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canyonwalkerMy company is hosting a large annual industry conference this week. This year, like last, it's online rather than in-person. Shifting to online has been great in terms of boosting registration numbers. The last time we did it f2f, in 2019, we had around 2,000 registrants. This year we reached almost 16,000.
Within this context of huge raw numbers of sign-ups it's not clear how much better engagement we're getting. One place that gap is obvious is in the product demos we're providing. Several people on my team and I are tasked with running demo booths. In our first scheduled demo yesterday ("scheduled" means there's an official time on the agenda for 30 minutes between speaker events when demos are conducted) nobody even showed up for the first 17 minutes. Then one person arrived but was on such a weak Internet connection that he couldn't see anything. He dropped off. A second person came in at the 25 minute mark.
The next few demos we've run were only slightly better attended. We've averaged just three attendees per demo session. Occasionally a person actually interacts with us, describing the problem they're trying to solve or asking questions about the solution we're showing them, but most of the people are in lurker-only mode.
Over the years I've pushed back with my employers on how demos at trade shows are prioritized. We invest a lot of effort— and a lot of cost— to deliver content that very few people see. Moreover, most of the people who do attend demos are students and entry level workers more interested in getting free swag (giveaways like t-shirts or a drawing for an Amazon gift card) than exploring whether our enterprise software products are right for their business.
Within this context of huge raw numbers of sign-ups it's not clear how much better engagement we're getting. One place that gap is obvious is in the product demos we're providing. Several people on my team and I are tasked with running demo booths. In our first scheduled demo yesterday ("scheduled" means there's an official time on the agenda for 30 minutes between speaker events when demos are conducted) nobody even showed up for the first 17 minutes. Then one person arrived but was on such a weak Internet connection that he couldn't see anything. He dropped off. A second person came in at the 25 minute mark.
The next few demos we've run were only slightly better attended. We've averaged just three attendees per demo session. Occasionally a person actually interacts with us, describing the problem they're trying to solve or asking questions about the solution we're showing them, but most of the people are in lurker-only mode.
Over the years I've pushed back with my employers on how demos at trade shows are prioritized. We invest a lot of effort— and a lot of cost— to deliver content that very few people see. Moreover, most of the people who do attend demos are students and entry level workers more interested in getting free swag (giveaways like t-shirts or a drawing for an Amazon gift card) than exploring whether our enterprise software products are right for their business.
