SISO Members Get Real-time Opinions

By Rachelle Crum -- Tradeshow Week, 4/3/2006

Attention, Society of Independent Show Organizers members: If the three-day CEO Summit doesn't give you all the time you need to survey your colleagues on everything from international expansion to registration and venues, don't worry.

Face-to-face isn't the only way to network anymore. The new SISO Forum ( www.sisoforum.com) will let you communicate with the masses year round.

In December, the organization tested the Web-based discussion board to a sampling of members, and in January introduced it to the entire membership.

The forum features more than a dozen topics (or forums within the forum) so far, including management, event technology, sales, operations and special events. Users are encouraged to start a conversation on any topic by posting a question or comment, and to review existent posts and add their two cents.

Forum administrator Carl Pugh, president of Weston, Conn.-based Radius Events, said he volunteered to get the forum up and running because he was most familiar with the technology. He said board members had been discussing it for some time.

SISO Executive Director Mary Beth Rebedeau said the group has "tried to do this in various ways for the past few years."

The forum is working well under Pugh's direction, she said. "His knowledge of technology is extensive, and we're fortunate that he's helped us on this project."

As of late March, the forum listed 33 members, 20 topics (including subtopics) and 59 posts. Its newest member was Scott Goldman, president of Eaton Hall Exhibitions.

Two moderators are assigned to check each topic daily and assure that questions are answered and users are "behaving themselves," Pugh noted in a post.

The forum also discloses how many other members, guests and invisible users are online at any given time.

Pugh hopes more users will get interested in the forum. "I'd love to see 100 members, 100 topics and 500 posts by the end of the year," he said. "That would be a good start."

The forum is still in its infancy, Pugh added. "It takes time, and a critical mass of users, for such a community to catch on. Our desire is to create a place where our members can get quick answers to virtually any question or start a lively debate on any topic."

SISO member Cherif Moujabber is one of the users livening things up.

Moujabber, the globe-trotting president of Walpole, Mass.-based Creative Expos & Conferences, moderates the forum's international section, and has answered questions about reinforcing North American shows with foreign participants and structuring licensing deals.

And it appears that Moujabber's transnational experience is attracting some attention. His online conversation with Paul Woodward of Hong Kong-based Business Strategies Group has been viewed more than 280 times since February.

The forum is "very good for all of us," Moujabber said. "It's another way of getting the community together by topics of interest."

Rebedeau agreed. "Members consistently list networking as the greatest benefit of SISO membership," she said. "This forum gives our members that chance to network real time, and establish relationships with a wide range of other members."

And for those SISO members who prefer to communicate via an e-mail-based listserv, Pugh designed the forum to allow them to opt to receive an e-mail copy of any posts within specific topics.

Pugh told users in a post that he believes the forum format is a better way to communicate than a listserv, because otherwise "you tend to get a mountain of e-mail that may or may not interest you, and the only way to stop it is to unsubscribe. You also cannot search through old activity unless you have been a subscriber all along and you kept all the e-mails."

However, he added, a downside to the Web-based forum is that it isn't "in your face" like listservs.