Let’s be honest, you want your event to be memorable and valuable to those who choose to attend, but it’s incredibly easy for attendees to get lost in their phones and distracted by notifications and emails. Instead, promoting networking and conversation is a great way to help your attendees stay involved and get the most out of your event.

When those in attendance take quality time to engage and network with fellow attendees, your event will stick in their memory alongside the meaningful relationships they’ve formed. Just keep in mind you may have to give guests a nudge sometimes to wake up and smell the roses.

Here are some ways you can naturally encourage networking and get the conversation going among attendees:

Prioritize Meet & Greets

Many people go to an industry specific event with the intention of networking and meeting new professionals in their field. However, it isn’t always easy to catch speakers and organizers during sessions or presentations. Providing a time and a place for people to network will take the pressure off of trying to get together, and help them make more of their interactions.

Before your event, brainstorm ways in which you can make it easy for attendees to meet with speakers, exhibitors, and fellow guests. Consider dedicating one or more areas as a meet and greet lounge to be used at any time. Once you decide on the locations, include them in promotional materials you send out via social media or email.

Creating a space which is dedicated to networking will make your attendees more likely to take the time to interact with others at your event. Many industry specific events are great places for your audience to form new and productive business relationships.

Choose Food & Beverages With Care

People naturally socialize over food. Providing free food and drink with the price of attendance will create a natural reason for attendees to stick around and get to know one another. Plus, being at an event for several days in a row can be taxing. Your attendees are likely to need refueling several times a day before your event is over.

One option to encourage socializing is assigning seats to guarantee your attendees meet new people. Or, if you provide small tables scattered around the event near food sources, you’ll create a space in which people can get to know fellow attendees in a more natural environment.

Party games, happy hour, free drinks, and entertainment are also great ways to encourage socializing between speakers and other activities. Pick a few strategies ahead of time and make sure your event is set up to support your choice.

Use the Right Event Technology

Equipping your event with the right technology will help you better facilitate engagement. Social media provides a plethora of ways to encourage networking and interaction before, during, and after the event. Creating an event specific hash tag and using a social media wall to spotlight relevant posts is a great way to encourage your attendees to interact online.

Games are also a great way to boost interaction at your event. People can get incredibly competitive when incentivized properly. Consider hosting giveaways for a certain number of people who add to your hashtag, or perform a specific activity at your event.

Using new technology like a virtual reality booth with help create buzz among attendees too. People will talk about the experience they had interacting with the latest virtual reality demonstration, or trying out tech that isn’t commercially available yet.

One option for increasing engagement during presentations is using an Audience Response System and crowd polling. Guests will be more likely to interact and remember takeaways if they are actively responding and paying attention to what’s going on.

Plan After Hours Activities

Sometimes, despite best intentions, attendees can’t manage networking during the event. This is why it’s important to plan a couple of meet ups after hours. Consider partnering with a local bar or hot spot to reserve some space for a few happy hours with conference goers. They should be willing to negotiate food and drink specials if you let them know a large number of people will be attending.

Having activities available outside of your event can also help ease any anxiety your attendees might be feeling. Providing a place to interact outside of the conference takes the pressure off of attendees to interact with others in a specific way.

If you provide multiple options, people can choose where to go based on their interests, and can get to know like-minded attendees in more comfortable environments. Getting a breath of fresh air will help them loosen up, and put their best foot forward when it comes to forming new business relationships.

Encouraging interaction at your event is a great way to help your attendees form new partnerships that will benefit them for years to come. If you plan ahead and prioritize attendee networking along with other event goals, you’ll create a meaningful experience that will keep your guests coming back year after year.

Video content is a great way to catch your audience’s attention in a short period of time. Short videos retain 53% of your audience to the very end. From product demos to testimonials, business related video content is one of the most effective tools at getting your message across.

This makes it a great tool for event promotion and engaging potential attendees through social media. Even if you don’t have much experience creating videos, your company can take advantage of this medium’s higher engagement rates.

Read on to discover simple ways to create new video content without breaking the bank on a big production crew.

1. Use Existing Content

You don’t have to come up with completely new content to create a video for your upcoming event. Do you have videos or photos from last year? Use footage from previous events to give attendees a sneak peak of what they can expect from you this year. These clips will also serve to remind past guests of the great time they had, and will encourage them to attend again this year.

If you don’t have any video footage, you can use photos to create a collage to achieve a similar effect. Include event details like key features, keynote speakers, and other happenings through engaging narration and musical cues.

2. Live Stream Your Events

No matter how much advance notice you give your potential attendees, some of them won’t be able to make it come event day. That doesn’t mean they have to miss out! You can expand your audience by allowing them to view some aspects of your event from anywhere through a lives stream.

This format works great for those who want to hear from your keynote speakers, or attend specific learning sessions or hands on workshops. Recording this content also makes for great follow up content to send out to attendees once your event is over. Plus, come next year, you’ll already have content you can use for a recap or highlights video!

3. Create Vlogs

Event attendees want to see content they won’t be able to get anywhere else. Providing video interviews with speakers before the event takes place will give your audience a taste of what they can expect from you. This is a great way to create interest and bring people to your event who wouldn’t come otherwise.

Make sure to promote these videos through social media to expand the reach of your vlogs (video blogs). Post them to YouTube, and then share them on all of the networks your event uses. Sponsors and speakers are usually happy to share content that features them prominently, which will expand your social media influence even further.

Vlogs are also a great format for special announcements about upcoming guests and vital event details. You can also distribute these videos through email to make your attendees feel involved. These short promotions will work to create hype and excitement for your event.

4. Use a Photo/Video Booth

Social media booths are a great piece of event technology that naturally encourage attendees to promote your event. If you can incorporate humor or some crazy video booth like this (that’s me at INBOUND 2017), it’ll get a TON of social interaction. People want to see content that’s different from everything else in their feed, so including something a bit off the wall will help get their attention.

With an interesting background and environment, your audience will naturally want to record their presence at your event and share it with their followers. This is a great way to incorporate branding and hashtags without seeming too pushy. When your attendees mention where they are and what they are doing, others in their circle of influence will be encouraged to check out your event.

5. Host a Contest on Social Media

Hosting a social media contest through your social media booth is a great way to encourage attendees to market your event for you! You can offer prizes for the best, funniest, most creative, or most shared video with your event hashtag to encourage more sharing than you could accomplish on your own.

You can also feature contest submissions on a social media wall. People will see submissions from previous years and will be encourage to create some of their own. Social media walls are also a great place to feature interviews with attendees or event speakers.

Whatever you decide, just make sure your attendees know that entries are subject to being used in future promotional materials. There’s no limit to the kind of contest you can host, so go ahead and be creative!

The First MT Monkey

In 2011 our fearless leader Mark Aistrope was walking to brunch with Marla Wasserman when he was stopped in his tracks by the sight of a sock monkey in a store window. There was something about this mysterious creature that called to him and he had to have it. He entered the store, purchased the monkey, thanked the store clerk, and was on his merry way.

While waiting for a table at brunch, Mark was intrigued by how many people were drawn to the sock monkey. Kids and adults alike were coming up to interact with the monkey and it was clear that this simple object was making them happy. After enjoying a delicious meal with his new stuffed buddy, he had a thought:  corporate gifts are often unmemorable and fail to surprise and delight clients.

This sock monkey was clearly accomplishing this very goal, so the next day he decided to work with his team to distribute as many sock monkeys they could find as a thank you gift to clients, technicians, and partners.

More Monkeys Please!

Finding these sock monkeys was not as easy as one may imagine. Marla Wasserman took the lead in calling as many stores as possible to locate these delightful beasts and even ordered toddler sized t-shirts branded with the MT logo for each monkey to wear.

From this, the MT Client Appreciation Team (CAT) was born. CAT is still intact today and is responsible for developing unique ways to make people smile with a thank you, that more often than not, includes a sock monkey.

A Monkey Tradition

This initial idea has grown with Meeting Tomorrow. The first round of monkeys received such a great response from recipients that it was clear this tradition should continue. Meeting Tomorrow went straight to the distributor and purchased a bulk order of monkeys and even had a room dedicated to storage of the plush that is known today as “The Monkey Space.”

The sock monkey has been sent to clients after a large event, for valentine’s day, to celebrate the solar eclipse, or as a thank you for a great year of partnership. The sock monkey has also greeted many a staff member as they return home after the birth of their child. Meeting Tomorrow has even used the sock monkey at trade shows as a giveaway prize item and people line up at the booth just to see what it’s all about!

The sock monkey represents a side of Meeting Tomorrow that makes our office tick, our events great, and our culture flourish. The sock monkey brings out MT’s whimsey and giving spirit. When we are asked, “what’s with the monkey?” the answer is simple. The sock monkey started as a small idea to make people happy as well as evoke surprise and delight for all those it’s gifted to.

The Sock Monkey Today

Today, the sock monkey is known around the office as Socrates and has his very own Instagram account. Through his posts, Socrates shares an inside scoop of what it’s like to work at Meeting Tomorrow and has a great sense of humor. While Socrates is still a little confused about some basic AV functions, he is learning quickly. Socrates even spends some time with Meeting Tomorrow employees outside of work and participating in family activities.

Socrates has grown into an office tradition, visits events, and joins MT at the occasional happy hour. Meeting Tomorrow is dedicated to perfecting inspired events but believes it’s important to also have fun along the way. The sock monkey continues to be a great way for us to thank those outside of MT who have helped us become who we are in a unique and memorable way.

Follow the adventures of Socrates the Sock Monkey on Instagram to see what he does next!

No one likes a boring corporate meeting! Fortunately, as advancements in presentations have been made swiftly in the last decade, today a meeting planner in virtually any industry can use new technology to impress their audience and convey information in a more provocative way.

As an incubator for innovative, out-of-the-box ideas, TED Talks are a fantastic source of inspiration for technological advancements. With experts, industry leaders and inventors from all walks of life leading brief lectures, viewers can learn current advances in technology that will have a direct impact in their field.

We researched recent TED Talks on event technology and put together a list of our favorites. If carried out with the right lead tech and planner in the driver’s seat, these concepts could energize your staff, impress execs and board members, and curry favor with shareholders.

Here are five TED Talks featuring the latest innovations in robotics, artificial intelligence and 3D printing that could take your events to a new level:

1. The Incredible Inventions of Intuitive AI
by Maurice Conti

Maurice Conti discusses how generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) could conceptualize massive structures like bridges and airplanes. Intuitive AI would not just follow a set algorithm, but come up with innovative new solutions and most importantly, continue to build without human intervention.

AI can construct on its own using robotics and collaborate with humans to manage a project and create complex new visions. Imagine a marketing product or venue layout that could be enhanced with AI, like a custom designed drone or sophisticated prototype.

2. The Flying Camera… on a Leash
by Sergei Lupashin

The Fotokite is a lightweight camera on a leash, affixed to a quadcopter that can hover and follow its handler. This easily maneuverable aerial camera, which doesn’t require special regulations, can add another dimension and fresh perspective to meetings and events.

Perhaps the Fotokite can capture footage of attendees at a conference or expo, or explore the intricacies of a large structure that the audience can’t see. Alternatively, the Fotokite could get an extreme close up of the onstage happenings during a large-venue performance or concert.

The Fotokite is especially cool for trade shows, press conferences and outdoor events to give the viewer the feeling they are sitting front and center, but still moving around grasping the entire scene.

3. What’s Next in 3D Printing
by Avi Reichental

3D printing is evolving to ‘localized distributed manufacturing’ based on digital fabrication. With 3D printing advancements, prosthetic limbs are customized to the exact digital measurement of the user. A tailored ventilated scoliosis brace and dental restorations are just a few examples.

In the near future, complex mechanical components in medicine, food production, and the manufacturing of everything from full body limbs to automobiles to spaceships could be made using 3D printing.

For your next meeting, consider chartering a large 3D printed marketing apparatus or prototype. Or consider using 3D printing to allow meeting attendees to bring their own unique renderings to life.

4. Future Tech Will Give You the Benefits of City Life Anywhere
by Julio Gil

With the advent of virtual reality and drones, and a recent boom in e-commerce, Julio believes that people can enjoy the perks of city living, even after migrating to the countryside.

Technology has finally provided a long-term alternative to the 9-5 corporate environment, as urban populations swell and more people desire telecommuting. Virtual staff meetings can generate deep savings on operating costs per employee, and drones can deliver products directly to households using trucks similar to UPS.

Advantages to living outside of dense cities include lower crime rate, more living space, less traffic, and lower cost of living. Virtual reality and telecommuting may already be a part of your progressive work environment, but if not, consider a virtual team meeting or outing. Or for your next conference, impress patrons with a virtual excursion or a virtual special guest.

5. The Astounding Athletic Power of Quadcopters
by Raffaello D’Andrea

The nifty quadcopter uses algorithms to fly, hover, dip, change speed and carry objects. It can balance things on it own and be maneuvered with the use of a pointer. The quadcopter can still fly without its four wings, and it reads hand gestures and even imitates the driver’s hand movements.

It should come as no surprise the quadcopter offers endless possibilities for presentations, trade shows or conferences. Consider using the quadcopter to carry a tool or piece of equipment across a large space, or perform stunts and play cool games as D’Andrea demonstrates.

Bonus Video:  The Emergence of 4D Printing
by Skylar Tibbits

4D Printing involves programmable materials that build themselves – or self-assemble, and adapt to changes in environment and human interactions. Though this technology is still in its discovery phase, soon 4D printing will be able to construct large installations, tools, machinery, and infrastructure that can adapt, transform, and even thrive in extreme environments with no human interaction.

Know of any other TED talks we should consider for our event planner series? Let us know on Twitter at @MeetingTomorrow!

Let’s start with an honest truth: the events you host aren’t about you – they’re about your attendees. If they don’t leave smarter, happier, more inspired or better connected to their peers than before they arrived, what was the point of bringing them together in the first place?

As an event professional, it’s critical that you have your finger on the pulse of what your attendees actually feel about their experience at your event. It’s the only way to constantly make improvements that people care about, and the only way to ensure that people continually want to show up to your events.

So how do you learn what your event does a great job of and where it could stand to be improved? You’ll need to directly ask for feedback – and then actually implement changes based on what you’ve learned.

1. Asking for attendee feedback

An event can be a major production; as such, there are a huge variety of attributes that you may be interested in gathering feedback on. Some common and useful areas to solicit comments on include:

Speaker or Sessions

How engaging were each of your speakers or sessions? If your event is centered around these two things, getting honest responses about how useful and enjoyable they were is critical.

Questions that you may ask include:

• On a scale of 1-10, how engaged were you with this session/speaker?
• What was your biggest takeaway or new piece of information you learned?
• What could have been improved about this session/speaker?

Food and Drink

The food and drinks you serve need to taste good and keep attendees energized throughout the day. If people aren’t happy about their options, they’ll likely get grumpy (or hangry) pretty fast.

Questions to ask about your food & drink include:

• On a scale of 1-10, how tasty was the food and drink provided?
• Were there enough opportunities to get a snack and beverage outside of mealtimes?
• What changes would you want to be made to our food and drink options next year?

AV and Technology

The AV & technology used at your event hopefully made everything easier and more engaging for your attendees, but it’s always possible that something didn’t work as planned.

Questions to ask about your event’s AV and technology include:

• Were you able to adequately hear all speakers?
• Were you able to adequately see all video presentations?
• On a scale of 1-10, how did the stage and lighting look?
• Did you notice any technical issues during the event? If so, please explain.

Social and Networking Opportunities

For many, events are as much about the other people attending as they are about the official sessions and speakers. To help keep your social attendees happy, you’ll need to find out if your organized networking opportunities were beneficial and fun.

Questions to ask about your event’s social and networking opportunities include:

• Did you feel you had enough opportunities to network?
• On a scale of 1-10, how did you enjoy the happy hours?
• What did you think of the venue that hosted the happy hour?

2. The best channels for collecting feedback

Once you’ve figured out what it is you want to ask, you need to determine the best avenue for you to use to collect input. Below are some of the most popular and well-received ways of gathering attendee comments.

Surveys Shared Via Email

Surveys sent via email are usually the best way to collect more detailed comments and ask a larger number of questions about the event. You can use whatever survey tool you like best (we like Educational Measures); we recommend you customize your email with your event’s branding and a brief explanation about why you are sending out the survey so you don’t get dismissed by recipients.

The two most common ways to manage email surveys:

• Send one at the end of each day of your event, asking for feedback specifically about that day
• Send one at the conclusion of the event, and ask questions spanning the duration of your function

Even though email surveys are the best option for asking larger numbers of questions, don’t go overboard:  the shorter and easier it is for a person to complete your survey, the higher the likelihood that they actually submit it. 5 questions answered by 250 people is far more beneficial to you than 25 questions answered by 5 people.

Want to see this in practice? Check out this great example survey on GetFeedback’s website.

In-App Surveys

If you’re using an app for your event (we’re big fans of simple, to the point event apps), you’d be missing out on an easy win if you chose not take advantage of the fact that attendees are already engaging with you on their phones.

We especially like using in-app surveys to have people rate individual sessions or speakers. If your app allows you to collect a list of each session a person attends, you can share surveys that are customized for each sessions.

As with anything on mobile, don’t ask survey takers to write a novel when they could share their feedback with check boxes, buttons, or drop down options. Typing more than a few sentences on a mobile device can feel like work, so do your best to limit free responses to questions that can be answered with brevity.

Push Notifications

Push notifications are great for quickly collecting information about a single question. For example, after a keynote speaker concludes, you can send attendees who have installed your event app a question asking “What did you think of our keynote speaker? Please rate 1 -5 stars.”

Recipients will be able to respond quickly and while content is still fresh in their minds. Of course, this isn’t the approach to take when you want to dive deep into understanding what people liked or didn’t like, but it’s a fantastic way to quickly take the temperature of the room.

Social Media

If you have an active social media following, or at least an event hashtag that is widely used by your attendees, you can ask questions about how people are enjoying your event over Facebook or Twitter. If you chose to go this route, you’ll need someone to monitor all responses and respond quickly.

You can ask questions during the event or host a Twitter chat a few days after everything wraps up. The benefit of soliciting feedback on social is that you’ll be meeting people on a network they’re already spending time on, so they’ll be less likely to feel they are doing “work” to submit their comments. Keep in mind, though, that some people prefer anonymity – or at least don’t want to leave feedback publicly – so you may not get as many responses on social as you would using other means.

Want more ideas of ways to solicit feedback? Check out Hubilo’s article about how to ask for the perfect event feedback.

3. How to incorporate the feedback into next year’s event

Once you’ve collected all of the feedback from your attendees, you’ll want to spend some time reviewing and cataloging the input. Don’t race through this review session: you should look for patterns of praise or constructive criticism, which may involve playing around with data beyond just simply reading through responses.

Once you’ve determined where you can improve, you need to take action to ensure your next event better meets the needs of your attendees. Whether it’s adding more audio equipment to help folks in the back of the room hear the speaker, including a larger variety of snacks, or offering more networking happy hours, take advantage of the fact that you know what your audience wants.

As you promote the next occurrence of the event, be explicit about the fact that you’ve made improvements based on feedback from last year’s participants. People will appreciate that their voices were heard and feel confident that any shortcomings they may have experienced in the past have been resolved.

Planning a conference is a major undertaking. There is so much more to do than meets the eye – from hunting for the perfect venue, booking the right speakers, marketing the event and getting the right technology setup, an event professional’s work can feel like it’s never done.

Whether you’re a seasoned pro or planning your very first conference, we’ve put together a list of our favorite resources to take some of the stress out of the event planning process.

1. Selecting Your Venue

Selecting the right location for your conference is critical. Here are some tools to help you pick the venue that best fits your conference’s needs.

• Cvent’s Top 100 US. Meeting Hotels List
  We love Cvent because they make it easy to search for meeting venues that match your conference specs. Simply share your event location, dates, and size, and Cvent will share available venues that will fit the bill. Want to jump to the best-of-the-best meeting hotels? Just click the link above.

• 6 Things to Consider When Hosting Events in Non-Traditional Venues
  Hotels and convention centers not your thing? Non-traditional venues make for a unique conference setting, but offer a few challenges that traditional venues don’t.  Before committing to a non-traditional venue, make sure you think about these often-forgotten details of unconventional conference spaces.

2. Booking Conference Speakers

Having relevant, interesting speakers at your event is critical for drawing in a large, enthusiastic audience. Having a great speaker on your schedule can be the tipping point for someone on the fence about attending. If your event is known for having engaging speakers, you’ll build up a positive reputation that will help make it easier to attract attendees year after year.

• Eventbrite’s Guide to Sourcing Speakers for Your Next Conference
  If you’ve never booked speakers before or have struggled to land your dream speaker, Eventbrite’s guide is a great starting point. They break down the step-by-step guide to determining who you want to come to your event and how to convince them that presenting your conference will be worth their while.

3. Nailing Marketing & Promotion

All of your other event planning is for nothing if you don’t fill the seats in the venue. Here’s how to make the most of your event marketing efforts.

• Brandwatch’s Event Marketing: How to Successfully Promote an Event
  Conference marketing is an ongoing task, requiring a lot of work and collaboration across many teams. Brandwatch shares their top event marketing strategies and tools for generating interest in your conference.

• Sli.do’s Top 10 Ways to Integrate Social Media into Your Events
  You know social media is important, but are you doing your best to maintain your presence during your event? Sli.do shares great ways to incorporate your social media into your event so that you can keep up the momentum you built during the weeks leading up to your conference. (If you’re interested in using a social media wall during your event, check out our advice here.)

4. Choosing the Right AV & Technology

Every event needs technology; for some, all that’s needed is a simple microphone and speaker set-up, while others will require a high-tech setup of video walls, touch screen kiosks, stage lighting, and more. No matter where your conference falls within that spectrum, it’s important that you have all of the equipment you need to make the messages you share you at your conference heard loud and clear.

• Hotel Audio Visual: You Don’t Have to Use the Hotel AV Company
  Most hotels offer in-house AV services. What many people don’t know is that these services often come with inflated prices and lack of up-to-date technology. Learn why “bringing your own” AV (with the help of an outside AV vendor) is a more cost-effective conference AV strategy.

• How to Use Event Technology to Improve Attendee Experience
  Curious about how you can engage and excite conference attendees? Learn why you should go above-and-beyond the standard event technology setup.

5. Improving Attendee Experience

It’s the first day of your event, and you have a packed house! Now, it’s time to make sure your attendees have a great experience.

• Event App Bible
  A good event app offers attendees a seamless, simple and enjoyable conference experience. However, finding and implementing the mobile app that works best is easier said than done.  We love the Event App Bible for offering insight into different app options, project management tools, and trend information.

• Eventinterface’s Conference Food and Beverage Planning Tips
  Figuring out how much food and drink to order for your event can be tricky – overestimate and spend more money than you need; underestimate and face a group of hungry, cranky attendees. Eventinterface’s guide shares practical insight to help you determine the quantities to order.

• Collective Next’s 5 Tips for Facilitating a Breakout Session
  Breakout sessions allow attendees to get creative and engage in insightful discourse. However, they aren’t always easy to successfully facilitate. Collective Next’s tips are based on their own experience running break out sessions that are actually productive.

6. Securing Conference Sponsors

There’s no beating around the bush here: conferences are expensive to run. Thankfully, sponsorships can make running a captivating event financially feasible.

• Bizzabo’s “Catching The Big Fish: The Event Sponsorship Guide”
  We love Bizzabo’s ebook, which guides readers through every aspect of conference sponsorships: from finding good fit sponsors and pitching your opportunity to them, to promoting your sponsors without overwhelming your attendees, this book answers many of the common questions that event professionals have during the sponsor search.

• 7 Great Event Technology Sponsorship Ideas
  Looking for fresh sponsorship opportunities to present to potential sponsors? These seven ideas seamlessly blend engaging technology with high-value promotional opportunities for your backers.

We want to know: did we miss your favorite event planning resource? Let us know on Twitter!

*This post was last updated on 10/09/2017.

Most event profs would agree that our industry tends to be on the slower side when it comes to adopting new technologies. Largely this is about risk aversion in terms of event execution, however, there are also times when we can be too eager to adopt tech that hasn’t yet reached its full potential. As a result, we are actually creating three additional risk pools for meeting technology:

1. Using outdated or low-functioning technology
2. Bringing in things that are shiny, but ultimately superfluous
3. Fixing something that ain’t broke

All of these mistakes can cause attendees to perceive event hosts and exhibitors as “out of touch” or “un-savvy” and put relationships at risk. Instead, the technology we’re implementing should always be evaluated on how well it serves its purpose and lives up to expectations. 

In our new ‘Event Technology: Quit, Skip or Keep?’ series, I’ll review three technologies that fit into each of the risk pools mentioned above. This time, I’ll be discussing augmented reality, 3-D content, and super simple event apps.  

QUIT:  3-D Content
Reason:  Outdated, low-functioning tech

Why, oh why am I still being asked to put on some weird glasses in a trade show booth, or in a general session and stare at a screen to watch some content that is generally made WORSE by trying to pop out at me?

Unless you are an IMAX movie about zombies, robots or outer space, this is a bad idea. Pretty much every LCD HDTV ever built has 3-D capabilities, but I bet you can count how many times you have watched 3-D content on zero hands.

For an actual immersive experience, try making some 360 degree content and pair it with a Samsung VR or similar headset. You can even do this from your iPhone, try it! You may be tempted to try and make that content 3-D. Again, unless you are James Cameron, you will do a bad job, and it will add very little to the experience and a TON to your budget.

SKIP:  Augmented Reality (AR) Applications
Reason:  Shiny, but ultimately superfluous

Someday, AR will be legit — but ONLY when it is integrated into normal looking glasses (i.e, not Google Glass). Right now, pretty much every AR event application has people literally walking around with their phones in front of their face, waiting for something to happen… but the thing only happens on their phone!

Plus, the thing that happens on their phone is usually not very cool. “Ohhh, your logo is spinning,” or “ohhh, there’s a cat on a table that isn’t really there.” And again, it only happens on your phone. Why is that cool?

I know that Pokemon Go made everyone go nuts because Pokemon showed up, but trust me, this is not going to add a lot of strategic value OR wow factor to your event — at least not yet. Also, do you want people to be staring at their phones any more than they already are at your event? You may have a good niche or idea for this, but for me, it’s a skip for now.

KEEP:  Super Simple Event Apps
Reason:  If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it

I know you can get a ton of cool bells and whistles for your event app. I know they promise to improve networking, increase engagement, simplify social media, monitor your blood pressure, be a game and create world peace. Do you know what they are actually supposed to do? Function better than a piece of paper at telling you what the schedule is and where you’re supposed to be.

So, when the sphygmomanometer feature on my event app doesn’t work, I am not surprised. However, when I can’t get a list of sessions, or when I carefully make a personalized schedule and my app seems to disavow all knowledge of that schedule, I start to get upset.

Event apps are wonderful, and they are aptly compared to a swiss army knife in terms of their multi-function capabilities. That being said, the more gadgets you add to the swiss army knife, the bulkier it is, and the less you want to carry it around in your pocket. Make sure your knife cuts like a pro before you worry about the tuning fork that you will never use anyway.

In the end, make sure whatever event tech you’re considering is actually serving your event’s goals and not simply on-hand because it’s new and flashy. In the same way, we need to know when to retire tech that is no longer up to snuff or is being widely overused. For more insight on what event technology to quit, skip or keep, check back in for the next installment later this fall!

Have other tech you’d like to see featured in future posts? Hit me up on Twitter! – @Phil_Hamstra

Meeting Tomorrow hosted the first annual Meeting Tomorrow Values Week and we had a great time!  This was a great way for our internal teams to connect and enjoy some team building activities before our busiest season hit.  During this week we celebrated our core values of commitment, kindness, and humility as a reminder to ourselves to always work towards building a culture of respect and affection.

Monday

Meeting Tomorrow celebrated COMMITMENT.  Staff came showing team pride by representing their favorite sports team.  We also worked together to finish a puzzle of our beloved Meeting Tomorrow values van.  Nature even joined in on the festivities and our team viewed the rare spectacle behind custom Meeting Tomorrow eclipse glasses.

Tuesday

Meeting Tomorrow celebrated KINDNESS. We launched a digital affirmations wall where staff could share kind words about their co-workers and we sure did have some nice stuff to say about each other!  In the afternoon we enjoyed root beer floats while we engaged in a friendly four round “Minute to Win It” competition where we had 60 seconds to bounce ping pong balls onto peanut butter bread, stick cotton balls to our noses, eat oreos without using our hands, and pop balloons with darts.

Wednesday

Meeting Tomorrow celebrated RESPECT & AFFECTION. Everyone brought in their favorite lunch items for a massive Potluck and throughout the day we participated in random acts of affection.  Employees shared handwritten notes, funny video clips, and Meeting Tomorrow Thank-ys with their secret partner for the day.

Thursday

Meeting Tomorrow celebrated HUMILITY.  Staff enjoyed an idea hour led by our very own Jesse Johnson that focused on humility and what it means to our company.  There was also a craft station set up for participants to create dog and cat toys to be donated to a local shelter.

Friday

Meeting Tomorrow celebrated FUN.  Staff wore their funkiest shoes, socks, or craziest pants and we enjoyed a movie during Free Lunch Friday!  After a day of hard work we head over to our new building for a Summer Party for great food, drinks, and ample laughs.

Meeting Tomorrow Values week was a huge hit and a tradition we look forward to continuing for years to come.  You can check out more photos of #MTValuesWeek on Facebook and Instagram.

Live streaming has grown in popularity over the last few years, thanks in part to easy-to-access tools like Facebook Live and YouTube Live making it easy for anyone to broadcast live video to the world.

But live streaming isn’t just for sharing personal video: event planners are warming up to the idea of broadcasting some (or all!) of their conferences, meetings or other events to virtual attendees. Whether you choose to stream only your keynote speeches or the entirety of your meeting, offering those a glimpse into what’s going on within the confines of your event can pay off in a big way.

One of the reasons that event planners should strongly consider incorporating webcasting into their next event is because of the ROI that it yields. Below are some of our favorite ways in which a live stream of an event can pay off for your organization.

1. Increased Attendance

You read that right. Live streaming your event can lead to an increase in physical attendance. One study found that organizations that live stream their events experience around a 23% conversion rate of remote attendees who become physical attendees the next few times the event is offered.

The ability to turn virtual attendees into physical ones isn’t so crazy. There are many reasons why a person may choose not to physically attend your event, but a big one is simply a fear of the unknown: will the event be worth their time and money? A broadcast of your event can help assure viewers that the quality of your event is high enough to justify the resources they’ll need to attend in person.

2. Better Marketing Efforts

A common misconception is that footage broadcasted during an event stops being useful as soon as the event ends. That couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Not only is a webcast a fantastic way to engage people who couldn’t make it to your event, but it’s also a marketing treasure trove. The footage from your conference should be recorded so you can reuse and re-purpose it throughout the year.

There are a lot of ways to get mileage out your event stream after-the-fact, including:

• Archive the entire event on your website
• Upload to YouTube to help increase exposure of your event
• Share short clips on social media throughout the year
• Use clips in your marketing for next year’s event
• Use clips to help convince potential advertisers to sponsor next year’s event
• Use the footage as a reference when writing content (like blog posts) about topics discussed during the event

Your marketing team will be thrilled to be handed the video from your event, so don’t be surprised when they create effective and compelling content based off of it. 

The quality of marketing materials shared for your event can be what ultimately helps someone decide if they’ll attend, making access to past event footage critical for the success of future meetings.

3. New Revenue Opportunities

If your event relies on advertising and sponsorship to help cover costs, live streaming is a fantastic additional source of revenue. You can offer a sponsorship package for a single advertiser to have their name and logo appear throughout the entirety of your event’s webcast, or offer smaller packages, where each speaker or session is sponsored by a different organization.

Using your stream as an extra source of income doesn’t have to end with sponsorships. Consider charging viewers a small fee in exchange for access to the live feed or the ability to download an archived version of it after the event has ended. You can even partner with an industry publication or organization to allow them to use the live stream of your event as content on their own site.

Because live streaming can be a relatively inexpensive activity to execute, you should more than recoup the costs of the streaming equipment & crew through the profits collected from this type of sponsorship.

Whether you’re looking to increase physical attendance in future events, want more marketing material to work with while promoting your next event (or organization as a whole), or are just looking for an additional revenue stream to help offset the costs of running a conference, live streaming is an effective and fun way to increase the impact of your event.

Want to learn more about professional webcasting and live streaming services for events? Click the button below!