Ivan Chong: The I-Blog

Sunday, June 22, 2008

The Crowd Can Talk Back!

Informatica's annual customer conference was held a few weeks ago. I've been participating in this event for years. This year was really different because we decided to incorporate the online community into the event. We showed a funny video on mainstage and then posted it on YouTube. We had live blogging and commentary during the conference. After I gave my keynote presentation, I was able to get real-time feedback. After the conference, several attendees "wrote on my wall" in Facebook and commented on my presentation.

Communication with customers used to be entirely episodic. Now, with social-networking, the opportunities exist to blend traditional events (like an annual customer conference) with online forums and communities. As I stand on mainstage during the event, I am no longer talking to an inanimate mass of attendees. The community can now talk back... often in real-time.

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