When film industry professionals from 70+ countries register for this year's American Film Market, the premier global b-to-b marketplace for the independent motion picture production and distribution industry, November 3-10, 2010 in Santa Monica, they will have one more way to connect with one another—a new online community. My client, American Film Market (AFM), launched MyAFM for its 31st event not only to provide a richer at-show experience for attendees, but also to enable them to start connecting prior to the event, further enhancing the AFM value proposition. 

There are a variety of paths to take in launching a community platform, and many moving parts, so my first action item in working with AFM on this project was to identify their objectives for the community. Having a clear objective set is essential to ensuring the best solution and as such was the primary driver of the platform evaluation process. While we evaluated potential solutions against a wide range of criteria, the priority objectives for AFM were a customizable matchmaking application, strong social media integration, an integrated mobile interface, a rich set of usage metrics and viable platform economics. All of the objectives were achieved with the solution that was green-lighted by AFM.

The core component of MyAFM will be a robust attendee directory, which enables registered attendees to browse and search profiles of other attendees. Custom filters, profile questions and tags will be used accordingly to enhance the users' search experience and maximize connections. Attendees will have the opportunity to include a photo, info about themselves, and links to blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter in their profile. Among the other social networking benefits, attendees will be able to send messages to one another, engage in real time chat, schedule meetings and export them to their calendars, and see which of their Facebook friends are already registered. Attendees with smartphones will also be able to enjoy a rich, user-friendly MyAFM experience as the platform is mobile-centric, and any mobile updates users make will be automatically synched across all devices.

In order to maximize adoption by AFM attendees, they will receive an account/profile when they register, and relevant registration data will be automatically uploaded into to their profiles.  MyAFM will be promoted several months prior to the show through prominent integration into the show web site and other communications.

After the event, AFM will analyze usage metrics and evolve the community platform for AFM 2011.