Meetings Gadgets: Tech's Latest and Greatest

Those attending the Professional Convention Management Assn. Annual Meeting Jan. 13-16 at the Washington State Convention & Trade Center in Seattle won't see exhibitors in booths as they walk the aisles: the showfloor doesn't exist.

Suppliers are welcome to come and network, but the only place where a handful of them will be able to pitch their products is the I-Zone, a demonstration area for invited technology companies.

Last year, the I-Zone was in a hallway at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. An example of the companies showing off their wares there was face-to-face marketing firm ProActive, which introduced SeatSelect, a product that gives attendees the ability to pick their own seats at events electronically.

PCMA encourages its members to embrace new technologies, so instead of standing back and hoping it works out all right for everyone, the association tries new products itself.

Profiles of three relatively new technologies follow. Two are being test-driven by PCMA and its members, and the third could come in handy for convention managers who are looking to spice up their educational sessions.

Attendees at big industry meetings can get frustrated trying to find like-minded professionals to talk to.

To make it easier for attendees to determine beforehand who they're going to meet, PCMA sought the help of IntroNetworks, which offers a business networking application for events. When anyone registered for PCMA's annual meeting, he or she also could sign on to a uniquely designed Web site called PCMA Connect in order to meet other attendees before going to Seattle.

On PCMA Connect, attendees could fill out their profiles, but instead of providing information about their purchasing power or the size of their company, they would say whether they'd rather have lunch with Johnny Depp, Jennifer Garner or Ben Affleck, as well as answer other questions meant to create a snapshot of their interests and professional background.

As each person's profile was completed, he or she showed up as a colored pin on a circle divided into four quadrants. Other pins nearby represented people of similar backgrounds and interests. The hope was that attendees would start communicating online, then meet up in person at the event.

PCMA Connect is “not social networking, it's business-focused,” said Christine Melendes, PCMA's director of member relations. “It opens up the dialogue and helps in finding people you need to meet and get in contact with in a really safe environment.”

This is the first year PCMA has worked with IntroNetworks – another product was used for last year's meeting – and Melendes said the association switched because IntroNetworks had “more of a dynamic nature with the data. We can see it in all different formats.”

IntroNetworks CEO Mark Sylvester said his company launched a prototype of the software in 2003 when the organizer of the Technology Entertainment & Design Conference asked him to come up with something that would help attendees meet and greet online.

“It was a marketing stunt, but we were written up in the New York Times and Forbes the next week,” Sylvester said.

A light bulb went off, and he and his partner, Kymberlee Weil, decided to broaden their horizons. The pair started working with corporate events before branching out into the association world.

“Forty percent of people coming to the show don't know anyone,” Sylvester said. The opportunity appears to have struck a chord with PCMA attendees, as more than 3,000 have logged onto PCMA Connect and signed up for accounts. The average user has visited the site at least twice, according to Sylvester.

It's hard enough to gauge whether a meeting meets attendees' expectations, without even getting into the challenge of figuring out if it's worth their investment. At least one company, MeetingMetrics, covers both bases.

“Meeting measurement and ROI have to be more than buzz words,” said PCMA President and CEO Deborah Sexton. “At PCMA, we believe that meetings professionals must make strategic contributions to their organizations, whether that means more accurately measuring meetings, or serving up the tools to better measure organizational success.”

Ira Kerns, managing director of GuideStar Research, the parent company of MeetingMetrics, said he has been in the business of measuring meeting results for more than a decade. One way he's found to plan a successful meeting is to simply ask people what they want beforehand.

“Pre-meeting research is designed to surface and quantify the needs and priorities of the people who will attend the event,” he added.

Kerns said his firm does pre-event research in three phases, in which a number of questions are asked:

• What kind of education would attendees like to get?
• What kind of speaker are they interested in?
• What should the speaker talk about?
• What kind of motivational and social experiences do they expect?

“Now the meeting planner can design a meeting that will be very connected to the needs and desires of its participants,” Kerns added.

MeetingMetrics introduced its product at last year's PCMA annual meeting and, through an agreement with the association, made it available exclusively to members for six months.

As far as the response from the association market goes, Kerns said, “Unfortunately, it was January and budgets had already been done, but there's been growing interest over the past year.” Associations also are known for being fiscally conservative and slower to adopt new ways of doing things, he added, though he expects the adoption rate to increase as more people become comfortable with the technology.

Post-meeting research is also a part of the MeetingMetrics licensing package. This measures the impact of attending a meeting across a range of measurable human experiences, such as skills, knowledge, attitudes and perceptions, Kerns said.

MeetingMetrics also offers planners the chance to license software, developed in tandem with Jack Phillips, that measures an event's ROI.

“(Phillips) said, 'Gee, you have the psychological and I have the financial, and if we put them together we have the full spectrum,'” Kerns said. “There is no other service like this in the meeting industry.”

The truth is, no one likes to sit in a conference session and listen to a speaker drone on forever without getting the chance to participate. Luckily, some savvy tech developers noticed this problem and started offering audience response technology systems meant to get listeners involved.

Youngstown, Ohio-based TurningTechnologies was founded six years ago. According to Katherine Kahn, the company's corporate communications manager, it has experienced 3,800-percent growth, landing it the distinction of being named the fastest-growing privately held software company in the country by Inc. magazine.

The company's phenomenal growth stems from the success of a hand-held, RFID-enabled device about the size of a small calculator that allows audience members to answer questions in real time.

“One of its very basic uses is to engage the audience,” Kahn said. “People are looking for new or better experiences instead of sitting passively.”

Sheila Hura, TurningTechnologies' events manager, said the largest total conference implementation of the device was 3,000 attendees at Meeting Professionals Intl.'s World Education Congress in Montreal last year.

Another place the technology is showing up is on showfloors. Hura said Siemens used it in its booth at the HIMSS (Healthcare Information & Management Systems Society) Annual Conference & Exhibition and Gateway used it at the Natl. Education Computing Conference. “Exhibitors can gather data and engage the audience,” she added.