By: Anne Branigan
Senior Vice President – Innovative Services, Greater Omaha Chamber
We spend an enormous amount of time and energy at the Chamber connecting people – connecting them to information, to business opportunities, to whatever it takes to help a member or our community be more successful.
As we do this, we continue to push ourselves on an important question:
how can we innovate to produce better outcomes for our customers?
This is interesting when you think about it in the context of
One traditional avenue – the trade show – has fallen out of popularity for a variety of reasons. A complaint we heard over the years about the Buy the Big O! Show was there were lots of people but it was hard to connect with the real potential customers.
Quantity wasn’t helping produce quality connections,
at least for some of our exhibitors.
So in 2015, we tried an event called GENERATE that threw out the trade show booths and instead created an environment for casual discussion with experiences to act as unique conversation starters. Think of it as a grown-up version of “show and tell.” Walk by, engage in a conversation and learn something – could be about drones or perhaps how safe your personal info is on-line.
This year, based on customer feedback, we’re excited to take GENERATE to the next level, adding even more space and interesting experience makers to create an atmosphere that encourages learning about local businesses and developing more personal connections. We look forward to seeing great results.
Our business is about helping others be successful, and we will keep experimenting. If you have a great idea or input on what we might do to help you succeed, let us know! Better yet, I hope we can connect at GENERATE on Tuesday, Aug. 23, and talk about it.