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The board of directors for the Las Vegas Convention Center has approved a recommendation to enter into exclusive negotiations with Elon Musk’s Boring Company to construct a proposed loop of underground tunnels with high-speed electric people carriers to whisk convention attendees and workers around the facility. 

You already know the ins and outs of planning an event, but how can you enhance your attendees’ experience and ensure that you’re engaging them before, during, and after the fact?

One answer is to more deeply leverage today’s meeting technologies. While event management software tools offer a smoother and more efficient meeting planning process, they can also improve engagement, build your brand, and provide attendee insights.

I was at an educational forum recently where the keynote presenter spoke with passion regarding the success of completely virtual meetings in building communities using tools such as WhatsApp, Instagram, and Skype. The inference was that this digital disruption would cause face-to-face meetings to eventually fade away. While I am in absolute agreement that these virtual communities allow powerful sharing of ideas, I am also a firm believer that there still is nothing that replaces interactions and relationship building at face-to-face meetings. 

Unless you are living under a rock, you’ve heard of voice assistants such as Amazon Echo or Google Assistant, but have you thought about how to use voice assistants at events? We have to make sure as an industry we are always thinking about the purpose of the event and not just adding technology because it’s new and shiny. Could voice assistants really be a replacement for chatbots? What are the benefits of implementing voice assistants at events? Or do they have no place at all being at events? We will be covering all this and more.

Doing social but not doing video? Then you’re missing a huge opportunity to promote your events to a wider audience. According to our recent Pulse Report, video is the most effective social promotion tactic of all. Only 3% of those who used video to promote their events last year didn’t find it effective as a promotional solution. If you’ve not produced video content before, it can certainly seem daunting. However, it needn’t mean giving up masses of time and money – you can produce effective content in minutes, utilising free or low-cost tools.

While I generally recommend that planners look holistically at an event to see where video can play the most effective role, there's one spot where video makes sense most of the time: at the end of the event. Specifically, that general session where you bid everyone goodbye and good luck—and want to charge them up with excitement one last time, in a way that burns an overarching message into their memory.

Blockchain ticketing is set to change the way event professionals sell tickets works for good. Yet the meaning of blockchain for the event industry is still obscure. The buzzword around it and poor coverage from industry media is making event professionals even more confused. So what is blockchain? Why will blockchain ticketing have an impact on the way we sell tickets? Most of all... Why should you bother and what’s in it for you, event planners? We are bringing the answers to your most burning questions about the use of blockchain in ticketing and events.

You’ve set up the Facebook event page, you’re regularly tweeting and you’re posting about your event on Instagram. You might think you’ve covered all your bases. But you’re missing an important piece: an event website. It might seem difficult and unnecessary, but websites are still key for promoting an event and drawing in attendees. Taking the time to create one can be daunting, but plenty of host sites are making it easier than ever to create a site quickly and in a straightforward, clean manner.

Two news stories this week gave a conflicting vision of the use of AI robots as hotel staff. A Reuters’ story on Alibaba Future Hotel Management’s FlyZoo hotel in Hangzhou, China, describes sleek little robots delivering towels and cocktails, which, according to the story, Alibaba claims cuts labor costs and eliminates the need for guests to interact with people.

Investors and developers see the meetings and events technology space as ripe for disruption, and over the past four years have invested in or launched nearly 400 event solutions. The reasons for this momentous interest in emerging event technologies are many. (See my previous article “The Current State of Meetings Technology”).  What are the impacts of so many new disruptive technologies: the pros and cons for event participants, end-user organizations, and meeting planning intermediaries? With at least 20 new solution types now available (see below), I will only focus on general trends in this article, but in future articles will look at specifics of particular solution types.

Believe it or not, your website acts as a sort of membership salesperson. In fact, it’s probably the best “employee” you have! It never complains, and it always lets you know what’s going on. How does your website tell you anything? You can learn a LOT about what kind of information your visitors (aka, potential members) are looking for through website analytics, and therefore be equipped to give them the information they need to join.

The annual CES tech expo with 182,000 attendees and more than 4,400 exhibitors, has just wrapped in Las Vegas. Alongside some of the stranger contributions to humanity on display, including Internet-connected diapers and a $7,000 smart toilet, were a few new products that will definitely make meeting planner’s lives easier.

Nowadays, it seems like everything is going digital - including events. More and more companies and organizations are hosting virtual events and more and more people seem to be attending those events. But does that mean your organization should move from a traditional in-person conference to a virtual one?

The Social Media Trends for Events survey found that marketing was the number-one use for social media among event professionals, with 96 percent of respondents using it for outreach. More than 75 percent of respondents also used social media for customer engagement, news, and community building.  

Will 2019 be the year you leverage social media to make your events safer, more compelling and downright fun? A new survey shows that planners are missing opportunities to connect, sell sponsorships and build community.

The personal touch attendees expect from meetings is now largely being delivered with the help of machines. Yes, the event business has officially entered the realm of high-tech. From smart apps to the Internet of Things (IoT), event professionals must either master programming along with spreadsheets and CRM database building—or hire someone who does. Smart Meetings covered all the must-have tech advances this year to help you stay at the top of your game.

While Facebook has dominated the headlines most of the year with one crisis after another, its sister social media site, Instagram has quietly grown into a powerful social marketing tool. In June 2018, it reached 1 billion monthly active users, an increase of 200 million people since September 2017. Compare its reach to Facebook at 1.4 billion and Twitter at 68 million and you’ll see it’s a global powerhouse.

To redesign your website or to leave it as is? That is the question…

Maybe it’s something you’ve been pondering for a while. Maybe it’s something you’ve been intentionally putting off. How do you know if now is the right time? Well, take it from us, it might be time for a website redesign if…

If you use Instagram, you’ve probably noticed that when you post to your account and use a popular hashtag, you will often attract at least one new like, follower or comment. Sometimes, a quick check of these mysterious Instagram profiles will make you feel as if you’ve struck gold: They have tens of thousands of followers! They appear to be minor celebrities—potential influencers! More impressively, they are only following a few hundred accounts, and yours is one of them! Naturally, you show your appreciation by following them back.

Smart phones are smarter than ever, streaming has never been easier or more common, and the constantly connected technology of modern society is pushing events to jaw-dropping heights. That is, if your internet connection doesn’t crash.

Smartphones have technically been in existence since 1992, but in the last decade they have become an indispensable part of the planner’s on-the-go life. That is why optimizing use of all the helpful apps popping up every week is essential for event professionals today. Speaker and productivity expert Audrey Thomas, CSP, recently shared tips with attendees at FICP for making the most out of those powerful pocket computers. Here are her top tips for getting phone smart.

Have you ever wondered how other successful meeting planners use the newest event tech? This series takes you behind the scenes to see how your peers use features like gamification, augmented reality, and facial recognition to take their events to the next level.

It’s important to have social media pages for your business. A $20 ad can bring in hundreds of likes and sharing photos—and hash-tagging correctly—can guide Instagram users to your photo to see what you’re all about. But an under-utilized, yet very necessary, social media network is LinkedIn. It’s the “professional” version of who you are and what you do, yet it’s often neglected and left un-updated.

Meeting automation is potentially positioning itself as the next technology to shake up the planning game. While apps and meeting management systems have been grabbing headline and topping lists of “tech to watch,” more complete meeting automation could take those principles another step forward.

The holiday season is officially upon us, and with that comes a certain level of increased social media visibility. (People are on their phones a lot more, after all.) But how can your organization really leverage that visibility to increase online member engagement? We’ve got a few ideas!