Steve Rubel recently commented that The Future is Web Services, Not Web Sites. He's right but that's not the point of this post. His headline helped me draw together a couple of related thoughts.
Namely, that The Future is Interactive, Not Online.
And that means far more than simply getting yourself one or two of those new fangled online tools or strategies. This PPT from a UBM/CMP analyst briefing last year crystalized it for me.
As expected print is consistently sliding down the chart.
As expected online is consistently moving upwards.
Surprisingly, events are on a similar trajectory, steeper in fact, than online.
Its not the fact print is delivered on dead trees that's the problem, its the fact it is passive.
Online has to some degree always been interactive, and is daily becoming more so. Events have always been interactive, they just struggled for relevance as the formulae got tired in the1990s.
Now face-to-face events are powering back, liberated and enriched by the increased interactivity, better audience self-selection, and community extension capabilities offered by using online to support events (witness this year's online/offline SXSW experience).
Tags: events, SXSW
PS - I know looking at one media company's media mix will always be skewed, but this story tallies with my own firsthand experiences too.