessful.

360 vision also means we need to understand the global impacts of economies on our business, know trends, and understand how our events can be integral to all of these happenies.

We need to understand our fellow-coworkers and what their abilities are and limitations. We need to have a vision of this new hybrid world that is online and offline and how these new mediums will integrate with our f2f programs.

Next we need to be aware outside the sectors we serve whether they are ancillary to our core or if they are just events that are having great event years because they found some of magical gold dust.

Now can anyone person be 360 probably not, but it's good if you try to have a good grasp of everything that is happening around your epicenter.

It will take a team, operations, marketing, sales, development, support staff and industry connections to allow you to be 360 in vision when you may have only eyes for a 180.

The pace of the 360 world is rapid and if you don't stay on top of it your going to feel like you got hit by a bus as the tires begin to come off your firm grip of your events.

Association, make a list of all of them you work with put into your outlook once a month to look at their websites and get a feel for what they are doing. Engage them in conversation every two months. Media/trade pubs, look at their sites more frequently and engage them as well either via email or phone call to get a good pulse. Meet with your ad reps they are in the field gathering information that can be valuable to you.

Have you and your staff pick 20 events to lock in and see what they are doing. Sign-up for the shows get on their promotional lists. It will give you some good insight to what may work for them and might work with you.

Build a networking list of your peers and have your staff do the same with a good mix of marketing, ops, sales, etc. This group will become a good resource for you to view.
Go to other events when they are in your city, it never hurts to gather more information that could be helpful to you.
Give vendors a chance to pitch you, you may not buy from them but you will see what they have to offer. Now I'm not telling you to go into full RFP status but engage them.

Also get involved with a little R&D with your vendors help them build better solutions for your events.

Read the pubs for our business, get online in the communities that effect for your business.
Call your customers exhibitors and attendees, conduct some market research all of the above will move you from peripheral to to 360.

Also consider a smart if you don't have one, it will keep you up to date and get on the google alerts for information that you think will matter to you.

Understand data minining, metrics, hybrid, horizontal, vertical, purls, social media, f2f, electronic promotion, direct mail, pr, ops, logistics, ROI, ROO, cost value, added value.

Theres alot we need to know but some of it's fun.