The MeetingTechOnline Buyer’s Guide to Mobile Apps for professional event organizers and corporate meeting planners has just been released and will be available (in print) at the MTO Summit in November.

Hybrid events—conferences and corporate events that include both live and virtual audiences—have prompted speakers accustomed to presenting in front of a live audience to adopt some new practices to bring the virtual audience into the conversation. Speakers aren’t the only ones interested in appealing to a virtual audience. Savvy hybrid event organizers are looking for speakers with the skill sets to wow both types of attendees.

I’m always curious about how social media channels function in other countries. Recently, I noticed a discussion on LinkedIn about social media in the People’s Republic of China. I posted a question about whether social media channels could be used to recruit attendees to U.S. trade shows. I received a very informative response from Shawn He Yuxun, founder and chairman at MeetChinaBiz.org.

Trust Agents Chris Brogan and Julien Smith discuss the use of strategy over tools and some other ideas for you to think about. Although Chris and Julien began responding to a question about the kinds of tools the younger generation is using (since the fastest growing age group on Facebook is 65+), they finished with comments on platforms, communities and social media strategy. The same ideas can be applied to face-to-face events.

In the context of social media and face-to-face events, there is still a lot of uncertainty associated with bringing social networking platforms, technologies and methodologies into the marketing mix. There is fear around privacy, investment of time, costs, negative comments, loss of control, lack of expertise, exposure, difficulty measuring ROI, and the risk of failure in such a transparent environment. After all, not only were we put in the hot seat by the recession, some of us were burned beyond recognition (lost jobs, companies out of business, marketing strategies obsolete).

I had the pleasure (for the first time) of hearing the Trust Agents Chris Brogan and Julien Smith together on the same stage during the Women Tech Council meeting last week. During the Q&A Session, I captured some video (I’m a writer not a videographer) on their responses to questions from the audience. These are relevant topics for the event industry as well as the business community in general. Here’s what they said about blogging failure and success and some other tidbits for you to think about.

March’s MTO Summit in Chicago still has me thinking about some of the interesting perspectives that were shared during the conference. Here are some of the ideas that made me sit up a little straighter in my chair. Mobile Apps Event organizers aren’t necessarily interested in the new sponsorship opportunities (too many already) available with [...]

If there was any common thread running through MTO Summit in Chicago last week, it wasn’t the technology innovations or even the focus on execution. The room was full of people talking about new ideas and how to do something different without damaging what (if anything) is still working in the event world. In fact, [...]

This Thursday, March 25 at 9:30 a.m. CDT, I will be moderating a panel at the MTO Summit in Chicago on mobile apps for events. I was initially thinking that the discussion might center primarily around applications that bring the traditional attendee “needs” to life on a Smartphone but recent product releases pairing social networking [...]

Remember the days when you attended a trade show with a hard copy of the show program and a highlighter? Drawing a pink line over the exhibitors you wanted to visit or the sessions you wanted to attend was almost a ritual—a cathartic process to help you feel productive. Then, everything went online and so [...]

Reviewing event technology options can be both invigorating and exhausting. The good news is that there are many different online and mobile productivity tools available for social networking, bookmarking, scheduling, mapping, messaging, lead retrieval and polling. The bad news is there are so many different tools available. If social networking is hot, mobile apps are [...]

Almost two weeks after Social Fish Maddie Grant, Lindy Dreyer and a host of technology providers launched what they dubbed #Untech10 in defiance of the major snowstorm that forced the cancellation of ASAE’s 2010 Technology Conference and Expo, the potential long-term impact of their efforts has become clear.

Between the Avatar in 3D movie craze and the 3D televisions rolled out during the Consumer Electronic Show, “3D” may be the acronym of the year for 2010. Since virtual events are a hot ticket in the event industry this year, it makes sense to take a closer look at 3D virtual events to see [...]

Leading event organizations are utilizing technology in a variety of ways to keep up with the demands of the “new normal.” Whether it’s online or offline, new media or traditional media, SPE, Hanley Wood and Graph Expo are cooking up some tasty tech tidbits for 2010. Enhancing the Exhibitor Experience The Society of Petroleum Engineers [...]

The International Association for Exhibitions and Events held their annual meeting, Expo! Expo!, December 7-11, 2009 in Atlanta. Technology and social media were major themes of the conference. Read my overview here. Associations and non-profits looking to develop social media strategies should consider companies such as Washington, DC-based Social Fish. I caught up with Maddie [...]

A virtual trade show with a hosted buyer program might be the perfect combination for the senior level executive that hasn’t been seen at the face-to-face event in years (with or without a recession, corporate travel ban or AIG Effect). However, without the face-to-face contact and experiential elements that enhance sales conversions at live events, [...]

Blogs, Facebook fan pages, Twitter posts and YouTube videos are some of the most talked about ways to nurture an event community year round as long as you don’t break the cardinal rule of new media which is “share, don’t sell.” Producing compelling content that stimulates community conversation (usually over the heads of most college [...]

Anne Thornley-Brown of Toronto-based Executive Oasis International and LinkedIn group “Event Planning & Management – the 1st Group for Event Planners” fame, shared with me how she integrated social media into a team building event during an executive retreat in Egypt for the Saudi Arabian office of a global pharmaceutical company. Her experience is a [...]

The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show is the annual embodiment of all that is content-related including the creation, management, commerce, distribution, delivery and consumption of audio, video and film. It’s only natural that they would entertain the idea of offering a virtual trade show and conference at some point. On January 20, the show [...]

I had the pleasure of exchanging emails and/or speaking with three headliners for the upcoming Expo! Expo!, IAEE’s Annual Meeting and Trade Show. The event is being held this year in Atlanta. The resulting article was titled, “If You Tweet It, Will They Come?” and appears in E2: Exhibitions and Events’ November/December 2009 issue. There [...]