Getting the Most Out of CubeTree: Live Event Support

This is the second in a series of posts on how to get the most out of CubeTree. Several customers have talked to us recently about how they use CubeTree to support live events. This week you'll learn about how BCD Travel uses CubeTree to support their big annual meeting for their Commercial Group. BCD is an international travel agency, with 10,000 employees and offices all over the world. Recently they brought 150 people from their Commercial Group together in Boca Raton, Florida for a four day conference to receive training, share information and collaborate.

Getting ready for the meeting, BCD decided that they wanted a single place online they could use to publish all the event information leading up to, during and after the event. BCD already used CubeTree extensively as their social enterprise solution, with nearly 500 active users, so using it for event support was a natural extension for them.

They started with creating a group in their CubeTree for the event. Attendees then received invites to the group where they could find all the pre-event information as well as post comments, ask questions and browse the profiles of other attendees. With all of the conference materials posted to the CubeTree group people were motivated to sign in and use their accounts frequently building up to the event.

Use of CubeTree before the meeting led to a sense of familiarity between this group of 150 individuals, many of whom didn't know each other very well before the event. It really changed the way that they met each other at the conference; it wasn't the same getting to know you small talk, it was much more familiar and relevant, like: 'hey you wrote that blog post' or 'I saw your comments online and I wanted to ask you a question...". It jump started the conference because people were already somewhat familiar and comfortable with their peers.

At the event, BCD used the CubeTree group to store all the information generated at the event. There were several break out sessions and round tables during the week. Attendees used the document sharing feature in CubeTree to post documents and add comments to them as needed. Attendees could also post comments and ask questions right in the conference feed. During the presentations, the event's group page was projected onto a huge screen in the meeting hall.

Based on good feedback from attendees, BCD is exploring ways to leverage the CubeTree mobile apps live during a meeting for voting, live updates and real-time polling much the same way you'd use a rented audience response system.

The content generated became part of their social enterprise and didn't need to be downloaded, imported or otherwise manipulated in another system to be useful. After the meeting attendees continued to go to the event group page to access all the content from the week. It became a living repository of all that was learned and shared. People also started posting pictures and notes from their time in Boca Raton, helping them stay culturally connected to the people they had just met.

BCD Travel’s large-scale employee event gives a powerful example of how a social enterprise solution allows people to get more benefit out of live events. Not only did group file sharing prove to be useful throughout the conference, but sharing employee profiles and interacting online weeks before the event built momentum and increased participation once people were together. Continued document sharing and interaction online in CubeTree helped people stay connected even after the conference ended, making the event’s positive outcome even more far-reaching. Use of CubeTree for live event support by BCD and other users shows how a social enterprise solution helps employees collaborate and work together more efficiently.