Vienna, VA—1105 Media Group, organizers of the FOSE and GovSec Conferences & Expos, hosted a FOSE 2013 Blogger & Speaker Meet-up Thursday, March 21 at 1105 Media Group offices in Vienna, VA. Invitation-only and held specifically for government technology influencers, the FOSE 2013 Blogger & Speaker Meet-up is the fifth in an ongoing series of high-level meetings, where FOSE speakers and bloggers are given an opportunity to discuss significant topics including sequestration and government events, mobile and the government workforce, cybersecurity and more.

This meet-up included influencers Brand Niemann, Ph.D., Director and Senior Enterprise Architect – Data Scientist at Semantic Community, Ghadi Ben-Yehuda,  Director of Innovation and Social Media for IBM Center for The Business of Government., Brad Barker, Director of Professional Services at Master Key Consulting and Young AFCEANs  National Capitol Region President , Ajay Budhraja, Chief Technology Officer, EOIR at the United States Department of Justice, and Nick Wakeman, Editor-in-Chief at Washington Technology. The meet-up was also attended by representatives from the Capital Area Food Bank and GovEvents.

After brief introductions, the topic of sequestration and government events was first to arise. Program Manager for GovEvents, Stacie Flynn, provided details on how the government events industry is currently being affected by sequestration. She noted that while sequestration will not help the already ailing events industry due to travel restrictions and continued backlash of conference overspending, only a few conferences have been cancelled since it actually took effect on March 1. Stacie also announced that GovEvents will soon be rolling out a new program aimed at assisting event organizers with delivering content through a virtual conferencing platform (keep an eye out for details!).

This announcement led into a discussion of virtual conferences and webcasts, praising them for their cost-cutting abilities, while also sharing the challenges of online events, such as lack of interaction and captivation of viewers. In brainstorming, the group came up with several ways webcasts and virtual conferences could be enhanced to create an extensive engagement span of viewers:

• Create ways to multi-task within the webcast/virtual forum—many people will gravitate to email or other tasks while participating in a webcast.
• Change the value proposition of what attendees expect to gain from the webcast/virtual forum.
• Speakers–get right to the point! Too much ‘pipe-laying’ causes distraction to come easily to the viewer.

The topic of mobile and the government workforce was headed up by Ghadi Ben-Yehuda from IBM Center for The Business of Government, discussing the upside of mobile’s flexibility—allowing professionals to work virtually from anywhere, at any time. However, it was noted by others in the room that the flexibility mobile allows becomes a management priority when employees telework regularly. Proper training and management of both managers and employees was deemed the ultimate key to a sound teleworking staff.

Be sure to stop by GovEvents booth at FOSE 2013, May 14-16 in DC!

GovEvents is the premier web portal for all Government & Military events worldwide.