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EVENT AT A GLANCE
Objective: Promote the annual JavaOne conference, gather customer feedback, foster community among attendees, and extend event content to developers who could not attend the live event in person.
Strategy: Develop a multifaceted social-media campaign comprising Twitter, YouTube, Second Life, Facebook, LinkedIn, Ustream, and blogs.
Tactics: Aggregate blog posts about JavaOne, stream real-time event footage online, post behind-the-scenes videos and interviews, host virtual parties, and encourage the production of user-generated marketing materials.
Results: Netted more than 6,000 JavaOne-related blog posts, 2,700 Twitter followers, approximately 100,000 video views on YouTube and Ustream, and thousands of Facebook friends and fans.
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 ob Lee sits among a sea of dark heads, haloed by the glow of laptops and cell phones, at the opening general session of JavaOne 2008, the annual developer conference for Sun Microsystems Inc. (now Oracle Corp.). Lee (aka crazybob), a software engineer at Google, opens his laptop, delighted to find a strong Wi-Fi connection, and logs on to Twitter, a social-networking service that allows users to send and receive mass text messages. He immediately enters a conversation with hundreds of other attendees — a steady stream of “tweets” that, if audible, would be deafening. Among his frequent tweets throughout the keynote sessions, he types, “Watching Twitter during JavaOne is a whole new experience.”
In the meantime, Jevgeni Kabanov, then CEO of Estonia-based ZeroTurnaround OU, heads over to the JavaOne Pavilion (an
exhibition for Sun and partner companies) to help with his company’s booth setup. Fortunately, he doesn’t have to miss the keynote. He tunes in on Ustream, a Web site that provides a live video feed of the opening session, and follows Twitter simultaneously on his iPhone. At 9:31 a.m., he tweets, “OMG! Watching the keynote video with a stream of Twitter commentary is better than being there :)”
Sun is right there with its twitterpated attendees. The computer network technology company has created its own Twitter identity — JavaOneConf — and provides a play-by-play of the opening session. Several Sun employees also tweet from their personal Twitter accounts, including Tim Bray (@timbray), director of Web technologies at Sun, who offers a running commentary: “I don’t care how many times you’ve been or how jaded you are, the opening of JavaOne is really intense.”
Sun started JavaOne in 1995 to build community among software developers who use Java, Sun’s computer software platform, to create their own products and technologies.
Since the event’s inception, the technologically precocious JavaOne attendees have been blogging about their experiences during the event and connecting with each other through social-networking technology such as Facebook and LinkedIn.
In 2008, Sun decided it wanted to join them. But the goal wasn’t just to jump onboard the social-media train in hopes of looking cool. Sun hoped its new social-media strategy would achieve five key objectives:
1. Increase event registration and attendance.
2. Promote event activities during the event.
3. Gather customer feedback.
4. Allow developers who could not attend the event in person to participate.
5. Foster community, enabling developers to connect with and support one another during and after JavaOne.
Sun’s first step was to decide which platforms to focus on. “We wanted to pick a few and do them really well rather than use all the networking tools out there,” says Betsy Hansen, senior marketing manager at Sun. Thus, Sun surveyed its JavaOne attendees in 2007 to find out what social-networking tools they were already using. It found that 70 percent of them were linked up on LinkedIn. Sun also discovered that 12 percent of JavaOne attendees had Facebook accounts (by 2008, that number nearly quadrupled to 45 percent). Other social-networking sites, such as MySpace and Friendster, had much lower participation rates among conference attendees, so Sun decided not to pursue them as part of its multifaceted social-media strategy.
Sun also decided to use Ustream, YouTube, Second Life, and Twitter so customers who were unable to attend the live event in person could still participate in a tangible way, through videos and virtual reality. “We wanted to create a virtual world for those who couldn’t attend in person,” Hansen says. “We weren’t trying to replicate the show, we just wanted to enhance what was already there.”
To make sure its customers were aware of the company’s social-networking initiatives, Sun put prominent social media and video menus near the top of the JavaOne 2008 home page, with links to each of the social-networking tools it was using. But that was only the beginning of Sun’s seven-part social-media campaign.
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 “In a week from today, I’ll begin the annual trek to one of the best conferences on the planet: JavaOne. By ‘best conferences,’ I don’t mean it has the best technical content. JavaOne has the best networking opportunities.”
This blog post, by user-interface consultant Matt Raible, illustrates both the risk and reward of providing links to external blogs. Because Sun has no control over the content, it has to take the criticism with the praise. But when the praise comes, unsolicited and uncensored, from a customer rather than from Sun itself, it’s much more credible than typical corporate marketing.
To harness the blogosphere for JavaOne 2008, the event’s marketing team created BlogCentral, a Web site that filtered through internal and external blog posts that mentioned JavaOne, and organized them according to popularity. Sun invited visitors to subscribe to the site through Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, feeds, which send updates to subscribers when new entries are posted.
Before the event, bloggers speculated about what would be introduced at JavaOne and listed schedules of the seminars they planned to attend. During the event, they blogged about everything from where to find the best parties to critiques of seminar content.
The JavaOne marketing team also created its own blog, “JavaOne 2008 Conference,” with posts by five different Sun staff writers. Internal bloggers posted pre-event teasers, previewing some of the activities and hotly anticipated sessions. During and after the event, they posted session summaries, articles about product launches, and interviews.
In total, hundreds of event attendees subscribed to Sun’s RSS feeds, and more than 6,000 blog posts were available on BlogCentral.
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 YouTube is an online video site that allows anyone to watch or post video clips. Before, during, and after JavaOne, Sun created original video content, and posted it to YouTube to give those customers that couldn’t attend a sense of the event while providing information for attendees as well.
Throughout the year, Sun maintains two YouTube channels: 1) Sun News Network (SNN), which includes polished video coverage of Sun events, and 2) Sun Total Access Network, which includes more informal videos.
The SNN has a mere 121 subscribers, but the 44 videos have been viewed more than 66,000 times. During JavaOne 2008, SNN posted four main video series:
1. A Java Minute. Short interviews by Sumaya Kazi, social media manager at Sun, with executives from Sun and its partners. Kazi even interviewed Duke, the
mascot of JavaOne, who replied to her questions by thought bubble.
2. Duke’s Choice Awards. Interviews with winners of an annual competition that recognizes the most innovative projects created using the Java platform.
3. Java Perspectives. Interviews by Chris Melissinos, Sun’s chief gaming officer and the official host of JavaOne 2008, with executives from Sun and its partners.
4. Inside JavaOne. Eight episodes with exhibit tours, event footage, interviews, and product demos. One video in this series has been viewed 13,661 times.
The Sun Total Access Network has a much smaller YouTube presence, with 12 videos about JavaOne 2008 and only 33 subscribers thus far. The videos are more about personality than production quality — just a few Sun employees with microphones and a video camera.
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 Java Developers who weren’t fortunate enough to wait in the jostling throng at Sun’s live event could watch it from the comfort of their own swivel chairs. Sun provided its customers with real-time footage of the event on Ustream, an interactive video-broadcast platform that allows anyone to broadcast videos through its Web site, www.ustream.tv.
Ustream enabled Sun to meet one of its main social-marketing objectives for JavaOne — opening up the event to customers who couldn’t make it to JavaOne in person due to budget or time constraints.
Sun broadcast 26 JavaOne 2008 sessions live on Ustream, generating more than 40,000 views. While watching the Ustream videos, viewers could see a running total of how many other viewers were watching, chat with other viewers, rate the video on a scale of one to five stars, and post comments. After the show, the recorded videos remained available for viewers who missed them in real time.
That post-event availability of conference content not only extended the reach to those who were unable to attend, it allowed attendees the ability to go back and view or re-view sessions and speeches they either missed, or found inspiring enough to warrant a rerun.
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 At 9:33 a.m., on the second day of JavaOne 2008, Alex Miller pulled out his cell phone and typed, “As I walked into Moscone this morning and breathed deeply of JavaOne, I thought ... these are my people.” The nearly 700 Twitterers who follow his feed, plus anyone else who was tracking all Twitter entries containing “JavaOne,” received his tweet.
To capitalize on the Twitter craze, Sun created its own Twitter identity — JavaOneConf — which it used to both follow its customers’ tweets and to update them on event promotions and highlights. It now has 2,757 followers and follows 2,870 of its customers. As attendees read the incoming tweets during JavaOne 2008, members of the marketing team collected their favorites and linked to them on the sidebar of the JavaOneConf Twitter page.
During the conference, Sun used Twitter to:
 Leak event information. “JavaOne 2009 registration will open next week. Cool pass options this year. (JavaOneConf)”
Promote registration. “Hey Early Bird! Get $200 off. (JavaOneConf)”
Make announcements at the event. “JavaOneConf Script Bowl is the place to be right now. Room 104. (JavaOneConf)”
Collect feedback. “I love the speaker’s lounge at javaone - best reason to be speaking :) (puredanger)”
Tap in to customer buzz. “just caught up on
all javaone tweets from
yesterday. so much talk about it. (edyavno)”
Twitter was also helpful to conference attendees. Miller used it to figure out which sessions to attend based on recommendations by fellow tweeters.
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By far the most sci-fi of all the social-networking tools Sun utilized, Second Life is a self-contained virtual world. Users create avatars, online alter-egos to represent them in the virtual world, however true to life. These avatars inhabit a video-game-like digital world where they can work, play, shop, talk to other avatars, and more.
Sun leased its own real estate in Second Life, the virtual Sun Pavilion, a lush, ocean-view property with conference rooms, theaters, a book store, lounge areas, classrooms, and product demo stations.
During JavaOne 2008, Sun scheduled three hours of Second Life content each day, targeted to developers who could not attend the actual event. “Attendees” could participate in informal Q&A sessions with speakers from JavaOne after viewing their real-life presentations on Ustream, attend a focus group about the Sun Developer Network, chat with an author about the latest Java book, and watch a virtual technology demonstration.
Participants could also visit the JavaOne playground where they could test-drive a virtual version of Tommy Jr., a self-driving robotic car that runs on Java technology. Sun even hosted a party in Second Life with music, trivia, and giveaways.
About 45 developers attended Sun’s Second Life events, a small but committed contingent of the company’s customer base that otherwise would have been left out of the event altogether.
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Duke, Java’s red-nosed, triangular mascot, has 1,141 friends. At least that’s the number of people who have claimed him as their pal on Facebook, a social network with 175 million users worldwide. Facebook users create a page on the Web site with information about themselves, photos, links, video clips, updates, and messages. When people become “fans” or “friends” of a company’s Facebook page, they are able to follow the company’s posts, status updates, etc.
In addition to creating a profile page for Duke (who apparently enjoys surfing, mountain climbing, and dancing), Sun created a JavaOne Conference group. Facebook users could join the group — now 2,142 strong — to get updates about the event, discuss the event with other members, post comments, and view event photos. JavaOne’s Facebook page includes YouTube videos and RSS feeds from the event’s most popular blogs.
Sun also created a fan page on Facebook called “I Love Java,” with 20,209 fans. Although this page is for Java in general and not dedicated exclusively to the JavaOne conference, Sun used it to market the event. For example, in April 2008, Sun held a competition on the I Love Java Facebook page, offering a free JavaOne pass to the person who best completed the sentence, “I love Java because ... .” The 63 people who entered posted comments praising Java, and their testimonials then showed up on the pages of all of I Love Java’s Facebook fans.
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LinkedIn (which, incidentally, runs on the Java platform) is similar to Facebook, but with a professional slant. Members create a profile with details about their professional life and use the site to connect with past and present colleagues. For example, members may post online résumés, recommend vendors or colleagues to other users, post comments on discussion pages, etc. The site has about 36 million members across more than 200 countries.
Capitalizing on the fact that 80 percent of JavaOne attendees were LinkedIn members in 2008, Hansen started a LinkedIn group for current and prospective attendees called JavaOne Conference. The group now has more than 600 members.
JavaOne Conference members use the online group to connect with other developers on LinkedIn who will be attending the event; participate in online discussions with one another; and receive updates about the event throughout the year, such as valuable information regarding registration deadlines, early bird specials, and JavaOne news. For example, on Feb. 5, Hansen posted the following update: “Papers Are Being Selected — there were over 1,300 submissions this year.”
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SUN'S SOCIAL EVOLUTION
Sun’s social-networking strategy was so successful during JavaOne 2008 that it enhanced its multifaceted approach and added a few new elements for JavaOne 2009. The company began evolving its strategy by evaluating each element in terms of the quality of feedback it generated and its utility as a marketing tool.
In addition to creating JavaOne-related YouTube videos, Hansen created a pre-event contest called “Dude, Where’s My Pass?” to generate buzz about JavaOne and build community awareness. Entrants submitted 30-second videos about why they wanted to come to JavaOne. In just three weeks, Sun received videos from across the globe. These 30-second spots were designed to promote the conference, build community, and drive interest in the event.
The five contest winners — from New Zealand, Brazil, Colombia, and the United States — each received a pass to JavaOne and $1,500 to offset travel costs. Sun highlighted more than 50 videos online, which were viewed more than 35,000 times, making it a relatively low-cost customer-generated marketing campaign.
Similarly, to encourage attendees to blog about JavaOne, Sun held a blogging contest. It asked developers who attended technical sessions or viewed them online to blog about them and then submit the URL to Sun. From the entries, Sun chose 10 winners, based on the novelty, clarity, and usefulness of the blog posts, and awarded each of those bloggers a $300 American Express gift card.
In 2009, Sun also added Blogtalk Radio to its social-networking toolbox. It aired 47 on-demand podcast-like episodes, including session previews, event recaps, and interviews with everyone from partners and presenters to attendees and the five “Dude, Where’s My Pass?” winners.
Most user conferences aren’t exactly worth writing home about, but by capitalizing on the social-media revolution, Sun has made its annual JavaOne conference something worth tweeting, blogging, and podcasting about. But perhaps the greatest advantage of JavaOne’s social-marketing strategy is that it extended the event from four days to 365.
According to Hansen, “Using social-networking tools for JavaOne has enabled us to build virtual communities and stay in touch throughout the year. It’s evolved our relationships with our customers and the way we market to them.” E
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