At any trade show, attendees can spend their time on a variety of activities. They can watch product demonstrations, listen to industry leaders discuss the day's most pressing issues or attend breakout sessions on specific topics. Or they can simply wander the show floor, loading up their tote bags with business cards, product spec sheets and freebies that range from useful USB keys to tchotchkes.

Thanks to AMD, trade show warriors can now have this experience without ever leaving their PCs. Unveiled in September 2006, the AMD Virtual IT Experience (AVE) is an interactive, content-rich venue that helps customers quickly locate information, tools and advice about a wide range of IT issues and challenges, from power and cooling concerns within the data center to the latest trends in server virtualization.

Ever notice how whenever characters in a present-day movie use technology, it always seems to be years ahead of what's available now? AVE has that level of sophistication, and it is available now. The site is a three-dimensional, first-person experience that brings users into a simulated trade show environment through which they can navigate, interact and gather information.

Because it's all online, users can steer their own course at any time of the day or night, choosing which information they want, participating in demos and observing the keynote presenters — not just talking heads staring blankly into a camera, but real execs who stroll the stage just like they would at an actual event. On the flip side are participating vendors who can connect with interested customers and generate sales leads without being aggressive.

"When you think about why people go to events in the first place," says Bruce Shaw, director of AMD's Worldwide Commercial and Enterprise Marketing, "about 85 percent of them go for the same reasons: to get information on solutions and to shop for competitive offerings.

"[AVE] is about how to get that information, but doing it in a way that makes it seem like you're at the event. You can talk to a real person, check out the physical equipment and gather the information you want. People have been talking about virtual trade shows for years, and we feel this is the first of its kind."

While other companies have taken a stab at their own online events, few, if any, of these events have the depth and breadth of AVE. Taking less than a minute to load with a standard broadband Internet connection, the site opens onto a visual of a trade show floor, complete with the ambient noise of "attendees" milling about.

The site offers an interactive walk-through of individual vendor booths, where users can view demos and obtain information. Periodic live chat sessions with participating representatives are being planned. AVE also provides 3-D visual representations of new AVE partner products and keynote speeches by industry experts. Users can even stow their information collateral in a virtual event bag, and they also can enjoy contests and giveaways of T-shirts and novelty items.

In short, AVE enables users to do nearly everything they would normally do at a trade show, short of shaking hands with vendor reps and fishing giveaway candy out of bowls at the booths.

Providing Greater Choices

Analysts who have seen AVE agree that it's breaking new ground. "We live in a world that has been vastly changed by the Internet," says Rob Enderle, president and principal analyst of the Enderle Group, a technology consulting and advisory firm in San Jose, Calif., adding that "forward-looking companies are looking for ways to use the Web to address the purchasing needs of IT buyers.

"The AMD Virtual IT Experience is one of the most advanced examples of this change and showcases how AMD is leading the technology industry into this new world of [highly] efficient and convenient technology showcases."

Though trade shows are a crucial way to deliver targeted messages to key customers and partners, they do require an investment of money and time. The financial element played a role in motivating AMD to pursue the AVE project.

As it prepared the site, AMD worked with Russell Research, a New York-based market research firm, to determine what elements could be derived from physical events and redrawn into a satisfying online experience. "When we were thinking about this project and meeting with AVE partners about it, we looked at the number of events they were planning to attend and the amount of money they'd spend on them, and we thought, 'There has to be another option,'" Shaw says.

If AVE merely took users through an exciting technology demonstration before pointing them toward the same old Web links, much of its impact would be lost. That's why, when requesting more information on a solution, users get specific, well-organized data sheets instead of URLs that may or may not be up to date.

"Our guiding principle was how to get customers the information they need to make their purchasing decisions, and we really focused on giving them digestible content," Shaw says.

Anyone who's ever had to sift through a vendor's Web site to hunt down a specific piece of product data knows what a headache that can be. This was a big motivator behind AVE: to make it much easier to find the right information quickly.

"2-D [two-dimensional] sites put the complexity on the customers," Shaw says. "There could be times when you spend hours searching through companies' Web sites, including AMD's, and still not get exactly what you need."

The technology behind AVE is a combination of 3-D rendering technology, animation and audio/video — "everything you would see in a Shrek movie, only in a scaled-down version," Shaw says. The entire system was built on AMD Opteron" processor-based systems, which Design Reactor, AMD's collaborator in building the AVE site, says was an invaluable asset.

"It's not possible to overstate the benefits the AMD Opteron processor brought to this project," says Kevin Carbone, president of Design Reactor, which is based in both Campbell, Calif., and Austin, Texas. "The ability to make changes and re-render them quickly is invaluable on a project like this."

Once the site has been built the first time, it becomes much easier and cost-effective to replicate, which opens the door to future "events." But that doesn't mean AMD customers and industry partners will soon be getting all their vendor and product information the 3-D way.

"Our goal is not to replace our existing site, but to be part of the movement to the digital age," Shaw says. "But once you have the 3-D framework in place, it becomes so much easier to repeat — it's almost as easy as HTML."

FUTURE UPGRADES To create the next version of AVE, which is planned for the first half of 2007, AMD drew from the optimization model some theme parks use, in which customers can get automated itineraries based on which attractions they'd most like to see, where the longest and shortest lines are, and how much time they have to spend.

"We're making sure not to include every piece of information on the site," Shaw says. "We'll post quick synopses of everything with specific links that point customers to exactly where they can find the rest on our [2-D] Web site." He says the technology that can highlight available content and take the user directly to it is "not quite there yet" but it is in the works.

AVE can also make it easier for the company and exhibitors to reach high-level executives, who merely have to log on to the site. "So far, we've seen a lot of use among CIOs," says Shaw, "and we've also had a large take rate from SMBs [small and medium-size businesses]."

The look and feel of AVE also has the potential to attract a previously untapped audience: people in Generations X and Y, the 20- and 30-somethings.

"The younger people have a high level of distrust for traditional information," Shaw says. "That's why we're looking for ways to deliver content with rich information, but in a way that makes it look like a game."

AVE is so new that AMD is still figuring out the best ways to use it. "This version will run through the end of the year, but we're still sorting out which events to do it for," Shaw says. "It might be an evergreen that stays up for awhile, or we might do a new one for each event we select."

an engaging experience

One thing is crystal clear, though: Users are enjoying the site.

"It's an impressive use of technology," says Michael Sagan, senior designer and technology principal for Trek Bicycle. "This engaging and compelling interface will give both the provider and the consumer of information a tremendous experience, while transcending the boundaries of the 2-D screen. This is a game-changer in content delivery."

"The reason we did this was to solve end-customer problems, and we've been seeing unbelievable response rates in the registration areas," Shaw says. The users seem to be doing more than just taking cursory looks at the site, giving AMD the elusive "stickiness" Web masters crave.

"Most people spend about 1.5 minutes on the typical Web site, but they're spending an average of more than 10 minutes on this one," Shaw says.

>In the end, AVE and similar projects will certainly not make the traditional trade show obsolete, but the technology could provide a useful alternative to traditional trade shows.

BUILDING THE SITE

When searching for the right agency to help build the AMD Virtual IT Experience (AVE) Web site, AMD did its homework.

"We wanted to focus on solving our IT problems efficiently, and we looked at ways we could do that," says Bruce Shaw, director of AMD's Worldwide Commercial and Enterprise Marketing. "Design Reactor was one of the few agencies that could handle it."

Design Reactor's involvement with the project was an instance of fortuitous timing. "We already had our virtual engine built, and we were looking for ways to use it just as AMD was bringing its technology partners together for this project," says Kevin Carbone, Design Reactor's president.

The entire site took about five months from conc eption to rollout, and the biggest hur dle was nontechnical. "The real challenge was developing a lot of fresh, new content and getting together participants to produce it," Carbone says.

The need to get executives — including those from other vendors — to come to a studio and essentially perform their keynote or seminar presentations as if on television requires a lot of planning and flexibility from the producers. "It's difficult to schedule time with busy executives, but they know if they spend a couple of hours in the studio to get a high-quality presentation, it's well worth the time investment," AMD's Shaw says.

Just as the finished product can help make it easier to recruit executives for future projects, the ability to reproduce the technology will smooth the path for future IT events. "It will be easier to pull technology partners together in the future because we now have a better understanding of which approvals we need and when," Design Reactor's Carbone says. "And it's phenomenally easier to do the experience a second time, because the virtual engine is inherently scalable."

STAR-STUDDED CAST

Other AVE events and speakers include the following:

Introduction, Tutorial and Treasure Hunt

Bob Wood, host

New BladeSystem c-Class

Paul Miller, vice president of marketing, industry standard servers and HP BladeSystem

Oracle Grid Computing

Robert Shimp, vice president, technology marketing, Oracle

Next-Generation

AMD Opteron Processors

Henri Richard, executive vice president and chief sales and marketing officer, AMD

http://virtualexperience.amd.com