The difference between style and fashion is quality.
Giorgio Armani

Photo by BitPicture via Flickr

I am sure you’ve heard about Social Media in the past six months. Well, that’s a bit too late as it’s been around for at least 15 years, maybe more. In 1995 I used to post on forums, chat over IRC and yeah it looked lots like Facebook. But hey since the latest fashion is here, now you think your event needs a Facebook Group. Here are few reasons to prevent you from committing Social Media suicide.

10. You haven’t got a clue

You just don’t know what this all Social Media thingy is about. Well, it’s like learning a new language. If you expect to get it in a week, you’re out of sight. Get someone to do it for you or give it some time.

9. They don’t have a clue

And by ‘they’ I mean attendees. If they don’t care, why should you? If they think Linkedin is the latest Alfa Romeo model, just don’t waste your time. Think about making a better event

8. You haven’t listened

If your attendees have talked to you about it or have been asking for it, you need to know where they are. Each target has it’s own networks. Listen first, then engage.

7. You haven’t got a Social Media Policy in place

If you run several events you need to have a standard approach to begin engagement on different platforms. That also applies internally. What are you doing to train your employees to use SM? 54% of companies ban Facebook, twitter etc. If you are among them change that first.

6. You love control

No, I am not out of my mind. It’s tough to find an event professional who’s not a control freak. I am. But you have to let it go.

5. You don’t read about best practices

Is Mashable on your Feed Reader? If you don’t know what I am talking about, start a daily reading practice. You need to get yourself updated with the latest trends, new services.

4. You think twitter is the answer

twitter is the Holy Grail of the credit crunch. The paranoid rush in getting twitter done for virtually every service on the market hasn’t spared events. twitter won’t make your event better if your event is boring. It may be of help to amplify it if you have a great format, as much as a small Ning of 200 people can. So don’t focus on one network because you heard it on TV. Know your options.

3. The maximum technology you embrace is printed badges

There is plenty of technology you can adopt to make your event better. Technology and Social Media go hand in hand. If you don’t innovate with technology you won’t get any SM benefit. Have a look at our Event Technology category or read about Augmented Reality, which is gonna change events for good.

2. You think ‘BarCamp’ is a cool pub down the road

Social Media help new, innovative forms of events. Unconferences and user generated events above all. We have been writing about this for the past 3 years. Time to do some research.

1. Your event is not worth talking about

If it’s no good concept, neither SM or traditional media will help you out. Read Seth Godin every day, that will help a lot.

Photo by smannium via Flickr

The much discussed role of twitter during presentations, led us to believe that some piece of software was soon to be released.

And there we go, keynotetweet has appeared. It is an open source Applescript that syncs with Keynote and sends a tweet of the notes associated with a slide when that particular slide comes up on the screen.

This is a major breakthrough towards online/offline integration and engagement. Death by Powerpoint is a sad reality. keynotetweet stimulates participation horizontally by making the presenter an active participant in the conversation rather than yet another superstar/mega expert.

We feel that twitter undermines that front lecture style so averse to Web 2.0’s shared knowledge environment. keynotetweet brings it on and we can’t wait to see more software going this way.

We had a blast with iPhone earlier this year. Now the time to show you how your Mac could become an extreme productivity tool and get your events done.

10. Mindnote

Successful events are carefully planned. Mind Mapping initiates the process of planning. It helps in skimming ideas and identifying KPIs. Mindnote is a great tool to draw nice looking and effective mind maps. It comes with a free version which covers all the essentials. Go for it!

9. iGTD

If you are an event planner and never heard of Getting Things Done, now the time to catch up. The famous book started a series of dedicated applications. Most of them are extremely pricey and not worth the money. iGTD is a great Project Management tool and it comes for free, so give it a go.

8. Notebook

You planned your project and rationalized it. Right about time to clear the clutter and start doing things. Notebook is a light application that helps in clearing the clutter on your desktop. Get back your focus.

7. Klok (Adobe Air)

Reality is that an increasing number of event professionals are now freelancing. If this is you, you should track the time you spend at projects and bill for that. Popular Mac or Windows applications that track time charge big monies, but you can get Klok for free. It runs with Adobe Air (which makes it Windows, Mac or Linux compliant). If you don’t have Air installed, Klok will install it for you.

6. Appointments

OK, you are up and running. You are meeting suppliers, clients and stakeholders. Appointments saves all the relevant info about your contacts and alerts you of upcoming meetings. Never be late again!

5. NeoOffice

For those who don’t like or cannot afford Office/Openoffice/iWork, NeoOffice is a specifically Mac designed office suite for your docs, spreadsheets and presentations.

4. Anxiety

We love To Do applications. We think that To Do List are the most effective way of getting things done. Anxiety depicts a feeling that you have experienced if you run events, but also empowers you to get rid of it by delivering instead of procrastinating.

3. Jing

Virtual Events, Webinars, Screencasts and the like are trending topics within the industry. Jing enables screencasting and video recording easily and for free, which is not usually the case in this software niche.

2. Caffeine

One of the most annoying features of the Mac is the Auto-Sleep function. That gets event worst if you set up the Mac for a presentation. Caffeine keeps your Mac on and on and on….

1. Chicken of the VNC

If you work with two computers, it is extremely likely that you may forget files on Machine A when you are using Machine B. VNC technology allows to access Machine A remotely over the Internet. Chicken of VNC (gotta love the name) is one of the few free apps (usually you pay hundreds of $/£/€) to do that. So next time you are at your event location you can easily access your office computer and retrieve vital information. Stress free!

Photo by Funadium via Flickr

Picture a cheap, insipid detergent brand. Imagine the marketing team struggling to find a new flavor for their boring product.

Our studies say that Marseille Soap is perceived as natural and refreshing. We should flavor our detergent with that.

Some customers will be definitely attracted by it, they will give it a go and buy it.

Later on, with the same easiness of mind they will switch to some more appealing flavor.

Now picture using the real deal. Savon de Marseille. As inexpensive, organic and effective as it is. Picture the fact it has been there for 600 years, not because it was ‘a flavor of something’.

If you attach new forms of events such as Pecha Kucha or Unconference to your boring event, you may win some interest in the short term but it is gonna be a hell of a nightmare to retain that interest.

Build a Marseille Soap factory, sell the real deal!

The Layar application for Android phones was yesterday released and gathered the attention of the most popular tech blogs.

Layar is the first application to add tangibility to a powerful concept: integrating Online and Offline.

What is Augmented Reality?

Augmented Reality as suggested by Wikipedia:

Augmented reality (AR) is a field of computer research which deals with the combination of real-world and computer-generated data (virtual reality), where computer graphics objects are blended into real footage in real time.
At present, most AR research is concerned with the use of live video imagery which is digitally processed and “augmented” by the addition of computer-generated graphics. Advanced research includes the use of motion-tracking data, fiducial markers recognition using machine vision, and the construction of controlled environments containing any number of sensors and actuators.

What does that mean for event professionals?

A number of things for sure. We mostly see the immediate application within conferences and exhibitions for networking purposes.

- Registering attendees with Face Recognition and associating online social profiles with their virtual badge sounds like a plan. We could soon experiment a live twitter where we can point our camera to an attendee and visualize balloons with thoughts from twitter.

- We could also think about associating a registered attendee with a particular networking/dating need and point the camera at the room to find our matching profile.

- Needless to mention the immediate benefits in terms of Health and Safety as well as logistics. Integrating the floorplan into the application would make it easy to find our way in a crowded exhibition.

- Sponsors at trade shows would be extremely happy if visitors could point their camera at the stand to download all the relevant info as well as reviews and opinions, or maybe special discounts.

- What about pointing the camera to a speaker during a session and be informed about books, shared online presentations and recorded sessions.

When should we expect that?

Sooner than you think.

The fact mobile applications are being rolled out to the market means that the trend could pick up soon.

6 years ago there was no Facebook.

We love to hang out at our Linkedin Event Planning & Management Group. Apart from great discussions and networking, we do create tangible knowledge.

The following is the effort of 15 event professionals willing to share with the World their passion for events.

Click on your present, download it and share it, it’s for free!

Link not Working? No worries

I enjoyed the crowd and we also built a community for the event which I invite you to join.

Julius Solaris @ Masterclass Social Media from punkmedia on Vimeo.

If you can’t see the video click here

If you can’t see the presentation click here

smeepe.net just launched and we are very happy about it.

In the SEO invaded Google and in the tricky jungle of Social Networks finding the right vendor, venue or PR for your event is becoming increasingly tough.

In our 9,000+ members Linkedin Group, we published a special offer featuring free registration for the first 5,000 vendors.

We surely did not want to exclude you from such goodness! So click here and enjoy it!

If you are not sure about what smeepe is have a look at the terrific video they put together!

Here goes a collection of what Julius Solaris, your host, thinks are the best tools to display live tweets at events.

5. Twitter Search + Firefox + ReloadEvery

Twitter Search is the visualization tool for the nostalgic twitter user and/or retro tweep. In order to make the page refresh automatically, Install Firefox add on ReloadEvery. If you don’t have Firefox probably you won’t read this because your browser has crashed in the meanwhile

Goods:
- Suits large screens
- Neat and detailed

Bads:
- Hard to read
- A bit dull, not fun.

4. TwitterCamp

We talked about TwitterCamp in the past. It’s a damn cool project and the fact it was implemented for a BarCamp and on an opensource basis makes it even cooler.

Goods:
- Highly Customizable
- Fun Interface

Bads:
- Could be slow in updates from time to time
- Looks like the project is not moving on

3. Twitter Fountain

What about that! Twitter Fountain looks slick and fancy. Very design oriented and definitely relevant to image conscious events.

Goods:
- Good looking Interface
- Clear and neat
- Flickr Integration

Bads:
- Embed only, does not work as a standalone page or software.

2. Twitterfall

Great Control with Twitterfall. You can play around with settings and have fun with customizing the experience.

Goods:
- Able to opt for a good speed of refresh
- Able to display ReTweets

Bads:
- Although highly customizable it still remains a bit dull

1. Visible Tweets

Visible Tweets is simply fantastic! This is what tweets at events should look like.

Goods:
It’s all good just go for it.

Bads:
Don’t see any.

Photo by Darren Hester via Flickr

This post is inspired by MeasurementCamp, a great event in London where new media peeps discuss solutions for real case studies.

As always, two recommendations:

- Don’t be impulsive. You could cause harm to your business. Try to understand new media and communities first, then implement.
- Choose well what you implement and don’t follow the buzz. Make sure your chosen medium is relevant to your target.

Let’s give it a go:

10. What’s your objective?

Boring, we know. But relevant, especially to your client. If you don’t set clear objectives, what are you gonna measure the event against?

- Awareness?
- PR Echo?
- Attendance?
- Satisfaction levels?
- Community reactions?

9. When are you gonna measure reactions?

In line with the above, it is good practice to divide your Social Media measurement plan in 3 stages:

- Pre-event. This usually collides with event promotion and it is easy to measure as it is reflected by attendance turnout.
- In-event. In this stage you should focus on feedback about the event. Remember that technology allows to collect feedback live and you should take advantage of that.
- Post-event: Usually satisfaction and PR, as well as community reactions are what you should be looking at.

8. Powerful tags

Tags are becoming the best way to categorize whatever activity online. Attendees now understand what a tag is and organize their online communication using them. Powerful tags have a catchy message within it and are not too long.

#Eventname could be not easy to share and not particularly engaging. Try to elaborate on your event name and link it to a powerful message. See #KissTheCup for the Fifa World Cup Trophy Final (Facebook Link)

7. Unified tags

If you worked out a powerful tag that is easy to share and has “embedded” promotion, there is no reason why you should think about another one. Make sure you use the same tag on different platforms as fragmentation makes measurement quite tough.

6. Tell people about your tag

Now that you have such a beautiful, effective and catchy tag, you should tell your guests about it. And you should do it vigorously. Every little tweet, blog post, picture or video about your event counts. If you don’t make that clear with your audience upfront, you may be missing out on repeated business.

5. Give online spaces to monitor conversations

If you are chasing blog posts all over the place or if you are trying to understand whether that twitter user was talking about your event, it may be the case for you to set up an ad-hoc community. Most of the services out there aggregate conversations using tags but they also fetch online profiles given at registration for relevant content, so…

4. Ask your attendees for their online profiles

We’ve seen great implementations of registration services that do this automatically. You can achieve the same results with a bit of more effort, that includes designing powerful registration forms. And also remember that once you have collected such precious data about your guests, you need to…

3. Invite them to the groups you created on different platforms

Social Networks are very powerful for promotion. Most of the events now use services such as Linkedin, Facebook, Xing, twitter, Upcoming, Eventful, Upcoming and Meetup to promote the event. When your guests sign up, make sure you let them know about the groups you decided to set up. By doing that you’ll be able to attract peers and measure influence of attendees.

2. Understand what to report

Track the relevance of conversations happening in the online world. How many comments did a blog post about the event got, how many retweets had a particular update. Allocate weight to different aspects and match the relevance with your objectives. Only then organize results in a report.

1. Be Proactive

Approaching measurement in a passive way, could lead you to quantitative results which may not contribute towards achieving set objectives. The most substantial revolution of Social Media is the ability to interact with your guests. Don’t be afraid to jump into conversations and ask clarifications.

Try to understand why a blogger loved or hated your event, comment on the post. Engage with the twitter user who was enthusiastic about the event. By doing so you will surely amplify the positive result, but will also display that you care if something went wrong.

Now time to share. Tell your friends and colleagues if this article added a tiny bit of value.