SimpleSeating – online tool for creating seating charts for analyst summits

Jonathan Eunice (bio, Twitter, blog), principal analyst at Illuminata, sent along a tip about Simple Seating. A quick scan reveals that it might be a really useful tool for those in charge of planning an analyst event. We think it is a best practice to leave nothing to chance when it comes to who sits with who at an analyst summit or analyst conference. However, creating a seating chart can be a major time sink and a massive pain. Maybe this online tool can make it easier.

Tip o’ the hat to Jonathan for the tip.

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We received the first submissions to the “Vendor Analyst Events” calendar

Tip o’ the hat to Rachel for her tip about the Avaya Analyst Conference. Another tip o’ the hat to Shelley for the tip about Iron Mountain’ analyst event. A double tip o’ of the hat to Daniel for the two-fer tip about Deloitte’s Americas and EMEA AR Summits.

Remember, there is no charge to have your event listed. The goal of the calendar is to help vendors avoid  splitting analyst attendance at analyst summits or conferences, which can occur if vendor events are scheduled too close together. As Shelley said:

“The AR event calendar is a great idea and I hope all of ‘us vendors’ will share that info with you.”

Nifty idea for raising awareness of vendor staff at an analyst summit

One of the quandaries I’ve had at analyst summits is how to introduce the analysts to on-site staff so they know who to go to for assistance and with questions. Seth Godin in his post Saying thanks in a conference presentation has a simple technique that can be applied to this purpose. It does not require the AR manager to use time during the opening “welcome” presentation and frankly is much more effective than simply verbally listing the names of AR team members and other support staff. Here is an extract from Seth’s post:

“The solution is pretty simple, thanks to Powerpoint and digital cameras.

Prepare for the talk by taking pictures of each person. If they’re shy, you can even do photographs in groups of two or three. Good photos, clever photos, funny photos… photos that are interesting are best.

Then, create a new presentation. Put each photo on its own slide, preferably with a well designed ID below it (it should be on

Harvest insights by having topic discussion tables at analyst summits

Most large analyst summits (aka as analyst conferences or days) are organized the same way: main tent presentations, breakout sessions, 1-on-1s, demos and booze-and-schmooze receptions/dinners. Breakfasts and lunches are typically organized by putting an executive at a table so that analysts can ask questions. Here is an idea for a new approach: topic discussion tables.

This is not a brilliant new idea, but a variation of the IT manager-centric “birds of the feather” tables at many analyst conferences. In this idea, the analysts are not invited to ask executives questions but to discuss amongst themselves an idea or issue (e.g., how rising energy costs will impact a particular market, how the vendor can expand globally beyond BRIC, or exploiting FireFox instead of being Internet Explorer centric). The vendor domain experts or executives are participants in the discussion and are asking questions instead of being the center of attention and answering questions.

Analysts from Gartner and Forrester will likely object or not want to participate in these sessions because they will not want to share their insights or data in front of competitors. That is ok because

SageCircle launches calendar of Vendor Analyst Events

Twice in the last couple of weeks, we have received requests – one from an analyst and one from a vendor – that SageCircle put together an online calendar to track vendors’ major analyst events. The idea is not new as it has popped up a number of times over the last few years as AR professionals express their frustration on trying schedule major events. Too often a vendor would find that its event was scheduled too close to another vendor in the same market so that both vendors ended up splitting the potential analyst audience.

Today SageCircle is launching a new “Page” (see left hand navigation menu) called Vendor Analyst Events. It is a simple listing by month. Please send us the dates and location of your events and we will post them for free. The events we are interested in are major events like summits and conferences (see definition below).

 Why would a vendor share the date of their analyst event? Wouldn’t that just be giving