FISHERS, Ind. — The way that YOUR Symposium is being created this year — online by the attendees themselves - may be every bit as innovative as the actual sessions at this annual credit union conference.
Using "crowdsourcing," a Ning.com website and video auditions by potential speakers, the online CU community at yoursymposium.org is custom-building its own two-day conference here in Fishers, Ind., in October.
Crowdsourcing is defined as an open call for participation that is broadcast among a user community, usually over the Internet. In this case, it's a call for speakers and attendees, sent out by the FORUM Solutions CUSO, all hosted at a custom Ning website, said Doug True, president, FORUM Solutions, a CUSO of Indianapolis, Ind.-based FORUM CU. "I think we may be on the cutting edge with this concept," True said.
The crowdsourced symposium is also a call for attendees to vote for speakers they want to hear at the symposium, based on speaker audition-videos, he continued.
Ning.com allows anyone to register and create a tailor-made social network for free. Since the symposium has no marketing budget, "we want to keep the price down for attendees," said True.
The symposium website promises two days with "smart, forward-thinking minds in the credit union sphere, leaving you equipped with new ideas" — and six meals — for $225.
There's more to the concept than just social-media trendiness, True said. "We can engage attendees before the event and give them some say in what they would like to see," he said. "The crowdsourcing took the pressure off of FORUM Solutions and placed it on the crowd."
Indeed, the crowd will be responsible for the success — or the failure of YOUR Symposium, which has been around in some form since 2004. If the event can't harness enough pledged attendees and sponsors, it's a no-go, according to True.
As this story went to press, 73 attendees had paid. "We won't green-light the event unless we have 100 pledged attendees and 10 sponsors," True explained. "We have our sponsors; now we need the attendees. I'm 67% sure that it will go."
If the conference reaches its goal of 100 attendees, that's confirmation for True that there is "demand and relevancy. Given the slashed credit union travel budgets, crowdsourcing helps mitigate the risk of hosting a conference."
This is the first year that the crowdsourcing-Ning-video approach has been used to build the conference, said True. In the past, the event was aimed solely at the FORUM client community and was paid for in large part by FORUM. But when the CUSO sold a proprietary platform last year, it no longer had the funds to subsidize the conference.
"If the crowd wants the symposium to happen, then FORUM Solutions will host it as a break-even proposition," said True.
Three free marketing channels are being used to spread the word about YOUR Symposium: Twitter, Facebook and the FORUM Solutions blog, said True.
The speaker video-auditions are trickling in this year, with only three auditions submitted to fill about 10 slots, said True. Last year, when FORUM experimented with the video audition format, five videos were submitted for the one available slot.
YOUR Symposium has already chosen a keynote speaker: Dr. Robert Manning, a consumer finance specialist who was nominated by the symposium hosts; George Hofheimer and Denise Gabel of the Filene Research Institute.
