the tech guy

Hugh Lee

What is your story?
Spring 2010

HUGH LEE is the founder and president of Rochester, NY-based Fusion Productions. He is past Chairman of MPI International, a member of the Convention Industry Council’s Hall of Leaders and serves on the board of directors of ASAE

MPG: What is Fusion Productions?
Hugh: Fusion has been in the business of meetings for over thirty years. We integrate meeting design and production with creative storytelling to deliver your message. We also integrate e-learning and technology such as social media to enhance the meeting.

We started out as a marketing and communications organization. Kodak asked us to take some of our content and begin working it into meetings so they could get a greater return on their investment. That was our first meeting and it has evolved into the major focus of the company.

A leading technology company recently canceled an annual face-to-face conference and replaced it with a virtual meeting. Do you see this being a trend?
The latest economic and global issues have been a tipping point for making this all occur. Because of budget restraints, some organizations are faced with either not doing any meetings at all or utilizing some of the virtual tools. The Department of Homeland Security was recently requested to look at technology tools that can enhance and lower the costs of their meetings.

Is technology a trend? Absolutely. Are social networking / community building tools a trend? Absolutely. The trend is more to augment the meeting, to increase its value, and perhaps to change the time and format of the meeting but certainly not to replace it. Where else, except at a face-to-face, can you meet 1,500 people? Get to know them, get to shake their hand, see where they are coming from - all at once. That is the intangibility of the face-to-face.

It’s very difficult, although possible at a much more shallow level, to develop deep experiential interfaces online. The virtual world is improving but we are certainly not ready to replace the personal contact.

Technology has presented us with an opportunity to reduce our costs, increase our speed and add greater value to meetings. For example, instead of showing 900 slides in a PowerPoint presentation, provide the bulk of the information online and have a community discussion about it so that when you are live you only have to hit the high points. It can also expand the value of the meeting, using social media, by tracking how people are applying the information and sharing best practices. You have taken the core strength of a meeting – its content, the relationships, the experiences, and the networking - and you’ve extended it both before and after as well as during the meeting.

Social media is an overwhelming topic for some people. Can you suggest a “baby step” approach to getting started?
Go find someone who uses Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter and sit down and have them walk you through it. Start small and communicate with one or two people you already know.

How can the hotel community best use these tools?
Social media provides the opportunity to create richer experiences for your prospects and customers at their moment of need through richer, more engaging media content and community. What that means is that, because it is inexpensive, any level property can get involved. That’s the beauty of Web 2.0 tools. Many of them are free.

Regarding tactics, the first question you have to ask yourself is, “What is your story, what is the content and experiences you have that will be of value versus setting up a Facebook page with your hotel brochure?” That’s not going to engage people any more than the printed brochure used to.

For example, if they think their niche is religious conferences, it is very inexpensive to do a simple case study, start a YouTube channel and virally market to your customers showing how other religious groups use your property. It’s greener, it’s cheaper, you can change it, you can embed it into your emails and on your web site, people can pass it on to each other and you can even brand it. If you are in the hospitality industry and not using interactive marketing, which includes social media, you are missing the boat.

Look ahead five year. What changes do you see in the meetings industry?
Whether you are in the meetings or the hospitality business, the need to find good content, have a valuable experience, make connections, and find out in a compelling way is only going to grow.

People will come to meetings better prepared. They won’t be taking notes because they will all have TWINE equivalent tools, a Web 3.0 tool which takes and categorizes your notes. They won’t have to be listening to long, boring general sessions because a lot that information will have been delivered to them prior to the meeting.

The depth and the breath of the attendees will be dramatically changed. For example, for the upcoming MPI Vancouver conference we will be incorporating a “second life” virtual world for people that can’t attend. They will be attending a virtual world that looks exactly like the live general session - stage, screens, seating and everything. There will be people around the world that will view the general session live, interact with questions, and have the same access to the content.

I think the meeting of the future will be shorter, higher impact, greater value, with use of technology before, during and after, and it will extend to more people. So what does that mean for hotels? They need to stay on top of bandwidth and mobile. They need to understand that they will be serving people both externally as well as internally. CVB’s and hotels should both be looking at how people can use their properties and destinations to enhance the social network discussion.

Will technology ever take the place of face-to-face? It will only enhance our time together.  

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