Freeman and bxbOnline Sign on to Help Train Planners to Produce Hybrid Event Extensions with DES Certification Scholarships

A new partnership between bXb Online and Virtual Edge Institute (VEI) will help more qualified professionals in getting VEI’s Digital Event Strategist Certification. This year, the bXb Online, a marketing agency specializing in hybrid and online event strategies, will award charter scholarships to qualified professionals seeking a “DES” credential. Scheduled to launch in spring 2012, the Digital Event Strategist Certification program will teach individuals the skills and strategies necessary to successfully plan, build, design and execute a virtual events program that achieves business objectives. “The digital events community is an important and fast growing category within event marketing. The scale of the industry, when compared to the available talent in the digital events category, calls for investment in the talent...

Face-to-face marketing is changing and ex-Freeman executive, Tony Lorenz sees a big opportunity in helping event producers and marketers change the way they do business. No stranger to agency start ups, Lorenz created ProActive in 1993 as a full service event agency and later sold the business to Freeman. “We were a full service event management and production agency focused on the corporate market and we were introduced to the association market through PCMA,” said Lorenz. “I was blown away at the tremendous concentration of connected buyers and sellers that associations represented. We went to work taking what we had developed in the corporate event space to the association market.” With the launch of bXb Online, Tony is hoping to...

bXb Online, a marketing agency specializing in hybrid and online event strategies, has begun the development of an innovative global online event platform (network). bXb’s longer-term aim is to develop a new online event network for the event marketing industry and relevant communities that provide aggregated live and on-demand content for the b2b marketplace from one centralized location. And to enable professionals to easily join relevant online communities, search and find content and community in their disciplines. bXb plans to launch the network after aggregating initial hybrid and virtual event content, should be completed by the fall of 2012. Greater part of the content will originate from in-person events. bXb already received substantive strategic advice, support and industry-wide collaboration from...

In an important signal to their entire industry, Freeman, an 84 year old diversified exposition producer, AV supplier, custom exhibit house, corporate and association meeting producer and highly respected partner to many associations and corporations, launched a new business unit to deliver a turnkey virtual extension to their clients. Virtual Edge got the story straight from Joe Popolo CEO of the billion dollar event industry giant. Virtual events have been around for 10 years but it is only recently that they have been seeing tremendous adoption especially in the corporate market, with Freeman’s entry into the space, it signals a shift into the mainstream event market which is heavily dominated by associations. Associations account for 70 to 80% of the...

Either I have been watching the wrong news channels or gotten on the wrong email lists but it seems all I have been hearing lately is “its coming, a double dip recession.” Actually, most of the business owners I know are saying that things are going pretty well for 2011 BUT they are all worried about the future. Their customers are quick to hit the brakes as soon as some bad economic info comes out and slow to recover spending. Event producers are also cautiously optimistic with many seeing gains in attendance and exhibits but keeping a close watch on the economy. So what if we are headed for a double dip, what can you do now to position your...