Beata Palis of the Convention Bureau of the Municipality of Kraków was present at this years INMA/OPA conference in Liverpool and invited about 200 attendees to visit her city and Malopolska region in Poland.

Kraków’s event is scheduled to September 29 – October 1, 2010. During the prestigious three-day hundreds of media people from all over Europe will gather at the capital of Malopolska to participate in lectures, debates and workshops on the latest challenges and trends in the media, as well as to exchange ideas, opinions with colleagues from other countries.

Successful bid to host this conference was carried out just by the Convention Bureau, supported by the Mayor of Kraków, Marshal of Voivodship Malopolska and editors of news media headquartered in Kraków: newspapers Dziennik Polski, Gazeta Krakowska, local edition of Gazeta Wyborcza, internet portal Interia.pl and radio station RMF FM.

Ms. Palis promoted at Liverpool her city and the region as a dream place for international meetings: the town has not only the rich history, charming architecture and hospitable residents, but also a convenient network of direct flights, European class conference venues, accommodation and catering.

At an exhibition accompanying the Liverpool conference, the participants might see 15 more reasons to visit this town, learn what must-sights during a short 3-day visit and why you should stay there longer. Editors and publishers had also an opportunity to taste the specialties of traditional cuisine, including delicious honey from hives in Malopolska.

Liverpool: Rachel Armstrong of Dainik Jagran and Alison Fennah of European Interactive Advertising Association learn more about Kraków from Beata Palis, its convention bureau manager

Ms. Palis met also lord mayor of Liverpool Mike Storey — whose efforts helped to establish there a modern BT Convention Center — and Carol O’Reilly, a manager of Convention Bureau in Liverpool. They were talking about Liverpool’s experience with the use of the center to promote the city.

BT Convention Center in Liverpool was opened in April 2008. In the first year it hosted more than 200 events attended by 71 thousand delegates. The Center has a total of 18 rooms. The largest auditorium can accommodate 1350 persons.

Similar center is being constructed in Krakow at the moment and it is scheduled to be open by 2013. The city and the region are hoping that the center will attract thousands of visitors from home and abroad, who fill up the local hotels, restaurants, pubs, visit museums, theaters and an opera, and at least some of them will stay longer to see the Tatra Mountains, the salt mines in Wieliczka or pay a memorable visit to the former Nazi camp — now museum Auschwitz.

Watch video about Kraków’s mysteries and attractions:

Here is a bunch of information about what was done during the Obama’s campaign:

• 13 million supporters on a email database
• millions of calls made
• millions of doors knocked
• 200.000 offline events
• 1.2 billion min of video consumed
• 500 mln dollars donated

The goal for news publishers should be to engage the people with compelling and unique content. During Obama’s campaingn a special blog was set: Voices for Change with hundred and hundreds of stories updated on a constant basis. What’s even more important – those stories were used that way, so others could hear it.

Also the transparency of the campaign was part of its success. Every month the voters knew what was going to happen in the campaign, and how much money was going to be spent. This way Obama had created a totally different image to other candidates. When Hillary Clinton was asking for 10 million dollars in fund raising, Obama was saying something different – that he needed 100 million donors, not caring how much they will donate. Engaging his voters, giving people something to do, and putting them to work was Obama’s asset. That way he did not have to deal with passive voters. Millions of contacts that supported Obama are still being taken care of, and the relationship is still on. They are now council representatives, active citizens in their communities.

Technology makes many things easier in terms of communication. That’s why it was easier to ask people to act via such channels of communications as Twitter or Facebook than doing it face to face. Also individual tactics were engaged in the campaign including building personalized and real relationships. It was all about identifying what people were willing to do. An example of such action is “not in my name” project, where people were invited to upload their pics. This could turn the enthusiasm and engagement into the result.