Solutions Stars Video Conference Wrap Up

Network Solutions‘ Solutions Stars Video Conference just finished and I have to admit, it was a pretty intense experience.  The event was primarily driven by a series of videos, each on a different topic relating to social media strategy.  The videos themselves were each composed of short bursts of insight from various web personalities.  These clips moved at a rather rapid pace.  Below the video player, the site offered participants a live chat box, which was quickly filled with a lively discussion.  Between the videos and the chat, along with a separate “ask a question” box and the parallel conversation on Twitter, it was quite a lot of information to digest.

Each video clip contained some useful insight, though some more obvious than others (a chat participant noted he would have to “write that one down” when a video clip mentioned adding keywords to your website).  I particularly enjoyed the comments made by Guy Kawasaki, Tim Ferriss, Tony Hsieh, Chris Brogan and Mari Smith.  In general, I was most intrigued by the discussion on the integration of offline business and marketing efforts with those being made online.

While I had initially expected a mostly DC based crowd, Network Solutions and Livingston Communications did a fantastic job getting the word out about the event.  From what I could tell, there was tremendous geographical diversity among the participants.  The format of the event was particularly creative – pre-cut videos with an enthusiastic chat crowd “co-watching”.  While I think this format has a lot of potential, there is definitely some tweaks that could be made in future iterations.

(Don’t) Focus on Chat

The live chat window was where most of the action took place, and a lot of value was create by the networking and discussion opportunities presented therein.  Unfortunately, the window itself was relatively small and automatically re-focused to the newest message.  The volume of messages was far too high for this model, however.

Quickly, it became impossible to keep up with the conversation.  This window should be made significantly larger and the auto update feature should only work if one is already at the newest item.

Twitter Integration

I was particularly excited to see twitter posts integrated directly into the conference site, based on the #solutionsstars tag.  But Twitter use during the event went well beyond my – and perhaps the site’s creaters – expectations.  A large chunk of the conversation was about or through Twitter, and I found myself juggling browser tabs as I kept checking up on various twitter profiles that came up (while hpelessly trying to stay caught up on the chat conversation).

As most people too this event as an opportunity to do some Twitter networking, this should be enhanced.  Perhaps allow people to link their chat name directly to their Twitter profile page by adding their Twitter tag while logging in to the chat.  The decision to keep the login as simple as possible (type a name, click login) was wise and refreshing, but I think this additional option would be worth it.

Other Items

There were several browser compatibility problems people reported.  I myself encountered a few errors and tested a different browsers before settling on Chrome. They guys behind the site did an excellent job solving many of these problems on the fly, though.  Putting technical issues aside, some people also seemed disappointed there was no interactivity to the video.  The “Ask a Question” feature didn’t seem to have a clear purpose – the only item on the site not to.  Perhaps have a few experts available to respond directly there?  Or just use the space to enlarge the chat window.

The most important thing, I believe, is to slow down the pace of the videos and maybe lengthen the clips.  While there were a number of useful suggestions made, it was difficult to digest them all so quickly.  Perhaps in the future, there could be a pause after longer individual clips and participants could ask a few questions about the ideas presented.

Thanks Network Solutions and Livingston Communications

Despite the possibility for improvement, the event was an obvious success and I was impressed from the start with the thoughtful and creative layout of the conference site. I definitely hope to see more of these kind of events in the future.  While it isn’t a replacement for real conferences, it was an innovative way to meet a number of new people and absorb the latest social media cleverness.  There are probably a lot of other enhancements that could be made to the site and format to push the concept further.  Any suggestion?  Leave a comment.