New website...what's next?

Well...I've been in the office for just a little over a year and it's time to look back and evaluate whether I've done my job of integrating with the team and fulfilling the goals that I've set for myself and that were given to me.

Generally speaking, I am not happy with myself, because I'm about three months too late in accomplishing all that I wanted to get under control in 2009, but I also feel like a lot has been done so far. I wanted to:

- Learn the ins and outs of this company

- Redesign, rebuild and bullet-proof the internal IT infrastructure

- Design and launch a new website

- Replace the old (but trustworthy) professional ARS software

- Release an upgrade to Get Feedback - the PowerPoint add-in

- Install and train the staff on the new CRM system and integrate it with the accounting software

- Make everyone comfortable with the changes

- Create a plan to become a dominant force in the audience response industry

Not a small feat, so let's see where we are now?

- The new website is up and running: www.meridiaars.com

- The new Beta of the Get Feedback for PowerPoint is out in public testing

- The Beta of Phase 1 of the NexGen professional ARS software is out in internal testing

- The power-failure protection has been put in place

- All emails, data and other important components are on quadruple backup system

- CRM is up and running and we're getting sales analytics that we have never heard of...

- Meridia is the best-known audience response company that offers fully-staffed ARS events

- Meridia received well over 100 positive and complimentary testimonials from our clients

- We ran a hugely successful 25-site multi-site event for a big pharma client

- As the only company on the market, we maintained a manageable set of highly-trained ARS system specialists

It wouldn't be without the help of our amazing Sales Department, but we have:

- Increased sales by 10% against the previous year in the worst economic situation in our lifetime

- Increased our sales force of solid performers

It seems like a month, but in fact, a whole year had passed (well, flew) by. With tremendous help from my spectacular team at Meridia, from the Project Managers to Staff Managers and on-site ARS Specialists, we managed to do all this AND run well over 300 professionally staffed ARS-enabled meetings, provide personalized one-on-one training and deliver hundreds of customized reports.

Thank you all for this amazing accomplishment and I KNOW for a fact that the year 2010 will be at least twice as good as 2009 was!

From the bottom of my heart: thank you, thank you, thank you!

New year - new challenges

It seems like time will always be faster than me. It's been over four months since my last post. I can't believe it! I can't get enough sleep because of work at times, or enough runs down the hill, when the snow falls and I am in the mood for some of Poconos' white powder. Time will never stop.

This time of the year, everyone stops and reflects at what they did. And whether IT made a difference. How could we make it better? In business terms - could have we done it cheaper, faster, better?

In February, one of our clients is going to try. They are going to put together 95 of their locations together in one big meeting. No, not in one place. They are going to to do it CHEAPER and BETTER at the same time.

Multi-site meetings and audience response goes together cookies and milk at Christmas time. Deploy a wireless keypad system that connects directly to your host site's audience response portable mainframe. Repeat 94 more times. Then watch the votes come in, observe how people learn, react, interact and have fun.

Oh, and nobody had to flip their schedules upside down, or spend huge amount of money and time on travel arrangements either. People joining these 95 small polling groups will be able to be home for dinner that same day, back to their families or evening TV shows.

However you decide to spend your company's time and money, don't forget to take time off and spend it with your loved ones!

Happy Holidays!

TS2 2009 post-show observations

TS2 2009 in Chicago was quite a surprise. Despite knowing that the economy is taking its toll on attendance of any trade show event, I thought the organizers at NTP would not experience it as much, because their events are always well thought-out, propagated and definitely exceptionally managed.

However, something did go south - there were visibly less people in the North Hall of the McCormick center and as exhibitors, the speakers also felt the decreased number of the visitors.

On the bright side, every breakout session, the keynote on Tuesday, as well as the expert panel discussion on Wednesday, was a quality event with volumes of great, useful information on the most current trends, strategies, tips and tricks for all marketing managers - from face-to-face, to print all the way to internet marketing gurus.

Audiences were able to participate, give immediate feedback, and be part of a team competition that got them involved and retain more of the material that was taught in the classrooms.

Next year, we're going to ask them about it and measure how much they've remembered.

Overall, from one man's perspective, the event produced focused, quality learning experience and a showcase of wide variety of industry suppliers on the show floor.

Next year in Boston, TS2 plans to become a hybrid meeting - thousands of people from all over the world will be able to participate in the sessions and the learning that will go on, interact with the speakers and the audience, and perhaps experience a walkthrough on the show floor - and shop as if they were there...

I can't wait for 2010!! How about you?

Save money with audience response!

I hope your summer has been as good as mine. Family visit, vacation, the beach and all the other good things that summer on the East Coast brings with it...

Also, summer seems to be the time to save money. A client of ours used audience response to conduct their annual elections for the board of directors and not only they shaved a day off the time allocated for the entire election process, but they also saved $40,000 by doing that!

Audience response technology can be used to gauge the knowledge of your audience before you started to give a presentation on a certain topic, and then compare it to the results at the end of the presentation, when they were supposed to learn something...and see how successful you were.

You could also develop a great, interactive and involved game that would make your participants remember the event more and better results in terms of attendance, revenue, or accuracy of the data collected.

Those are just a few thoughts...leave a comment, if you have any questions, please...

Enjoy the nice weather!

Peter

Spring into the spring time!

Hello!

I can't believe I haven't posted anything in so long. It's the long hours that I've been working, I guess. Unlike others, we are busy and continue to grow through this period of heavy cuts. People suddenly realize that they need to invest their money, not just spend it.

Investment in audience response pays off in many ways. ARS is a tool that ensures that the knowledge you're trying to transfer is transferred. If you're probing your audience with market research questions, you get the most honest and fastest vote count with the audience response keypads, not the paper surveys! If your electing your officials into their posts, no other method is faster and more accurate!

MAKE EVERY VOTE COUNT!

Are you cutting down on travel costs? Are you holding fewer meetings? Are you wondering how many attendees can you bring into the meeting?

Don't worry, we have a solution for you. It's called "multi-site"!

Let people gather at their local facility, connect them via our Instant Private Network (IPN) polling device and we'll take care of the rest. You can plan your meeting as usual - do a satellite broadcast, webcast, locally-moderated event, or anything else you're used to. When the overall vote of hundreds, or thousands of people matters, there is nothing that deploys faster, costs less and performs more reliably than Meridia's IPN!

This week, we provided our IPN solution to a 15-site doctor's dinner meeting across various cities on the East Coast and in Midwest. Our major pharma client was extremely satisfied not only with the actual event and the speed at which we received hundreds of votes from all sites in just a few seconds, but also complimented the ease with which we prepared for the event in a very short time.

Try us out! We guarantee our work!

I wish you all the best in these hard times and hope to hear from some of you soon!

Peter

Back from the holidays

Hello!

I hope you all had a great time during the holidays and that coming back to work was not one the worst experiences ever. If it was not, you are lucky...I envy you. If it was, then you are like me.

Well...what I really wanted to talk about was the exciting year of 2009 and what this year holds for audience response as a tool and the ARS industry in general.

We have seen some turbulence in the past two quarters. No, I am not talking about the last trip on the plane. I am talking about the vendors, competitors, but also the clients, frequency of meetings, and everything else that was thrown into the violent air full of vorteces and falls, which have resulted in some bankruptcies, layoffs and generally caused disturbance in the industry.

We would like to say that none of those statements can be made about Meridia. We have been around for 30 years and will be at least for the next 30.  Our current clients, as well as anyone who would like to become our client because their current vendor is unable to fulfill their obligations, can count on Meridia's professional, strategic and client-oriented team of people who will only consider the project if it benefits both parties and if the overall goals and objectives for both partners are met. We do not make compromises that will endanger our client's commitment to excellence, just like we will not undermine ours.

This year, we have a few very large meetings lined up and we are excited to say that Meridia has been chosen as an official audience response vendor for organizations such as IAEE, Training Magazine, TS2 and many others for two or three consecutive years.

Our long-term investment in a knowledgeable sales force, professional and courteous on-site System Specialists has paid off on many occasions. For us, as well as for these valuable clients.

Training industry is undergoing a major change due to the introduction of blended learning. The power of instant audience feedback has always shown as invaluable to speakers, educators and analytical specialists. It is the ability to measure the outcomes of learning and the ability to analyze the gaps in knowledge, among audiences and among the various methods of learning that make audience response so powerful.

However, in the very near future, we will see much more of what we started to call 'hybrid' learning and meeting. The concept is based on the fact that many of us cannot travel to the location of the meeting, yet we would like to participate anyway. While we all know how a remote meeting software works and we have probably used a variation of it at least once in our lives, Meridia has been the pioneer in combining the on-site audience response with the online tools and providing the most comprehensive ARS tool on the market.

Please feel free to contact us at rsvp@meridiaars.com or call us at 610-260-6800 to learn more about Hybrid Meetings, Multi-site and Blended Learning concepts.

We are looking forward to the year 2009, and we would like to make your success possible through our professional efforts.

Audience response technology as viewed by the trade show organizers

Hello,

somehow, I am finding more time to post a new item on my blog. I guess it's the comfort of finally being settled down in PA and having my time at work organized and scheduled properly.

I am a big fan of the MeetingTechOnline.com website and just recently, I came across an article that our Marketing and Advertising department published in cooperation with a trade show organizers at NTP - the producers of the annual TS2 show.

You can read the article here:

http://meetingtechonline.com/articles_Making_Smart_Technology_Decisions.aspx

It is apparent that choosing the right technology is crucial to achieve your trade show goals. It's important to have the right lead retrieval system, the best registration software, audio-visual partner and an audience response system. TS2 used Meridia for a second year in a row and gave us the opportunity to measure the impact of the economy, rising gas prices (which have fallen since the end of July, thank you very much!) and subsequent decline in air travel that we were all experiencing.

Meridia's technology provided the TS2 show attendees with the ability to share with the rest of the audience the thoughts about the critical topics of today's trade show management. We, in return, were able to provide everyone with a TrendWatch report that helps guide their future decisions. You can read the report here:

http://www.ts2show.com/images/pdf/2008summary.pdf

That will be all on this beautiful, sunny Saturday morning.