I don’t profess to be a social media expert myself. Like most everyone else, my knowledge on the subject is the culmination of many many hours of reading, listening and experimenting with social platforms. I do know about the mechanics of the meetings and trade show industry and how to apply social media principles to the marketing and promotion of event industry brands. Here are the “20 Tips in (Less Than) 20 Minutes” that I offered to session attendees last week.

In case you haven’t noticed, social networking is a movement, and where Tunisia and Egypt are concerned, it sparked an actual revolution. In the meetings industry, the experimentation with Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, and LinkedIn is training our attendees, exhibitors, sponsors, media and nearly everyone in the event ecosystem to expect MORE—more content, more information, more engagement—before, during, after, online, and offline. In response, developers have come up with some interesting ideas to help event planners expand their notion of “social networking” beyond online platforms.

In the beginning of the month (on December 7, the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor), I received an email from a company that I had previously blogged about. They somehow landed on my radar and I found their application interesting. The subject line of the email read, “A Christmas present from the Triqle Team.” After a pleasant opening—“we love you, because of your involvement and feedback…”—they made me a fabulous offer. Of course, I couldn’t refuse.

Of all of the urges, predilections, and addictions that social media has spawned, the most obvious is the “need for speed.” Where information is concerned, we want it now, we want it continuously updated, and we want to get it wherever we are. Trade show and conference attendees are no different than regular folk—the info consuming public. In fact, their time is at a premium on the trade show floor and the printed show/conference schedule is going the way of the dodo. What to do? Enter startup company, Triqle Event Intelligence, based in Amsterdam.

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

As the lead blogger for the Donate Life Utah campaign that ended on October 24, 2009 (National Make a Difference Day), I had the opportunity to participate in, as well as observe, how social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and WordPress (blog) can be utilized to build an event-driven community. Donate Life Utah was [...]

The MTO Summit, October 21-22 in San Francisco was the hub for discussions on event industry technology. Much of the discussion focused on social media and social networking applications and integration. Two interesting technology providers, Fantail Consulting and The Social Collective were on hand to offer new perspectives and solutions for social media pains. Michael [...]

When the National Speakers Association (NSA) considered social networking platforms to enhance their 2009 Convention, they compared private and public options. Platform features, cost and attendee preferences were among the top considerations. The main goal for NSA was to build community. “Community is a huge part of our organization. We look for ways to learn [...]

I caught up with a couple of the exhibitors at MPI’s World Education Conference in Salt Lake City (July 11-14, 2009).  Zerista is a social networking program based on a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform.  John Kanarowski gives a great tutorial on the capabilities of his and other platforms.     Pamela Wilson from [...]