A new layout, more broadcast studios, and an “always on” strategy are key changes this year at Sapphire Now, a business technology conference hosted by German software company SAP AG. When the three-day event wraps up today, organizers estimate more than 15,000 people will have come through the doors of the Orange County Convention Center, and 60,000 more will have experienced the event live online or through social media. The content from the conference will remain accessible on the sapphirenow.com platform as part of the company’s strategy to create connections with customers and partners any time and any place.
“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.
