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!

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.

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!

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.