Lights! Camera! Web Action!

People hate meetings. but they love events: special occasions that bring together colleagues who don't often see each other - to consider topics that they don't often discuss. Most business events are physical gatherings: off-sites at posh resorts, training seminars at conference centers. The trouble with physical gatherings is that they impose so many limitations: How many people can take time away to attend? How many people can you afford to fly in?

Enter the Web. Don't think of the Web as merely a place to find information or to sell products. Think of it as a place to hold events. Web events have a number of advantages over their physical counterparts. For one thing, they can handle more people. British Petroleum recently held a three-day strategy session to which it invited 20,000 employees - everyone in the company with intranet access. "This changed the whole spirit of the meeting," says Keith Pearse, a 16-year company veteran, who spearheaded the Web sessions.

Web events can also reach people in more places. Bell & Howell has held its last two shareholders' meetings on the Web. Although fewer than 40 people traveled to the physical gathering in 1997, more than 1,700 attended virtually.

The four events described here show what's possible - and offer lessons on how to make such events work. So start sending out the invitations. By email, of course.

Virtual Strategy Session

Event: Under CEO John Browne, British Petroleum has worked to become flatter, faster, and more democratic. That's easier said than done in a company with 53,000 employees - many of them stationed in remote locations like the North Sea and Alaska's North Slope. Where do you hold a company-wide strategy session when your people are scattered around the world? On the Web. Last summer, BP convened a three-day Innovation Colloquium to devise ways for the company to become more creative. It was a high-priority event. When BP convenes these colloquia, they involve its most senior people. This session brought together CEO Browne, 70 other high-ranking BP executives, and a star-studded cast of outsiders, including a well-known futurist, a senior official from the U.S. Army, and executives from Intel and McKinsey and Co.

One other group was invited as well: the 20,000 BP employees with intranet access. "The topic was innovation, so we wanted the event to be innovative," says Pearse. "The feedback we got from all parts of the world bowled us over. We'll never do a conventional meeting again."

Agenda: The physical gathering took place at BP's training and development center, 10 miles west of London's Heathrow airport. Several days before the event, Pearse's five-person Web team sent out a company-wide email and included a URL so that people could attend virtually. People who logged on could review presentation slides and handouts, and hear a real-time audio broadcast of the proceedings. They could also email their questions from the field - including the oil fields.

According to Pearse, 10 BP workers on an oil platform in the North Sea spent the night shift discussing one of the sessions. They then sent emails about innovation in their work. Pearse was amazed: "Here you have all these high-level executives participating, but you also have a bunch of engineers floating around in the North Sea. We tried to make it obvious that their comments were making it into the room."

Reviews: BP's Web event was a gusher. Thousands of employees visited the site as the session was happening; hundreds more have accessed an archive of the proceedings. Pearse says the company's next Web gathering, a Futures Forum to explore BP's competitive environment over the next 20 years, will incorporate streaming video as well as real-time audio. It will also incorporate lessons that Pearse and his team learned during the innovation sessions.

First, Pearse says, you have to make Web events feel "live" - and lively. The BP event included a clock that "counted down" to when each session would start, photos of the facility, copies of all the materials the delegates received - even dinner menus.

Second, he adds, you need to make it easy for people to be heard. Offering access to an event isn't enough. You also have to engage in dialogue and debate. BP employees could click on a "Feedback" button and offer their thoughts to people at the gathering. "Employees can feel excluded. This event improved BP's family feel," Pearse says. "It created shared context."

Coordinates: British Petroleum, http://www.bp.com; Keith Pearse, pearsekd@bp.com