©2012 Corbin Ball
These are exciting times. The rate of technology change is accelerating with thousands of ideas, apps and innovations bubbling up to help meeting planners, exhibitors, venues and attendees to do their jobs better.
This annual review published over the next 13 weeks will cover many of the major events tech trends to watch for this coming year.
1. Meetings technology will continue to get cheaper and easier to use.
This trend in software programming is driven by continued advances in web services and open-source technology. This makes it easier, cheaper and faster to create, distribute and use technology to help in meeting planning. There are hundreds of free, freemium, low cost, and do-it-yourself (DIY) options providing lower costs and more flexibility for planners. Examples include ContantContact’s new Online Event Registration starting at $20/month, a small fraction of typical online registration costs. Guidebookoffers a free meeting DIY mobile guide app with up to 500 downloads per event. Google Hangouts On Air offers free multipoint video conferencing, steaming and recording. Joomla provides free web site building and content management tools with over 9,000 plugins. …just to name a few! These forces are also driving mobile app development with hundreds of thousands for free or very low cost app available; many of them of great help to meeting professionals.
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