Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Tag: Internet conferences

Travel 2.0 – I’m Breathless!

Regarding the conference I’ll be blogging from next weekPhocuswrightconf How can one not be enthusiastic after reading this update I received a few days ago from the event producers?

(beginning of excerpt)

Well, it’s just one week to show time in Hollywood, California!

At PhoCusWright, we are passionate about creating a unique conference in an industry mired in a “sea of same.” By producing a conference that’s changing conferences, we are fighting commoditization just like you and delivering a differentiated product along the way. Thank you for joining us in this quest to challenge the status quo.

Next week, The PhoCusWright Executive Conference will be the most notable yet in the event’s illustrious 13-year history for several reasons: record attendance, an unrivaled speaker roster that spans all aspects of our industry’s value chain; highly motivated and demanding attendees; and a tested, pioneering conference format that unveils what’s on prominent travel, tourism and hospitality executives’ minds, and a new “2.0 conference experience.” You’ll find yourself immersed in the strategic center of the world’s largest industry — surrounded by the heads of major suppliers, distributors and influencers.

This business trip is your key to the unvarnished truth about the vetted, the vexed and the victorious as “Travel 2.0 Confronts the Establishment.”

Overview and About PhoCusWright
For over a decade, PhoCusWright events have provided a more valuable experience because our analysts run the show. We leverage our travel industry expertise and interviewing skills to uncover truths, probe for clarity and reject sales pitches. Our clients (attendees, sponsors, exhibitors, speakers) know that we respect their time by providing superior production value, professional event operations, excellent meals and social networking opportunities with unique access to peers and industry leadership. The PhoCusWright Executive Conference on November 13-15 will be three special days dedicated to fresh ideas, expansive thinking, incredible energy and uncommon community.

PhoCusWright Inc. is an independent travel, tourism and hospitality research firm specializing in consumer, business and competitive intelligence. The company produces consumer, market and industry research, provides strategic consulting services and stages a series of high-profile conferences in the U.S. and Europe.

Conference Program and Agenda
At last year’s Executive Conference, we witnessed Travel 1.0’s swan song. Since then, the Travel 2.0 floodgates have opened with empowered consumers taking charge. It’s a positive, advancing force holding great promise for our industry.

Travel 2.0 – our industry’s collective application of Web 2.0 – embodies how companies can differentiate themselves in a vast, dynamic travel distribution marketplace. It challenges status-quo travel planning behavior. Travelers are now keen to take control and find/create the perfect trip, not just the cheapest trip.

The conference theme is huge: “Travel 2.0 Confronts the Establishment.” Content and conversation center on a unique collection of leadership and topics. The non-stop program is very busy by design and the format exposes attendees to a rare experience. Pithy and provocative commentary triumph.

PhoCusWright attendees (that’s you!) enjoy a reputation for asking savvy, deep-digging questions and not letting go without real answers. Don’t be shy! Our analyst team, armed with a cache of questions, draws the best out of everyone! With a relentless quest for meaningful debate and a probing perseverance for clear answers, together we will expose the very issues that have a vise-like grip on senior executives’ minds.

Be prepared for the unexpected!

New This Year
New this year, attendees are empowered to control their own conference destiny. Just as Travel 2.0 enables consumers to create their perfect trip, The PhoCusWright Executive Conference enables attendees to customize their perfect conference experience. For example, the Attendee Empowerment Heat Map (available at www.phocuswright.com/conferences/heatmap) illustrates your ability to control how much content vs. work you choose to focus on at any time and anywhere. Whether you soak up content in the theater, multitask in the cafe with headsets or camp out in the satellite theater, not only will you learn about Travel 2.0, you will live it!

Also new this year: real-time electronic question board, attendee headsets to listen anywhere, satellite theatre, 80 – person cafĂ©, sponsored workshops, “VC Talk”, myphocuswright.com and more.

Back by popular demand: WiFi, live blog, open exhibition showcase, I-mag projection that beams several different types of screens at different locations. Whoever is speaking — pundit on stage or attendee in row 38 — appears live on the screens, including subtitles with name and affiliation.

Dream Demographics
Wonder who you will be seated next to? Your strategic partner. Your big investor. Your hottest prospect. Your next key hire. Your awaited acquirer. Your biggest competitor. You’re not dreaming.

It’s very much prime time for our marketplace. We are proud to showcase industry heavyweights from the traditional as well as the online sector; from corporate, meeting and leisure camps; from the supply as well as the distribution side; from discount to luxury; from media and transaction vantages; from North America to Asia; and from Wall Street’s to Main Street’s perspective. We understand the people you interact with matter the most so we have lured an incomparable target audience you can’t miss.

In this fertile environment, millions of dollars of deals get done… and then some. Relationships are cemented. Leads are qualified. Paths are paved. Hires are secured. By joining your peers from around the world, you will shape your point-of-view, hone your strategy, fill your sales pipeline and cultivate business like never before.

The Bottom Line
That’s why we’re all congregating next week at The PhoCusWright Executive Conference to confront what’s next and profit from a keener understanding. Unrivaled insight, healthy debate, critical corroboration, peer talkback, audience grilling, credible forecasts, powerful thinking… even a better night’s sleep.

The PhoCusWright Executive Conference will be “a needle-moving” three days where clarity reigns supreme and buzz is palpable. You are among an unparalleled group: savvy, connected, demanding and poised to do business. Thank you for coming. We look forward to seeing you and to your participation.

Be ready to stand up and speak out. Travel 2.0 is confronting the establishment, and so will you!

(end of excerpt)

As I said, breathless! I’m getting pumped about this thing. And I haven’t even followed the online travel industry all that much to date….Flyspylogo_2except via my own personal experiences as an avid user of these services for my frequent personal and business travel. I’m especially looking forward to the talk to be given by Rob Metcalf, founder of Minneapolis-based Flyspy.

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Return With Me to Those Halcyon Days of the Internet ‘Summit’

Did you hear the Web 2.0 Conference kicking off today in SF just changed names to the “Web 2.0 Summit”? Web20summitlogo That’s to sufficently differentiate it from the “Web 2.0 Expo,” dontcha know — which debuts next spring (and will also be produced by O’Reilly Media and CMP).

Harkens me back to the days of the former “Internet Summits” of the late ’90s, produced by The Industry Standard and hosted by John Battelle — same cohost as this week’s conference. I was reminded of those heady events when I saw a guy quoted yesterday in the WSJ who was one of the many good people I met at those awesome Summit events that Battelle produced. That was Peter Cobb of eBags, which is one of the better e-commerce survivors from the dot-com era; he was part of the very interesting story on Google’s newspaper advertising test. Rock on, Peter!

Those dot-com era Summits were a $4000 ticket, not this week’s bargain(?) $3000 tab. [That must mean it’s not a bubble yet?… 🙂 ] But don’t try to buy a ticket to the Web 2.0 Summit — every VC and recepient of VC from here to China sucked those up quite a while ago. [Yes, just like the pre-bubble days.] Your best bet (only bet?) is to watch for some of the breathless blogging that will be emanating from The Palace Hotel for the next few days. Or else just hang out in the lobby. [My friend Steve Borsch secured a pass and will be one of those capturing some of the action on site. But just type “web2con” into any search box you can find, and you’ll have way more to read than you can handle.] Myself, I’m at a private Sony event in LA the next few days, and will only have time to take a glimpse of the online action occasionally during downtimes.

Meanwhile, Elsewhere in Conference-Land
An event that I wished I could have taken in last week was Startup Camp in Mountain View, sponsored by Sun. Looks like it drew 400 attendees, who are listed here.

I also heard from my former Conferenza editor in SF, the intrepid Gary Bolles, that another one of the MuniWireless events he helps produce, this one right here in Minneapolis in recent weeks, was a big success. He said they had some 300 attendees and three of our local mayors spoke, including tech-savvy R.T. Rybak of Minneapolis (a former Internet consultant, I kid you not).

Did I mention conferences are a booming business again? 🙂

Okay, so next week, since I was planning to stay in SoCal this coming weekend, anyway, I decided to catch a big “Travel 2.0” conference. The pitch: “Now in its 13th year, this event will cast a Hollywood-style spotlight on the world’s largest industry as ‘Travel 2.0 Confronts the Establishment’.” Yikes! They asked Minneapolis’ Rob Metcalf of Flyspy to speak, so I can’t miss that. Mr. Disrupto. I’ll be posting from there as much as I can, assuming they’ll have enough WiFi bandwidth to go around. It’s a jam-packed agenda, with lots of big hitters in the travel space, old and new, speaking. From the looks of the registration list, this one will top out at some 800 attendees and close to 50 press.

Ah, yes, Internet conferences — I love ’em! Watch for more, right here…

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