Gene - Great post. It's refreshing to focus on the key questions that matter most. In particular, I found your priorities very interesting and thought-provoking.

Gene: RIGHT ON! The lessons we should have all learned from Web 1.0 was that if it's simple, engaging and doesn't make the user change their behavior, the tools will be adopted. If it's about the technology, it'll get dropped.

People can be moved to change, but only incrementally. It's been our experience that you have to give people 2/3rds of what they're used to and 1/3rd of something they'd be interested in before they adopt.

For instance, easy, cheap or good... choose 2, is the usual metric. Well, through effective selections and an understanding of what your audience wants and wants to move towards, you can have all 3 - and add in a little green to boot.

It's great to see that the events industry won't fall into the stumbles of the past - great post and thanks for your thoughts!

With the plethora of technologies available to choose from, it is no surprise that decision makers face a tremendous challenge in selecting the technologies to invest in. But choose they must, in the current age of technological innovation, or run the risk of loosing their edge. Decision makers need to particularly make it their priority to invest in technological initiatives given that solutions are more affordable than ever

Well, thanks to those folks who commented on my Blog Post. It seems we are all in agreement that there are many very useful technological solutions available to those of us who organize events, meetings and trade shows, and that like all of the services we utilize, we should carefully select those that fit the needs of our participants. Keep those comments coming!

Gene: I could not agree more with John. How often do we get caught up in the hype rather than stepping back and recognizing our priorities? Too often we forget our audience and their needs. Launching technology just to say we adopted a new tool is stupid. Yet it happens too often.

Our company is currently pursuing many of the available Social Networking tools as well as redesigning our website and adding blogs. I would appreciate any feedback on how these types of services have performed or not for your companies.

I am finding increased use of social media tools in both for-profits and non-profits. One of the most impressive for-profit company uses of social media is Comcast Cable Corporation. One of their insightful customer service representatives, Frank Eliason, began to notice comments about Comcast on Twitter. He wanted Comcast to respond as quickly as possible especially to negative comments. Frank approached his supervisor with a proposal that resulted in comcastcares. Thanks to Frank (and other Comcast leaders) there is now a whole team providing digital customer care --

Another group whose work with social media is impressive is ASAE & & The Center for Association Leadership. They have implemented a whole array of tools with specific uses for certain tools: Twitter to keep followers informed about services & events; Acronym blog which includes posts on hot association topics and issues; etc.

Key takeaway: identify the main reason your company is considering social media; match best social media tool to the reason; establish a plan -- of course -- it must be 3G in timing -- to ensure that the posts, tweets, blogs, etc tell the organization response; and most importantly, identify a team member to take the lead. This last item cannot be over-emphasized. When no one has responsibility for the company social media, challenges can grow like weeds.

Social & digital media of all forms are so powerful -- tap them to work for our companies!

Amanda - thanks for the specific examples and the key takeaways. Your advice is excellent and your warning about the challenges on managing social media solutions should be heeded. Weeds are bad, yet so few show organizers work to prevent tech issues in their garden. More often we become burdened by the heavy weeding we must do by the neglect.