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TOURISM FUTURES

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Tourism Futures National Conference
Make a note in your diary: Monday 17 August, 3.30 - 4.15pm (AEST)
Please note that the last 15 mins of the presentation will be devoted to audience interaction

Standing on the shoulders of giants… What will conferences look like in 2020?

79 people watched this video stream live. The goal was 50 – 100. To see it for yourself, click on www.ustream.tv/recorded/2004408. Ignore the related videos they were failed experiments.

To view a pdf of the slides click here. It will make more sense if you have two windows open, one with Ustream and the other the pdf.

For those of you seeing a presentation in this way for the first time, be aware most viewers will be comparing their experience with YouTube or News feeds. Equally, you wouldn’t expect to sit down and view the whole conference from 9am until 5pm every day. You’ll pick and choose the sessions of greatest interest.

As you will hear during the presentation, we’ve been streaming video from conferences since 2005 and it is a continuous learning process. We tried this time to use the cheapest and simplest technology and it worked OK.

Next time we’ll position the camera above the heads of the audience although you did get to feel what it was like to be there seeing the laptop screens glowing in the foreground.

We also took the audio-out from the mixer into the camera and hence via firewire to the laptop. What we didn’t realise was that the laptop microphone was not deactivated. Next time we’ll take the mixer feed direct to the laptop. That will avoid some of the background whispers you can hear.

We also discovered how important it was to adjust the laptop mike level to avoid distortion. You can’t hear this in the saved video stream, it got fixed in the final upload.

Be aware if you hit save-recording on Utube, it will save everything unless you explicitly say DO NOT. More disconcerting, you must continue the live feed whilst you are saving the session to an explicit filename. Discontinuing the live feed breaks the save process and you’ll lose it forever (and that is why we were recording on the camera as well, but next time we’ll have a second feed from the mixer to this device).

Good luck, enjoy.

Now we know what to do, we’ll be streaming most of our meetings and conferences. It was easy and almost zero cost.

We run conferences to change the way people think and build relationships they didn’t know they needed. Video streaming allows us to increase our reach and so create more change.

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About the presentation

This 30 minute presentation is one segment of the Tourism Futures Conference at the Marriott Hotel, Surfers Paradise. See www.tourismfutures.com.au. The presenter, Martin Lack, is Director of ConferenceIT, which runs more high technology conferences in Australia than any other company. He will transport the audience to 2020 and then look back to see what has changed.

  • Will delegates still attend conferences in 11 years time? When will they book? How different will be the experience? And how many will actually attend the formal sessions? Will there be formal sessions in 2020?
  • What will be the impact of global warming and traded carbon credits? Peak-oil will be long gone by 2020. Will society frown on frivolous travel?
  • How will hotels and PCOs have to change to meet the demands of Gen Y, then in their mid-late 30s? Or worse still, today’s Gen Z now in the workforce!

Join the video stream to find out. It will be a whole lot of fun and will definitely set you off on your own journey of exploration into the future.

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Other useful information
Thank you to all who contributed - we have acknowledged you by first name as some of you may wish to remain anonymous! :-)

There is a great video called Shift Happens, which explores some of the themes raised here. It has an ethical bent but also looks at impacts on society. Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpEnFwiqdx8&feature=fvst.
Phillip

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See also Corbin Ball’s website: Future Trends in the Meetings Industry www.corbinball.com/art/.
Articles of particular interest include:

Julia

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The CPM gap http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/07/the-cpm-gap.html
Ads online typically cost $5 to $20 for one thousand impressions. A fancy magazine might cost two or three times that. But it's still pennies a person.

Attending a conference, on the other hand, costs $1000 by the time you add up the expenses. That's a CPM of $1,000,000. One thousand of the right people at the right conference costs a million dollars, as opposed to $12 for the same thousand people online.

That seems nuts. Same people, radical difference in price. Apples and oranges. It's not a valid comparison because one is about ads and interruptions, the other is from the point of view of the conference organizer or the attendee awash in attention and connection...

Here's the thing: advertisers treat prospects online as targets, as victims, as people to subject to interruption. Conferences treat attendees as royalty, as paying customers who invested time and money to be there.

And that's the difference. As long as your site is about something else and the ads are a distraction, you'll see CPM rates drop. As soon as you (or the advertisers) figure out that creating online communities aligned with the advertising, where attendance is a choice by the consumer, then you're creating genuine value.

The irony is that advertisers continue to push media people to create the very environments that don't work. They want a bigger M and a lower C.

Far more useful for everyone to do the opposite. Pay a lot and get more than you pay for.
Scott

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And see http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/10/nine-steps-to-p.html. The abstract is crystalising, the title having appeared over lunch – Transparency: why it will make you money.

Also http://www.slideshare.net/martinwalsh/digital-marketing-and-events-20-draft-ver6.
Tim

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New user interfaces will definitely be there – e.g. gesture (Microsoft Project Natal) and speech. Also augmented reality (that would definitely apply to conferences).

Project Natal: YouTube E3 2009 from 0.22 - In the future 3D will be intelligent. Content expert is not a real person it will be a knowledge pool. Device sees her physical movements.
Hugh

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  • The purpose of a conference will shift away from sharing information to solving problems collaboratively. Ie –people will have access to information, skills training and communication anytime, anywhere. Conferences will be less about disseminating information / skills and more around soft skill application of knowledges and skills. The current purpose of PD / training will no longer be necessary.
  • This will require a new ‘conference’ mind set. Ie- Keynote speakers, content experts will deliver their thesis through new media, and the face to face component will move from 95% face to face to something more like 10% as the presentation moves online. Holograms, full-sense web conferencing, haptics etc.
  • The purpose of the 10% face to face time will change to allow people to develop ‘connectivist’ intelligence – ie – to build personal networks of human resource intelligence / relationships, and will probably be based around global problem solving methodologies. Building teamwork, networks, relationships etc, will be the objective of face to face. It almost is anyway.
  • People will also have the opportunity to solve specific problems with content experts in smaller groups, assuming a base line level of knowledge from the pre-face to face content delivery.
  • Therefore, there would be very few sessions in which people would be all together listening to a speaker. Sessions would be personalized by ‘learning guides’, who assist delegates to plan a two day event that suits their individual goals based on the notions above. Small groups. Project / solutions based. Accessing and building networks as required.

So, this probably isn’t much out of the box thinking. Hope it helps.
Sean

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2009/07/how-to-use-virtual-worlds-for-business.php
Vicki

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The interactive whiteboard for <$100 is from the link here www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s5EvhHy7eQ.

The application which allows a PC to control another with our vga cables is TeamSpot by Tidebreak http://www.tidebreak.com. The software is designed to facilitate collaboration.
Gordon

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See also some heavy-weight reports from the RAND Corporation - "The Global Technology Revolution 2020, In-Depth Analyses" published in 2009: www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/2006/RAND_TR303.pdf.
Bob

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Instructions - DO NOT USE

These are the instructions we provided for people to access the live stream on the day. I retain them so you may be able to use them as the basis of instructions for your own session.

PowerPoint
Click here to download a copy of the PowerPoint slides. You may find it easier to view this on your machine with the full presentation in a separate window. See below:

Exit Reality
For a rich experience, log onto ExitReality at http://download.exitreality.com/. Download the plug-in and create your avatar. This will take a few minutes so we suggest you do it now.

To view the presentation in SurroundUs lick on http://3d.exitreality.com/?q=http://tourismfutures.surroundus.com/index.wrl.

You will enter a large 3D auditorium with the screen in front of you. If you don’t immediately see your avatar click one of the arrow keys bottom left.

To raise and lower your avatar's head, use CTRL and the up and down arrow keys. Alternatively you can use the scroll wheel on your mouse.

If you would like to make comments, go to the Chat button top right. You can then communicate with all the other avatars in the auditorium. Have fun!

Ustream
For a simpler method; to see the video stream log onto www.ustream.tv and search for Tourism Futures. Or click on http://www.ustream.tv/channel/tourism-futures

Ustream allows you to watch the show monastically, although you can share comments via our twitter hashtag #confit.

Twitter
Share your thoughts with the whole audience.

Log on to Twitter http://twitter.com and then make comments but you must include the hashtag to share information. Always include #confit in your short message.

Open a further window and log on to http://search.twitter.com/ and enter #confit to see everyone else’s comments.

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Thank you to all who assisted

I first heard the phrase 'Standing on the shoulders of giants' at high school where it was attributed to Isaac Newton when he was asked why he had discovered so much. The phrase is, in fact, is much older than that.

A huge number of people assisted with this project including technology evangelists at Cisco, CSC, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Intel and Microsoft. Articles in New Scientist provided some long term views about where technology was heading.

Significant input was provided by Education Queensland whose One-School strategy involves some 400,000 students and is one of the most advanced uses of technology in the K-12 space as applied to the pedagogy of teaching. K – 12 is the major driver of change in this space.

None of the technology would have been possible without the pioneering efforts of the QUESTnet conferences over many years, see www.questnet.edu.au. These first trialed streaming video with JCU as hosts in Cairns in 2004. The experience progressively got better until we hit the jackpot in 2009 when the University of Southern Queensland were hosts. This conference demonstrated a virtual conference prior, hashtags, streaming video to Mediasite, Second Life and Exit Reality. Short video clips taken at the conference are viewable at You Tube. Search for QUESTnet2009.

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The technology we are using

The goal was to use low-cost easy-to-use tools readily available on the Internet.

The initial video conference uses Mirial. They provide a three-month trial at no charge. It could equally have been Microsoft NetMeeting or Skype Video. Remember talking-heads via a video conference don’t have to be high quality to engage an audience, but they must NOT pixelate and the audio must good quality. And you must display meaningful PowerPoints. We normally put the talking head on a smaller secondary screen with the PowerPoints on the main screen although NetMeeting allows both on one (and so does Mirial).

The streaming video uses an old high-end domestic digital video camera albeit more than five years old.

Lan1 provided a joy stick remote controlled Axis 214 PTZ network camera which demonstrated how you did NOT need a second camera operator to run streamed video.

KPOWER loaned an ACER K10, LED projector which is amazing. High spec cheap and very light to carry.

The laptops are Sony Intel Centrino Duo T5500 / 1.66Ghz with 2G Ram.

To simplify network connections and manage QoS, the video feed is via the hotel in-house DSL service with 2Mb symmetric. The Mirial is via an Optus 3G service using the Netcomm NSG002W. The students used Dell laptops, a second Netcomm device albeit linked to NextG, to spread the load between 3G frequencies.

Overall less than a $1000 of gear plus laptops and connection costs of less than $100.

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 Standing on the shoulders of giants… What will conferences look like in 2020?

Abstract:
The presentation will look 5 - 10 years out and postulate how conferences and meetings might change. It will be based on a decade of experience running leading-edge conferences for the computer industry including subjects such as advanced networking, e-Learning and eResearch.

It will underpin the argument using fairly predictable data such as economic forecasts, airline fleet sizes and issues with non-renewable resources and climate warming. It will overlay this with possible advances in technology and known social behaviour.

It will grapple with the impact of Gen Y in ten years time and the changes likely demanded of their successors.

It will finish with one or more scenarios about what might happen. From this will be drawn a series of questions.

The presentation will be successful when it challenges the audience to think in very different ways about acquiring information and building relationships in 2020.

Biography:
Martin Lack studied mathematics at Imperial College, London. He is renowned for his good ideas. He has forty years experience in the computer industry and has spent his life challenging conventional thinking. He is also known as the grenade thrower as he asks apparently simple questions which stimulate intense debate. People say his brain thinks in quite different ways and outside the convention of social mores. He is a classic De Bono disciple.

Together this allows Martin to synthesise disparate pieces of information and draw together a coherent and plausible picture. He thinks very deeply about subjects, yet analyses his intuition to gain a greater understanding of the thought process.

With four distinct careers, he has been a professional project manager, business analyst, national marketing manager and now professional conference organiser. For more than a decade he has led ConferenceIT, a company which runs more computer conferences in Australia than any other PCO.
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