“We were at about 900 people, but we had a lot of verbal commitments, so we knew what was coming in,” said Tara Fontana, owner of Grapevine Events & Marketing, the company that produced the gala. “We looked at our floor plan and realized it was going to be very hard for a lot of people to see with runway-style seating.”

So Fontana switched the event to a seated dinner at round tables, with 123 tables to accommodate the more than 1,200 guests, 50 percent more than attended last year’s inaugural event. In addition to a plated menu, the new design required additional decor elements: Fontana created centerpieces by dropping orchids in tall glass cylinders and Swag Decor provided draping for the ballroom.

A fashion show with 68 pediatric cancer patients as models was the focus of the fund-raiser. The children, some as young as two years old, paraded down the 64-foot runway in the middle of the ballroom, accompanied by local celebrities, athletes, and community leaders. TV personality Mario Lopez and Miss USA Alyssa Campanella hosted the show. Runway to Hope is a nonprofit created by Orlando attorney Mark NeJame and his wife Josie to fund pediatric cancer research, treatment, and support services at Arnold Palmer Hospital and Florida Hospital.

Last year’s Spring Fashion Soiree raised $400,000. Organizers are still totaling proceeds from this year’s event.

“Sapphire Now as a single designation for 72 hours is the old model,” said Scott Schenker, SAP’s vice president of global events. "The new model is that Sapphire Now is always up, always available, always supporting the sales organization, always supporting our customers. We are really trying to switch from pushing the string to pulling it. The content is there when you want it. You don’t have to come exclusively to the event."

For this year’s conference, organizers created five broadcast studios on the show floor, up from three last year, to produce content to distribute live online and archive for future access. Unlike past years when the company hosted dozens of simultaneous gatherings around the world where clients could experience Sapphire Now live via satellite, this year organizers created only a few such events.

“While it is certainly important for us to have connections from the event to as many people as we possibly can, we realized we didn’t have to do it just during those three days. We can connect to other events at any time throughout the year. We don’t literally need a satellite connection,” Schenker said. “We are less focused on how many physical events we connect to in real time during those three days and more about how we make sure that this pool of content, that these conversations, that this excitement connects you from Sapphire Now to another physical SAP event.”

To do that, the company will host between 60 and 80 smaller events around the world in the coming year. Known as SAP Forums, these events are free and held in the language of the local community, but they will be connected to Sapphire Now through a shared online platform. Schenker said this transition to an “always on” strategy grew out of the recognition that an event should not be viewed as an isolated tactic.

“An event is part of a marketing portfolio rather than just a moment in time. It should be about the relationship between the attendee and the company and not about the relationship between the attendee and the event,” he said. “The purpose of the event is not to draw an annual returning audience, it’s to further the relationship with the company. My return on investment comes from the sold business and not from revenue about the event itself."

From large keynote sessions to smaller, informal meetings, Sapphire Now offers more than 1,600 sessions. Organizers created several mechanisms to help participants filter that content to find what is relevant to them. For in-person attendees, the conference provided suggested agendas by topic and also an agenda-builder tool. For online participants, 13 channels stream content grouped by topic. There are also eight social reporters who are sharing information on specific topics through social media. In the past, the social reporters began posting at the start of the conference; this year, they began about four to six weeks before the event to help generate buzz.

“In the first several weeks, they had 30 blog entries already finished and more than 5,000 views had taken place. Only about 35 percent of the social media conversation about the event comes from us, 65 percent is coming from the community. We are not blasting out tons of comments. That’s how we know the channels are working—it’s not just us talking to folks,” Schenker said.

To visually represent how the company’s services are interconnected, Schenker and his team revised the layout of the show floor by overlapping the five campuses—Cloud, Analytics, Mobile, Database and Technology, and Run Better—in the center of the space.

Each of the five campuses included meeting space, a 200-seat theater, and multiple microforums—small seating areas for loosely-moderated discussions on specific topics. Last year the microforums met around conference tables, but organizers found that some sessions attracted more people than the layout could accommodate. This year, they redesigned the microforums into a semicircular formation with two rows of seating: a row of chairs closest to the speakers and then bar-style seating behind those chairs, with room behind that for people to stand.

Schenker said this transition to viewing Sapphire Now as an online platform rather than a virtual event has forced them to rethink how they measure its impact. “At what point do we stop and say ‘Okay this is in the context of Sapphire Now and this is the result of it.’ If the content is going to run 365 days a year, how do I measure that impact. That’s the best problem to have,” he said.

“People are used to digesting content online and on Twitter and on their laptops, so we wanted to give them something that is easy to consume and also entertaining,” said Jennifer Diamond, Mashable’s marketing director and a member of the event’s planning team. "Our speakers have strong points to get across, and often the shorter the presentation, the more powerful it is. We also wanted to steer presenters away from talking too much about themselves, and I think the less time we give them encourages them to get right to the point and talk about what matters most.”

The roster of speakers was a who’s who of the digital community, including Klout founder and C.E.O. Joe Fernandez; June Cohen, executive producer of TED; Storify co-founder Burt Herman; and Mashable staff like founder and C.E.O. Pete Cashmore, editor in chief Lance Ulanoff, and others. To keep the 300 attendees engaged, organizers varied the program, scheduling shorter presentations in between the longer ones and offering a mix of single-presenter talks and small panel discussions.

On Friday afternoon, one hour was set aside for breakout sessions. Attendees could choose from three topics: digital branding, design, and entrepreneurship. (A fourth breakout session on social TV was for a select group of attendees: “We have a lot of big leaders in the [social TV] industry who are here, but not as many attendees in that field, so we wanted to curate the attendees,” Diamond said.) Unlike the general sessions, where the audience sat at round tables in front of the stage, the layout for these breakouts had attendees facing each other in hollow square configurations to facilitate dialogue. Each breakout included a few speakers with expertise on that topic and Mashable staff as moderators.

Conference attendees included senior-level executives from digital firms, technology and social media companies, brand leaders, senior-level marketers, and entrepreneurs. “One thing they all have in common is they are leading digital in some way,” Diamond said. “We want them to walk away having formed meaningful relationships with one another, feeling like they learned something practical that they can use in their everyday lives, and feeling inspired by learning something new and interesting.”

To facilitate networking, organizers created a scavenger hunt Saturday night at Epcot. Working in teams of five, attendees had to identify things in the park based on a set of clues and post photos of their findings on Instagram, tagged with #Mashcon.

The actors walked the red carpet along with Disney chairman and C.E.O. Robert Iger and consultant Jane Goodall, who carried a stuffed animal chimpanzee in her arms. Joining them were the movie’s producers and directors and more than 100 children from around the world whom Disney recognized for their work to protect the planet and help their communities.

The weekend’s festivities began Friday morning at Animal Kingdom Theme Park, where the company hosted an award ceremony to announce grants to five nonprofits that connect children and nature. The program continued Saturday with an event at Epcot to honor elementary and middle schools participating in Disney’s Planet Challenge, followed by the Disney Friends for Change Youth Summit, a day-long program with children that included hands-on activities and panel discussions.

“Exhibitors had started to slow down on the number of machines they were bringing due to costs,” said Gene Sanders, the association's senior vice president of trade shows and conferences. “When you bring these machines in and you are in a city like Chicago, you have to use union labor to bring it in and to assemble it. The cost of that is more expensive. [In Orlando] it’s about 25 percent cheaper for the general labor. And as a right-to-work state, you can do all of that yourself. If you can’t afford to bring machines, what’s the point?”

The equipment filling 920,000 square feet of exhibit space uses a substantial amount of electricity—as much as 80 megawatts at one time—and was another factor in the move to Orlando. “We were able to work out a package for utilities and that allowed us to charge per square foot,” Sanders said. "So the most an exhibitor will pay by our rules is $4.15 per square foot. They can bring unlimited machines and get unlimited power drops." Organizers also explored moving the show to Las Vegas, but Sanders said that city declined because it could not accommodate the event’s power needs. He added, “They didn’t want a show that took up 20 days, which is what we use from move-in to move-out.”

The final decision on the move came after the association analyzed costs for attendees to fly, sleep, park, eat, exhibit, or attend in Chicago versus Orlando and found an average savings of about 19 percent in Orlando. Sanders said organizers plan to return to the Orange County Convention Center in 2015.

In addition to the trade show that occupies both buildings of the convention center, the event includes more than 700 education sessions. Buyers come from a variety of industries such as automotive, consumer electronics, packaging, medical, and athletic equipment. Sanders said a person who walks every exhibit aisle and education area would cover more than 400 miles.

The second-floor Tropical Ballroom is a 2,775-square-foot room that can be divided into three sections. It can accommodate 120 people at round tables or 180 classroom-style. Across the hall from the ballroom is the Terrace Lounge, which serves breakfast for tower guests in the morning but is available for private groups after that. The room has a balcony overlooking Sandy Lake.

For outdoor events, the new tower has 4,000-square foot space known as Skybar at the Oasis, with stunning views of nearby Universal Orlando Resort and downtown Orlando in the distance. On the ground floor of the new tower is a second breakfast lounge, which is also available for private groups in the afternoon and evening. The room has seating for 177 and floor-to-ceiling windows with views of the lake and pool.

The new tower also has a lobby bar, business center, and fitness facility. The hotel’s original 12-story tower, which opened in 1987, is scheduled to be renovated later this year.

DigitalNow wrapped up Saturday at Disney’s Contemporary Resort. We spoke to Fusion Productions president Hugh Lee about the strategy and design behind the event.

DigitalNow attracts executives from a range of industries such as health care, finance, education, and engineering. What makes this event appealing to them?
First, we get speakers before they become famous. We identify what the trends are. And we mix that with people who are already well known. Second, we spend so much time finding presenters for the workshops who are trying new things, so they can share what works and doesn’t work. But I think most important is that it’s not a conference, it’s a community. The whole design is based around that. I don’t consider myself a meeting professional. I am a meeting professional, but I believe our role is curation. We curate for our particular target audience. I start from almost building a museum exhibit. What’s the story? What’s the environment? What’s the moment of truths that are going to say to these people it’s all about them, it’s really unique, it’s exactly what I want and when I want it. Then once I’ve identified that, then I build the meeting around it.

Your opening keynote session had an interesting format. Speaker Geoffrey Moore spoke from the main stage for about 35 minutes and then he moved to a small platform in the middle of the room where he answered questions from attendees for the remaining 45 minutes. What was the strategy there?
I know that community and networking is critical to our attendees and the major barrier is the formality of most meetings or the loud networking of most places, which breaks down the C.E.O. conversation. So now we design even the general sessions with this in mind. To create the culture of people going up and talking to each other—again I’m curating a story here—I want people to talk to each other in the hallways, so what we did was we had the speaker in the middle with three other chairs. We had three people who had volunteered to ask him questions, talk to him about their specific problem. Then we also allowed people to come up, tap on the shoulder, and replace that person to get more attendees engaged. The key thing is get the content out, get Geoffrey Moore’s points out, but get it into the problem-solving mode. Two-way communication. Create the culture of conversation through your design.

The central gathering spot at Digital Now is the Fusion e.Comm.unity Resource Center. It’s a large, open layout with 12 technology vendors who discuss their products and services with attendee. The set-up is very low-key, no elaborate exhibits or giveaways that are so common at typical trade shows where exhibitors are vying for attention. Why did you opt for this format?
We don’t have trade shows. We don’t allow salespeople. We go up to these people and say our advisory board, your audience, told us who they want to see here, what technology they are interested in, what problems they have. So when you come here, if you are invited, you are not going to see a trade show area. You are going to see a conversation area. And we want you to have case studies up that you can have conversation over, not sales pitches, no sales collateral. We want you to get people talking about their problems.

In the midst of these vendors is the C.E.O. Lounge, an area with sofas and chairs where some of your presenters come after they speak to have more intimate conversations with attendees. How did that come about?
Think back to Starbucks, think back to anything that has created a community. You can’t force a community. So you can put design elements that people will create communities themselves around. So five years ago, we stuck out these couches in the middle and we just left them to see what would happen. And we observed it. C.E.O.s would have their direct reports sit down with them and say what did you get out of this meeting. And then the last couple of years they would end up inviting the keynote over, or a workshop presenter over, sitting down and talking with them. So we just said what would you call it. And they said C.E.O. Lounge. Now it’s a very popular attendee-driven program.

You are streaming all three general sessions and both plenary sessions in partnership with Meeting Professionals International. This is syndicated streaming. What is the strategy behind this?
Webcasting has always been around. Now what we can do is we can syndicate it. You can say who has access to that for a fee. If you are a corporation, you can say we are going to syndicate this just to our Spain office. If you are an association, you can syndicate to certain chapters, or to sponsors. When they see it, it’s the same feed but it’s on a separate website that is branded with their logo and feel. So it’s not DigitalNow. It’s a whole business model around changing the way people are viewing things. We are trying to show our attendees what is next and that is syndication. Because people are having trouble monetizing this stuff. This is a new business model for them.

This is a small, exclusive event and you have sold out for the last 10 years. If attendance is not a concern, where do you focus your marketing strategy in the months leading up to Digital Now?
What’s the story we want to tell? We start eight months before the meeting creating that story so when people get here they know what they are going to get. We use social media, we use our keynote speakers, we use our advisory board, anything we can think of to create a plan that says how we create the energy ahead of time.

Catering: “I typically work with Arthur’s Catering. They’re an upscale caterer and very reliable in their service.”

Flowers: “I use Cheryl’s Distinctive Creations. They’re very creative and respond well to last-minute requests.”

Audiovisual Production: “I work with Spectrum Productions. Our contact there knows things like when we can hook into a hotel’s sound system rather than having to rent one.”

Photography: “Lately, I’ve been using A Coyote Production. Charles Yates, the owner, is one of those guys who will help you with the smallest of details to get things just right.”

This information was previously published in the 2009 BizBash National Venue Guide. 

“Enchantment is a relationship that is deeper, longer lasting, mutually beneficial, and voluntary,” Kawasaki said. He said all businesses should be using Google+, Twitter, and Facebook to engage their customers, because "they are fast, they’re free, and they’re ubiquitous. That is the holy grail of marketing.”

“We see this Olympics as an opportunity to drive behavior change,” Symonds said. “It’s an opportunity and responsibility that we have to use the power and scale of our brand to get people to do things differently.” She participated in the discussion from her London office, while co-presenter Fiona Pelham, managing director of Sustainable Events Limited, led the session before the audience of nearly 200 event planners, suppliers, and venue representatives.