How to "digitise" your event

These days everything is going digital, and so are - events! Certainly if you're looking to have Gen Y or the millenials in your audience, but actually anyone who owns a smartphone.

So, to make life easier, we've chosen for a start 5 interactive, digital technologies to share in this blog, aiming to spread the word about how to make corporate events more interactive and fun. These technologies may be used in open/external, specific industry or your own internal conferences, exhibitions with content, product launches, seminars, roundtables, team meetings, awards and so on.

For a savvy events professional, it may be yesterday's news...but for someone who "does" events on a side in their company along with many other jobs, it might prove to very useful!  At the end of the day, the aim for using all of these technologies is to make your event better, more productive, more profitable, and your audience more involved and satisfied - making your event better overall. Check these out and give them a go if you haven't yet:

ONLINE EVENT PLATFORMS

2009 and 2010 were the years when the events industry was experiencing a boom in online (virtual) events (articles like this were booming too), or at least to say, an investment from many companies into virtual event technologies - perhaps this was an attempt to minimise the negative consequences of physical event bookings of the 2008-2009 crisis and aiming to take events in a new direction while minimising costs and integrating new technologies. Althought virtual events never really took off in the B2B events space in those days (I was there too, and came back to physical events), they seem to have made some progress especially in the academic world promotion (many online University fairs have shown success and been running consistenly, such as the Economist MBA Fair) and lately appear to be coming back slowly - hand in hand with this goes the fact that video calls are now more acceptable, online social networks have grown a lot, apps and smart phones have been a part of every day communication, so the idea of online events perhaps doesn't seem so strange anymore, as it did, in 2009/2010. Not that online events will ever replace physical events, it's just a fact that giving a physical event that online dimension, can make it more successful, especially for those unable to make it to the actual event, or to give your event a bit of refreshment.

So, how to go about this? There are several companies who can help with creating your own event platform, including inXpo , ON24 , 6Connex and iMaste to name a few. You can visit their websites and see what it's all about - while this may be expensive for some, it might prove useful for large companies or geographically dispersed teams/industries - get a demo and check it out for yourself!

WEBCASTS/WEBINARS

Similar to the above, while online events usually include all aspects as they would in a physical event (conference programme with videos, Q & A chats, networking/chat are, exhibition hall, resources area etc.), webinars are usually presentation + Q & A only. Perhaps it's a good format to try out and see how you go. Try out BrightTALK for a start with running an audio webinar and see how you like it!

TWITTER HASHTAGS

An old practice in events, but if you haven't done it yet, it's a must try! On twitter, create a hashtag for your event, 5-10 letters long which your attendees will type in when mentioning your event. Check that it hasn't been used recently, that it's easy to remember and that it doesn't refere to something else. How it then works, is that you need to promote it when promoting your event, so that your speakers, sponsors, press and attendees can use it before, during and after the event. Then, once you type it in on twitter at a later stage, it will give you all the results/mentions for that event. Then integrate it on your website so when people visit your website, they can also see what others have been tweeting about the event. It's also a good way to create more interaction also with those unable to make it to the event but who may have valuable comments or questions. For an example, see the comments from this year's Mobile World Congress with the hashtag #MWC14

VOTING SYSTEMS AND APPS

A few years ago, I tried some physical voting technologies at an event. Everyone was given this remote control-type thing and was asked to vote yes/no, answer 1/2/3/4, then the leader of the topic would read out answers. It seemed to work ok, although it wasn't very practical as you'd always need to have these "remote controlers" there with you physically. Here's an example of one. But, now we have new voting systems which have been developed by innovative companies and allow your attendees to connect to a website (which you pre-set for your event) and vote directly off their phone - no need for anything else! Mind you, most people are anyways browsing on their phone for most of the event, so this proves to be pretty useful. Check out one of these companies who now make this possible (thanks guys!), and try a voting system for your event for free with them: SliDo , PowerVote , TouchnVote ...or if you think your audience would prefer to use SMS voting, then check out SMS Poll or Poll Everywhere .

EVENT APPS

Following naturally from the last one above, event apps have become very popular. You can search for other attendees, leave your business card, check the updated schedule, set up meetings, browse through sponsored products, and much more with event apps. Some 5-6 years ago, there were only a few companies who make these apps, one of them I remember talking to and who are still around are called ShowGizmo from New Zealand. Lately, I've seen that you can even easily set up your own event apps through platforms such as AppMakr , ShoutEm  or Conduit Mobile . Or investigate who else is around to help you make the most of your app - there seem to be plenty of options to we'll leave you to it, have fun and good luck!

Contact us for more ideas, event technologies, how to use these in practice or if you need help with your event's production at any stage.

Image credit.

Slider-image credit: Jim Larrison