Sensible solutions for meeting & educational publications during tough times.

Making sensible solutions during these challenging economic times is important when it comes to my customers who provide educational meeting publications (e.g., handouts, final programs, course books) at their meetings.

It's tough out there. Budgets are getting slashed, attendance is down, and there are pressures to change. All of which brings me back to sharing what I have been learning over the past few months.

Here are 3 ways my customers are changing:

1) Shifting to conference journal notebooks
They are proving attendees with a slimmed down handbook on-site as a tangible printed piece for notetaking, key conference information and a reference after the meeting. By trimming out the slides, but providing key infomration, they are saving money and giving attendees something valuable.

2) Expanding their audience to grow revenue via e-commerce gateways
Some of my customers are creating an archive of information (e.g., technical papers, conference handouts) and placing them on our e-commerce web site and marketing this library to their entire membership. Now they reach a much wider audience and can sell the printed books, CDs and individual files we have produced for them. Producing books and CDs on the fly has has eliminated expensive warehousing and potential waste of products never used.

3) Shifting conference and training seminar content from print to CD, flash drive and online
Combined with the Conference Journal Notebook, my clients are providing their attendees with the technical papers and handouts in digital format. We work with them to create a professional interface to make finding content easy. Compared to printing this type of content, the cost of digital is less expensive. And, when providing tangible media (flash drives and CDs), attendees walk away with something they reference... to show why attending their meetings was important.

Be sure to visit www.omnipress.com/tips and download our "10 Ways to Save Money on Your Conference Materials" resource for more get ideas.