B2B Presence » Tech Tuesday

Keep an Eye on Periscope and Other Participant-Driven On-Site Videocasting Tools

Bill Rutledge — Wed, 05 Aug 2015 18:47:11 +0000

I enjoyed this front-line review on the application of Periscope employed as a real-time marketing tool at an established trade show event. Periscope enables live webcasting from your smart phone. This app, now owned by Twitter, launched in March and they’ve just announced that they’ve signed up over 10 million Periscope accounts. Nipping at the heels of Periscope is Meerkat, which created a lot of buzz at South by Southwest this year. B2B events producers would be advised to keep an eye on these tools that put the power of “presence” into the hands of your clients.

A Working Hybrid Model: To Add Revenue, Just Add Streams

Bill Rutledge — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 22:21:46 +0000

Hybrid Events are the future, and we’re always happy to hear about business models that work. So we were pleased to stumble on this story about ARRS, a medical imaging society, and Keri Sperry, their Senior Director of Education. They’ve been producing digital events since 2011, and have been adding hybrid revenue streams to a successful live association event. They started by livestreaming just some workshops that were held in conjunction with their annual meeting. Livestream attendance grew from 42 to over 300 in 2012 (on top of over 900 in-person attendees). The virtual registration fee to attend workshops is higher than for physical attendance, but on-site attendees also have to pay for annual meeting registration. So they added another stream: in 2013 they livestreamed the five most popular instructional courses from the annual meeting as well. Since that was successful, they offered two of the five livestreamed courses as Web lectures later in the year. So, for a small additional expense, the association added another layer of revenue. Their story illustrates an important strength to the hybrid model: repackaging content and growing revenue streams can sometimes be as easy as adding one more live stream.

Meetings-Oriented Hackathon: Great Move for the Industry

Bill Rutledge — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:36:38 +0000

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)

A Brief Rant. Virtual Events on Facebook and LinkedIn: Where Are the Apps?

Bill Rutledge — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 20:05:46 +0000

I call it the Internet Probability Principle: If I can think of something that should exist on the Internet, it usually does. I think of it…I Google it…and there it is. This was my experience with efax services, large-file transfer services, online OCR, and my wife. I looked, and there they were. So, why has no one created a decent virtual event application in Facebook and LinkedIn. Has Google seen this gaping void? Is it seeking to fill the void with Google+ Hangouts. My quick search around the web reveals only a couple of freshman developer attempts. I won’t even post links because what I’ve seen is embarrassing. There is nothing that even pretends to be enterprise-grade. This is based on a very quick look around the web, but that’s usually all it takes. Am I missing something? Come on, Internet!

Thanks for Putting All the Meeting Apps in One Place

Bill Rutledge — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 00:33:13 +0000

Someone did a smart thing and placed every app that could be of use to a meeting planner on a portal called, simply enough, MeetingApps.com. During my quick visit, I saw hundreds of apps listed, and some of the more popular apps are actually reviewed by meeting planners. Apps are organized in categories that are relevant to meeting professionals, like Air Travel, Meeting Management, Conferences, etc. You can also search for apps by platform, including Android, Blackberry, and iPhone. By joining their “App Alert,” you can be notified when new apps are posted. The site was created by Kirsten Strand, of Invenia Incentives in Vancouver, BC. The site is a very smart promotion for their services, as their offerings are subtlety integrated into the fabric of the site. Looking to develop your own app? Invenia can help. The commercial interruptions are minimal, and I didn’t mind, because the content is so great. Here’s the ultimate compliment: I’m wondering why I didn’t think of this.

Planning for NFC Lead Retrieval. Not Just Another Stinking Badge.

Bill Rutledge — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 14:00:56 +0000

Google NFC and what do you get? Lots of info about the Dallas Cowboys. Google “NFC -football” and everything changes: there are 37 million pages of info about Near Field Communication, the specification for simplified wireless transactions coming soon to a smart phone near you. I’m working with the Smart Card Alliance and NFC Forum to launch a big new NFC event next year in San Francisco. Of course the badging system needs to be NFC compatible, and we’re working with an NFC-savvy registration company. What I’m learning is that this technology, if it catches on, could change the economics of registration services at major events. With a “true” NFC badging system, any smartphone becomes a lead retrieval device. That’s great for event planners, right? Imagine everyone at your event, vendors, attendees, and press–scanning each other for networking purposes. If you’re running a registration company, you just had a heart attack, because that eliminates your main source of revenue–lead retrieval devices and services. We had a long discussion with the registration company about how to solve this problem and the answer was “Apps. Maybe.” This will be an interesting project because, if it works out, everything at the conference will be scannable: people, booths, technology demos, posters, food service stations, and who knows what else. I’ll keep you updated.