B2B Presence

Great work by The Chicago Area Chapter of Meeting Professionals International for organizing the first ever (as far as I can tell) hackathon for meeting apps, on Feb 15. The event was held in conjunction with its third annual MPI TechCon, a one-day meetings technology conference. Fifty-eight software developers and designers took part. The products that came out of the hackathon sound great: A touch-screen game for trade show booths that allows suppliers to gather e-mail information and attendees to win prizes; a tool that helps planners communicate with the back of the house, using a voice-to-text service that can translate the message into another language; an app that lets you see the business cards of people who are sharing the same Wi-Fi Internet connection. The winning app was OkMercury, a software program that matches up conference attendees (for business purposes!) based on the algorithm used by the OkCupid online dating service. The app was developed by Cedric Hurst and Gary Turovsky, software engineers at Spantree Technology Group LLC in Chicago. The hackathon was organized by Kyle Hillman, CMP, MPITechCon manager and chair, and corporate events manager at the National Association of Social Workers. (MeetingsNet)