Recording meetings and conferences for archival purposes is common practice for many shows. Digitell began recording events in the 1980s and has been an industry leader in adopting new technologies, initially from cassette tapes to CD-ROMs and now to virtual conferences and exhibitions. Digitell plans to unveil their new product, VirtualU, in the first quarter of 2009 and already has a list of clients to help them launch their virtual exhibition and conference solution. James Newman, Digitell’s Director of Research and Development, explains, “What we are focusing on right now for our current clients is in building them their own custom branded online convention center. It will have an exhibit hall, board rooms, lecture halls, and then bigger socializing-type rooms such as a ball room.”
Newman elaborates, “The idea is that an association or organization can have their own virtual space where their members can come, socialize, network, and make connections. They will be able to book the board room themselves if they want to hold a meeting, be able to book the lecture hall and give their own presentations, and of course they will have the exhibit hall where people will go to see what the latest is from the vendors associated with that particular organization. Our program has full VoIP (voice over internet protocol) – if participants have a head set or microphone they can talk to each other that way, and of course they can also communicate through the chat bar. At release the session rooms and boardrooms will allow presenters to upload power points for display in the world. Future releases will have everything you would want in a business program, including application sharing and white boarding. Participants will have as close to the face-to-face feel as you can get without actually being at a physical convention -- users will feel like they are in an actual exhibition environment.”
“Digitell’s Virtual Universe is called VirtualU. The VirtualU universe can support hundreds of unique virtual worlds and up to 65,000 simultaneous users. The number of simultaneous users each world supports will be different depending on the application. Users walk around the virtual exhibition as a customizable avatar, which is a computer presentation of an individual. Users can interact and chat with each other, publicly or privately. There are a variety of ‘spaces’ available for people to utilize as well.
The exhibit hall is fully automated, enabling exhibitors to easily buy a booth and populate it with images, documents, pdfs, streaming video and contact information, all originating from a web page that gets populated into the 3-d booth. Exhibitors can even have a representative online to talk directly to interested attendees.
The board room is built to host meetings, enabling geographically separated participants to meet in one place at the same time. This solution decreases travel time and expense as people simply log on to be part of the meeting.
The lecture halls allow speakers to give talks and presentations to an audience that may not be physically present, but have access to a computer with internet connectivity. The PowerPoint presentations are on display on demand in the lecture hall so that anyone anytime can view it from the start.
While Digitell creates the online world, the administrative rights fall to their clients who themselves have the ability to make changes to the virtual environment as they see fit, such as adding more tables or chairs to a particular room, making for a highly customizable product.
Digitell is currently selling their virtual convention centers in one year lease agreements, giving their clients the flexibility to use it on their own time frames. Newman explains, “The way we are selling the product is that once you create your own convention center, it is open year round. There will be a yearly fee for us hosting it, but it will be up to the client to make the most of it – they could do one conference a month or they could do one a year. They can also let their members come in and host their own conferences. Essentially, it is a way for their members to communicate all year round in a central place.”
While VirtualU, hosted at www.virtualbeginnings.com, is clearly a great tool for associations to keep in contact with their members, it is also a potential new revenue stream as well. Newman states, “Our clients will have the opportunity to make some of their money back by selling booths and advertising space as well as renting out the board rooms and the lecture halls. We give our clients these virtual spaces to use as they want, so it is up to them to take full advantage of all of the opportunities we offer them.”
One client who is taking advantage of VirtualU is Marshall Lipson, Managing Director of Professional Development for the Society of Financial Service Professionals. Lipson explains, “What I think is so appealing about this and why it is going to sell to our members is that it is a world in which someone like myself grew up. I grew up going to live meetings. I am comfortable sitting in a chair and listening to someone speak. The navigation is easier than going to a flat website that have drop down screens and menus and URLs and all sorts of things that I, being of a different generation, do not necessarily understand. A lot of people in my generation will not take the time to learn new technology, especially our older members, but, with VirtualU, by simply moving their mouse and using the ‘forward’ and ‘back’ button, they can maneuver this person, their alter ego, into the meeting and they can sit down, look around and watch the show. It is very intuitive and I feel it is going to be a great tool for my organization.”
Lipson continues, “I also know for a fact that it has a tremendous appeal to our exhibitors because they can not wait to have 24/7 access to our members, and we will most likely not charge an additional fee to our annual meeting exhibitors for this service. We are considering packaging it into the price of our annual meeting, which exhibitors are going to go to anyway, so they are going to the get the 24/7 exposure VirtualU gives them automatically if they choose to use it. Highlighting this advantage should make sales very easy. We are sold out for this year’s event partly because of what we will do for them next year with VirtualU.”
Lipson, explaining why he finds so much potential in VirtualU, states, “I feel like I am only limited by my imagination. I just keep thinking of new ideas and hope that people like those at Digitell will say ‘Yes, that will work.’ What I have found with Digitell is that they never say no. I give them an idea and they come back six days later and tell me, ‘We think we have got a way to do that.’ They are delightful to work with.”
Digitell continues to implement the latest technology to provide the best service to their customers. Newman states, “I believe that we were the first company in the Exhibition and Events Industry to move from cassette to mp3s and CD-ROMs, specifically, multi-media CD-ROMs complete with PowerPoint presentations, and then the first to go to the digital online format. We are now definitely the first in our industry to be looking at virtual technology as a way to hold virtual conventions with full exhibit halls. We initially got into this arena to offer it as another service to our clients as a way to extend the life of their conference year round. But, as we started to develop it and show it to people, it kind of branched off beyond our current clients. We are starting to get people interested in this type of technology for a dozen different reasons and everybody we show it to has another idea for what they can use it for.”
While Digitell will not officially launch VirtualU until the first quarter of 2009, they are already starting to take on clients. Newman explains, “We are pretty close to launch. It is just some of the functionality that we are still building in that we want to perfect that is holding us back. But, one of the great things about VirtualU is that once we launch and as we continue to develop new tech and new functionality, current users will automatically get these updates incorporated into their product.”
Lipson, a long time customer of Digitell and one of the first for VirtualU, sums up, “It is rare today to work with a company like Digitell that cares as much about your meeting as they do. They bend over backwards to give me what I need.”
Digitell will be a technology sponsor at the MeetingTechOnline Summit 2008 in Chicago, November 5th and 6th.
“To learn more about Digitell or Virtual Beginnings, go to www.digitellinc.com or www.virtualbeginnings.com. For additional information please call or email Steve Parker – 800-249-2662, sparker@digitellmail.com.