October 2004
Best Practices: Personal portals

SmartEvent calculates the potential connections among Supercomm participants

By Cathy Chatfield-Taylor

If Charles Babbage were building his automatic computing machine today, he might apply the technology to trade show behavior instead of the position of the stars. Plotting the trajectory of thousands of interconnected people is, in simple terms, the lofty goal of SmartEvent, a “Business Relationship Optimization” engine that promises to make a difference in how buyers and sellers interact.

“People show up at a trade show, and no one knows what they do,” says Mike Godsey, Senior Vice President, Client Services, for ExpoExchange, which developed SmartEvent with BDMetrics, Baltimore, MD. “This looks at their behavior, so we can know who’s talking to whom, then give them ideas about who else they should talk to.”

When the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA), Arlington, VA, used SmartEvent to hook up nearly 27,000 attendees and 675 exhibiting companies at Supercomm 2004, June 20–24 at McCormick Place, Chicago, the engine projected that 15 million possible relationships could evolve from connections made at the show.

“That’s a staggering number,” says Jack Chalden, former General Manager of Supercomm. “But if you think about all the ways people can connect, it’s not surprising.”

As many as 7,000 people per day logged on to their personal portals to identify other people they wanted to meet and/or products they wanted to see. Branded as “TIAnalytics,” the portal presented each user with recommendations based on the demographic data they entered during registration, including job title, function, areas of expertise and products of interest.

The portal enabled users to search on keywords, save their results — which listed people and associated products — and request connections. To protect individual privacy, contact information was hidden until both parties agreed to meet. Many users refined their demographic profiles to generate more accurate search results.

“That’s a strong indicator that they might have hastily filled them out, then realized they could impact their knowledge of who was there and connections they could make if they described themselves more accurately,” Chalden says.

Payback for the time invested was immediate. “A large show has its size as its biggest asset,” he says. “At the same time, its size can be a challenge, because when you walk into a complex event, it’s difficult to navigate and a challenge to be efficient. This tool addresses that.”

Because it captures information about all participants — including press and industry analysts — SmartEvent extends matches to include networking opportunities based on shared interests, not just product needs. And, by quantifying the number of prospective meetings, SmartEvent helps both attendees and exhibitors measure the potential return on investment and so justify their participation.

The real value of the portal may be realized post-show. For the nearly 6,000 participants who elected to keep their portals active until Supercomm 2005, SmartEvent enables users to refine and extend their searches to different product categories and areas of interest.

“If you’re going to roll out a new product or introduce a product in other markets, or you have a new problem to solve, that populates the portal in a new way, and even more connections are revealed,” Chalden says. “It becomes a research tool that can extend your reach farther into the market.”

Building up to the next event, SmartEvent becomes a valuable sales and marketing tool. TIA can show exhibitors how many potential connections there are with registrants who have expressed interest in their products. And attendance promotions can target finely tuned vertical market segments with messages that address their particular concerns.

Next year’s biggest challenge will be to communicate the benefits of using the portal and make the portal more intuitive to use.

“This year we did not make the registration badge and portal seamless. But next year, when they sign up, they’ll automatically have a portal,” Chalden says. “When it’s populated, you can see the connections, and the journey begins.”