virtual experience, The

Northwestern Financial Review, Jul 1, 2001 by Dullum, Justin

The American

Bankers Association demonstrates the future of conferences may be online, but traditional meetings will always exist

The first-ever online conference hosted by the American Bankers Association last month was so allencompassing that one might wonder whether traditional conferences have any future left. The animated introduction that welcomes visitors to the ABA's e-conference makes a statement that resonates throughout the rest of the site's pages: this is not your typical online banking affair. In fact, with www.aba-usbanking2001.com, the ABA has significantly raised the bar on all conferences.

In addition to more than 100 industry expert speakers - many of whom are presented in video and audio formats - the conference offers educational resources, a trade show, a press center and message boards covering a wide variety of topics. All this can be accessed by anyone with an Internet connection, 24 hours a day, seven days a week-and at no cost.

The conference offers more pertinent information than any traditional conference logistically ever could. The e-conference format featured new material released every day during a two-week period last month. After the "close" of the conference on June 15, information was archived on the site and will remain accessible to Web surfers for about a year. The message board section, called "Viewpoint," is still open for users to post comments.

The message board is to an online conference what the social hour is to a traditional meeting. It is a forum for bankers to meet each other and express opinions, albeit from the comfort of their offices or homes. The only thing missing at the e-conference is the physical presence of people.

"This online conference is a very important event to the industry," said Mike ter Maat, ABA's director of information, products and programs. The ABA has been conducting teleconference seminars and meetings for some time that have contained a Web element," said ter Maat. "So we've had our toe in the water of this kind of approach. But, this really takes it to a whole new level."

"Putting a conference like this together is about a six month process," said Tom Haymes, director of marketing at RMR, the company that created the conference for ABA. "The original idea was ours. We approached the ABA, and they have really taken hold of it." Haymes said the conference's content was almost entirely provided by ABA. The model from the conference had been a work in progress for some time.

RMR is the U.S. branch of a British company that has produced 15 similar conferences for various groups in England. According to Haymes, none were quite as inclusive as the ABA's latest contribution to this rapidly evolving technological application. "Our company produces the model into which organizations can plug in a specific conference," Haymes exlained. "We've done conferences on everything from aviation to banking to autism. We're figuring out a better way to make doing this more efficient."

RMR's model includes a virtual trade show. In the case of the ABA e-conference, the trade show is essentially paid advertising. "We can offer the content for free because of the ABA brand name," said ter Matt. "That allows us to draw in a lot of exhibitors based on our past history of being able to reach a lot of bankers." Haymes said the inclusion of a trade show section, through which exhibitors underwrite the cost of a conference, is a recent development in the field. As early as 1999, however, the Iowa Bankers Association held an online conference that operated on the same principle.

Ben Hildebrandt, senior vice president, marketing and public affairs for the Iowa Bankers Association, said he learned of the online conferencing idea from a company he worked with before joining IBA in 1999. "The idea isn't so new," noted Hildebrandt.

The Iowa Bankers Association experimented with the online conference, which was conducted in conjunction with its traditional annual convention, in an effort to include more participants than those who typically attend association events. "The conference we did was basically conceived as a tool allowing individuals at every level of the bank to access information about conference speakers and vendors," said Hildebrandt.

The Iowa conference was successful in at least one tangible sense - it made a profit, Nonetheless, IBA opted not to repeat the conference in 2000. "After the success of the first conference, we had a choice," said Hildebrandt. "We could either do one every year, or build upon the base of information we collected for the first conference and keep the Web site a continually growing thing." In two years, the 1999 IBA online conference has evolved into www.bankersyellowpages.com. (See accompanying article.)

The ABA's ter Maat doesn't expect his association's conference to follow the same path. "We're already looking forward to a 2002 conference," he said. "We've been very encouraged by what we've heard from bankers. The future is quite bright for this type of conferencing."