I’m always curious about how social media channels function in other countries. Recently, I noticed a discussion on LinkedIn about social media in the People’s Republic of China. I posted a question about whether social media channels could be used to recruit attendees to U.S. trade shows. I received a very informative response from Shawn He Yuxun, founder and chairman at MeetChinaBiz.org. He has given me permission to post it here.

“In my opinion, it would be extremely difficult if not entirely impossible to do that.

The social media scene in China at the moment still resembles what things were like when Facebook and MySpace were just created years ago, i.e., mostly a place for the young and those with a lot of free time on their hands to hang out and find dates.

BTW, you can more or less get a sense simply from the names of the top sites listed in Rebecca’s post above: “QQ alumni” is an outgrowth/extension of the original QQ (China’s answer to ICQ), a SMS or text messaging service. (N.B. Q usually stands for ‘cute’ in China. Another example is the beatle-like car model QQ produced by a leading Chinese automaker named Chery. Google “QQ car” with the images option and you will see…)

“Renren” means “everybody”; “Sina Space” is leading Chinese portal site Sina’s answer to “MySpace”; “51″ is a word play on one of China’s most vacationed holidays — the May 1st holiday — which until 2 years ago had been dubbed the “Golden Week” because for years it had been a week-long national holiday.

Indigenous Chinese professional SN sites on a par with LinkedIn haven’t been created (or at least haven’t attained the popularity of the ones listed) yet. Perhaps for the lack of an alternative, many Western-minded young professionals and executives in China have in fact started using Linkedln by default. (That is why I decided to add my Chinese name - you may only be able to see three ?’s if your OS was not set up to display Chinese characters — to my title so it is searchable for Chinese speakers / LinkedIn users.)

So in a nutshell, at least in the near-term I believe one’s money would be better spent by focusing on more conventional online and offline approaches in order to generate traffic from China to a trade show in the US. These would include existing industry-specific online or offline platforms and channels (i.e., portals, associations, publications, etc.)

Depending on the size of the marketing budget and the strategic positioning, one could also opt to be more proactive as well, such as setting up operations and/or forming partnership or alliances with players on the ground in China.

Hope this affords you at least a ‘big picture’ of the situation and answers some of your initial questions.”

The Takeaway:  Who wants to be the first U.S. show organizer to create a group on LinkedIn (in the Chinese language) exclusively for Chinese buyers and potential exhibitors?

How are you using social media channels to market trade shows to individuals outside the U.S.?

In the third of several video clips from the Q&A during the Women Tech Council meeting, Trust Agents Chris Brogan and Julien Smith discuss the use of strategy over tools and some other ideas for you to think about. Although Chris and Julien began responding to a question about the kinds of tools the younger generation is using (since the fastest growing age group on Facebook is 65+), they finished with comments on platforms, communities and social media strategy.

In the video clip, Julien recounts attending a party where the young guests played Chatroulette. His experience with specific tools reveals that, “the tools don’t really matter. The younger generation will use whatever is the most efficient, frictionless method they can to keep doing the same things they’ve always done just with wider audiences…The strategies and the principals are more important than the tools because the answer today might be irrelevant tomorrow,” he says.

Chris talks about how teens still text each other. “They don’t want more friends and they only want their friends to see what they are saying,” he says. As with Julien, Chris believes, “if you’re in marketing, think hard about spending money on a specific platform. You should be enamored with the community and not the platform.”

Trade show organizers, like many business owners, are struggling with developing social media strategies. Focusing on the objectives and not the tools is a challenge for many. However, exhibitions occupy a unique position in marketing genre. Their success is attributable to attributes that are most effective when deployed in a face-to-face setting. The objective of a social media strategy for exhibitions should be to use social media to enhance, highlight and capitalize on those unique characteristics before, during, and after the show. Consider these points:

Memorability: It was proven years ago by research from CEIR that face-to-face experiences are inherently more memorable than virtual ones. Extend the memorability of the exhibition by using social media channels and tools to chronicle a participant’s live experience and allow it to live online for them.

Tactile/sensory: Social media may not be able to duplicate the tactile and sensory experiences available at a live event but it can, through video or graphic representations, demonstrate and emulate these attributes in a way that reminds participants of the live experience.

Entertainment: Using social media channels to plan large-scale social activities such as flash mobs, Foursquare contests, and other interactive social games can activate engagement on the trade show floor.

Intimacy: Supporting the small and large “meetups” that the user community organizes independently by using the show’s social media channels to get the word out will help to foster the valuable one-on-one interactions that are unique to exhibitions and other face-to-face opportunities.

Inspiration: Provide support to capture, highlight and broadcast speaker content through social media channels before, during, and after the event.

Destinations: Part of the enjoyment in attending live events is experiencing the destination. Encourage local restaurants and area attractions to interact with participants over designated social media channels to provide information and services such as reservations, ticketing, prices, hours, menus, specials, and directions.

All under one roof: Use social media channels to highlight and facilitate the “smorgasbord” of time savings, product choices, new contacts, and information available in a single place.

The Takeaway: Online and offline channels can work together in much the same way as traditional marketing media. Although the tools will change, the strategy remains the same—to push the live experience to become the optimum marketing channel that it can be.

How is your social media strategy driving the live experience?

In the second of several video clips from the Q&A during the Women Tech Council meeting, Trust Agents Chris Brogan and Julien Smith discuss how to overcome fear and some other ideas for you to think about. I love how they take on any question whether related to social media or not. These responses in particular helped me better understand Chris and Julien as people.

Julien recommends embracing the uncomfortable and teaching your mind to overcome certain things. He says to give in to the desires of your future self (the one that is already better than your present self) and make decisions based on him or her.

Chris breaks “fear” down in categories such as the business fear of having to let employees go because he didn’t make his numbers, not knowing how to do a job (the difference between men and women), and not having a college degree.

In the context of social media and face-to-face events, there is still a lot of uncertainty associated with bringing social networking platforms, technologies and methodologies into the marketing mix. There is fear around privacy, investment of time, costs, negative comments, loss of control, lack of expertise, exposure, difficulty measuring ROI, and the risk of failure in such a transparent environment. After all, not only were we put in the hot seat by the recession, some of us were burned beyond recognition (lost jobs, companies out of business, marketing strategies obsolete).

Here are some of observations about the event industry and how to use social media more effectively to overcome our fears.

Stop speculating. Organizations have been accustomed to short term returns. If you invest X amount of dollars in audience promotion or booth sales, you will get X number of attendees and exhibitors for this year’s event. Social media success requires a long-term, sustained, and creative investment of time, energy and money without the expectation of immediate return. It requires that someone in the organization be working the social media levers all day every day and never asking the question, “how long will this take?” Instead they should be asking the question, “what can I do to help my customers today?” The result will be less fear (it’s more comfortable to help), more loyalty.

Quit trying to force twenty pounds of old school sales and marketing into a five pound social media bag. I see event industry companies and show organizers on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook every day selling their wares the old way on a new channel. I recently witnessed an individual on my #eventprofs Twitter “channel” being drummed out of there (by group consensus) because she was continuously selling her educational program and not contributing in any other way. There is an underlying mindset, philosophy, and liberalism of thought that underpins social media behavior. Organizations need to learn the rules of the road to prevent the much scarier scenario of driving off a cliff.

Stop the faux “I feel your pain” efforts. Over the years, I’ve written about exhibitor advisory boards and volunteer committees formed by organizations in an effort to get “feedback” from their customers. It’s a great idea on paper. In reality the same groups that allow these committees to “contribute” also restrict them from having any power to effect change. Second, the members of the committee are usually the large exhibitors, the biggest sponsors and the companies with the most “value” to the organization. They don’t necessarily represent the broader constituency.  Social media channels can empower customers, provide honest feedback, and represent a broad customer base more effectively than committees. When the community knows you have their back, they respond with increased loyalty.

Community first. Brand later. The reason why so many organizations are playing catch up in social media is that they are still trying to form a community around their brand. They soon learn that the only time their community members are jazzed about their brand is when they are at the show, being wined, dined and entertained. What about the rest of the year? Companies need to use social media strategies year round. Having a strong community helps companies overcome the fear of social media in so many ways–loyal, trusted customers ready and willing to offer honest feedback, promote their brand, and guide their continuous improvement is invaluable.

Be more human. (Yes I stole this from Chris Brogan). Be open to smaller group interaction. Stop marketing to thousands of people at once and try talking to only six people at once (I stole that from Mitch Joel). Maybe scale back the mega-events. Here’s what’s happening in the events industry. Attendees who are unhappy with boring speakers, the lack of personalization at large conferences, the same meeting formats over and over, and feeling like a number (thanks again Chris) are having tweetups, creating their own meetings (eventcamp) and burning up the Twittersphere talking about how to fix broken conferences and trade shows. Smart organizations will attempt to use social media to understand why this is happening and improve their own products.

Be very afraid. Be very afraid to overcome your fear? Yes. Here’s how. RD Whitney of Tarsus Online Media told me that one of the things that keeps him up at night is putting resources, time, and energy into creating a great event only to have the community siphoned off by some “guy” in his underwear at the kitchen table blogging about the same subject and getting people to listen. Wisely, RD uses social media to remain vigilant and ultimately mitigate his fear because either there isn’t anyone doing a better job than he is (the goal) or he figures out how to work with the underwear bloggers that have new and interesting ideas to support his community.

The Takeaway: In the end, these observations all point to the same mandate for overcoming the fear of social media–Listen, learn, and evolve or your customers will do it without you.

Are you afraid of anything?

I had the pleasure (for the first time) of hearing the Trust Agents Chris Brogan and Julien Smith together on the same stage during the Women Tech Council meeting last week. During the Q&A Session, I captured some video (I’m a writer not a videographer) on their responses to questions from the audience. These are relevant topics for the event industry as well as the business community in general. Here’s what they said about blogging failure and success and some other tidbits for you to think about.

In the video, Julien mentions a blog post he did about the “Six Pixels of Separation” blog by Mitch Joel (another excellent speaker at the conference). It illustrates Julien’s approach toward blogging and growing a large community. As the blog comments indicate, this approach isn’t for everyone but it’s something for event organizers and event technology developers to think about if “more qualified eyeballs” is a goal for your blogs.

Chris Brogan offers some more good advice in the video like:

• Make sure you have a great “About Me” page
• Use a real picture (no cartoons or Simpsons’ likenesses)
• Be sure to include a call to action in your post
• Make your posts “meaty” but brief
• Don’t write about your products
• Write about subjects that can help people

Here are some other things to think about:

Joyce McKee of the Lets Talk Trade Shows blog developed a Webinar called “Is There a Blog in Your Future?” It is an excellent tutorial on blogging. Joyce also recommends grading your blog using Alexa rankings and the free information you can get from grader.com. “My blog score was in the 30’s a while back and now is 95.26 – not bad!  And that was due to posting more frequently,” she says.

At Fork in the Road, I’ve learned a couple of helpful things about good content, increasing my search engine rankings, and what I have observed from really good blogs like Midcourse Corrections, Engage 365, Event Coup, Social Fishing, McCurry’s Corner, Interactive Meeting Technology, Corbin Ball’s Tech Talk, and several others and in our industry such as:

• Don’t hire an intern to blog for you unless they are technically good writers AND know your industry. I would rather read great content than great writing.
• If you’re going to moderate comments (which I highly recommend) be quick about approving the good ones. People that comment want to see the fruits of their labors right away.
• Always comment back to those who comment on your blog. It’s a dialogue.
• Tie your blog electronically into your Twitter and Face Book accounts so you get automatic updates there.
• Interlink to other posts in your blog. Google really likes this.
• Put Google Analytics code in your blog for a fun and free way to see whether you’re getting traction with your community.
• Write for a particular audience. In the writing world, we call them “personas.” Create a typical reader profile (Joe is a 38 year-old event organizer who loves reading about social media but doesn’t have the expertise to put it into practice, etc.). Refer to your profile when you are writing. If Joe would find it interesting, it’s probably a winning post.
• Don’t blog just to talk out loud and grab search engine love. Plan your posts. Make them relevant and add a little humor.

There is lot’s more content coming from the Trust Agents.What do you event industry bloggers think? What has worked for you?

March’s MTO Summit in Chicago still has me thinking about some of the interesting perspectives that were shared during the conference. Here are some of the ideas that made me sit up a little straighter in my chair.

Mobile Apps

• Event organizers aren’t necessarily interested in the new sponsorship opportunities (too many already) available with mobile apps.

• Organizers prefer to work with trusted advisors (their registration contractor or general contractor) even if those advisors know little about the application they are selling.

• Organizers want technology providers to partner with each other to come up with a combined solution (instead of the one-off apps and devices that do separate things).

Attendee acquisition

Taking a cue from affiliate marketers, organizers can leverage existing exhibitors and attendees using badges or contextual links (with promo codes) embedded in emails specially-designed for them to send to their clients and colleagues. When the codes are used, the exhibitor or attendee (affiliate) gets credit/cash/incentives.

In a wrap-up session on attendee acquisition, R.D. Whitney of Tarsus Online Media summarized our breakout group’s findings (from an unusual camera angle because I was trapped by other group members). Check out the video where he discusses the use of complex search streams, Webinars, affiliate programs, guest passes, requiring speakers to participate in community discussions, public relations SEM, contests with flip video, Twitter, and virtual events as attendee acquisition tools.

Data mining

Mark Ragan sparked a lively (somewhat controversial discussion) about mining the Internet for prospects. Using software from Broadlook, event organizers can “scrape” (not my metaphor) the Internet for contacts and email addresses and then feed prospects with daily e-newsletters (which they can opt out of). Such a practice creates brand awareness and a level of familiarity with the prospect that opens the door for future “offers.”

The data mining controversy stemmed from the idea of “pushing” information (one man’s info is another man’s spam) out rather than the social media principal of attracting interest with cool content and then creating a two-way conversation based on mutual interests.

Distributed Events

With discussion about large events shrinking to bring a more personalized experience to the trade show and conference floor, the idea of a distributed event was intriguing. Social Media Week debuted in New York in February 2009. It is a global platform for connectivity, collaboration and learning about emerging trends and interesting social media topics, says Toby Daniels, the conference founder. Venues were spread all over the city (and later, all over the globe), with each host creating a different “experience” for attendees. Daniels explains how it worked in this clip.

The next MTO Summit is scheduled for November 9-10, 2010 in Washington, DC. Now that MTO Summit has merged with TSNN, I am hoping the content and the brainpower will be as good or better than ever.

If there was any common thread running through MTO Summit in Chicago last week, it wasn’t the technology innovations or even the focus on execution. The room was full of people talking about new ideas and how to do something different without damaging what (if anything) is still working in the event world. In fact, there was so much great information that I‘m breaking this post up into two parts. Here is part one.

Chris Brogan, social media consultant, author, speaker (I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he was also a gourmet cook, Broadway star and base jumper), kicked off the conference with his take on changing things up. Here is some of the paraphrased wisdom he dispensed:

CB on the importance of focusing on marketing strategy: “It’s not about the tools. It’s about what we do with them and how we connect. Have a marketing strategy that integrates social media sometimes. Let’s do marketing, sales and prospecting and use these new tools.”

CB on the importance of acting human and treating customers humanely: “It used to be a little easier because we all used to be willing to accept being a number. We were OK with being on a conveyor belt as a customer. It’s about putting the ‘human’ back in your business. No letter from my Mom starts with ‘having trouble viewing this.’ We’re using blogs and Twitter to be seen and heard. You don’t get a lot of complaints on a survey.”

CB on social media: “Social media tools allow us to do what we want to do really well. No one wants to join a social media group for Diet Coke. After the first post, ‘I like Diet Coke’ or ‘really? So do I.’ What’s left to talk about? The number one opportunity is that social tools allow us to share what we like. Social media is like Hamburger Helper. It augments what you’re already doing. “

CB on marketing for events: “Be brief. What are your marketers doing writing 2,000 word missives to get you to come to the show? We are a world that lives on a 140 characters now (actually 120 so we can retweet). We process in the WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) factor. The audience does too. I implore you to look at your marketing language. Make it stick by holding up a mirror to yourselves. “

CB on Using Twitter for Sales: “Ask—how do we share? How do we extend? How do we search? Search for the data (search.twitter.com) on Twitter and then execute on it. Sniff on Twitter for new press releases. Find out about the prospect before you call. Twitter is a sales channel and a prospecting tool. Use it to make fast decisions and small decisions.”

CB on who should handle social media in your organization: “The job of social media isn’t just for the guy in the t-shirt and a goatee. It’s everybody’s job.”

CB on social media metrics: “One of the things about social media metrics is that there are lots of numbers that don’t mean anything. The only metrics should be did I or didn’t I increase revenue or reduce spend? Keep looking at how to get the dollar number bigger.”

CB on webcasting and free content: “Webcasting your event is just another way to get your audience to wish they were there. Think like entertainment people. Friends don’t let friends launch bad Webinars.”

CB on mobile apps: “We as a culture are connected to our phones but we’re not taking advantage of the mobile web. We live on our cell phones but design for our laptops. Flow content between shows. Don’t only design for the iPhone.”

CB on what he does for large companies: “I Look at channel development, lead generation, and conversion. My advice is tool agnostic. Start with an objective. Look for a revenue number you can move. Use a simple execution that will move that revenue number quickly.”

CB on how to distribute your time on social media channels: “Break social media down into three things: listening (1/2 hour a day), connecting (1 hour a day) and publishing (1/2 hour a day).”

CB on cats and soap: “Cats bad. Nubby soap weird.”

The takeaway: Obviously it’s time to try something new. What are you doing differently in your organization? How are you using social media to augment your existing processes? Are you still rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic or leaping off the bow?

This Thursday, March 25 at 9:30 a.m. CDT, I will be moderating a panel at the MTO Summit in Chicago on mobile apps for events. I was initially thinking that the discussion might center primarily around applications that bring the traditional attendee “needs” to life on a Smartphone but recent product releases pairing social networking and other capabilities with mobile phone access might bust this discussion wide open.

The first wave of mobile apps for events focused on bringing the event directory, agenda and floor plan onto the mobile screen and answering the primary questions of the attendee such as: Where am I going? Which exhibitors should I visit? What time is lunch?

In the current round of mobile innovation, social networking platform providers have introduced mobile iterations of their community-building tools. These extensions allow mobile phone users to access private networking platforms and perform other tasks such as agenda-setting, wireless information exchange, schedule sharing, etc.

Today, Zerista rolled out what they call the “World’s First Mobile Community Platform” at the Demo 2010 Conference in Palm Springs. Zerista’s new platform is mobile Ning on steroids as event organizers and other groups can create their own instant communities (like Ning) and incorporate features like Twitter, Foursquare and Eventbrite into one tool. It allows you to:

• Build your own communities optimized for mobile use with any desktop computer or Smartphone
• Utilize social networking features and communications through a private community channel, as well as external channels like Twitter
• Allow users to “check in” from wherever they are, providing instant access to community-specific locations
• Manage event invitations and issue tickets

Although Zerista is still in beta testing with this product, I can see the advantages for small or informal groups as well as large organizations hoping to appeal to the needs of their various customer segments (with customized communities for each group). Plus, since no one wants to carry his/her laptop around to use the platform, mobile phone access is a huge positive for keeping everyone on the same page especially during an event.

The Takeaway: Mobile accessibility and functionality is the newest and perhaps most exciting extension of social media platforms for events. As event organizers map their event objectives to the apps that are available, they need to look beyond satisfying the attendee’s basic needs and put community management on the list of goals. With the latest round of innovation, event organizers have a wide range of options to consider. How are these new mobile apps meeting your event objectives?

Remember the days when you attended a trade show with a hard copy of the show program and a highlighter? Drawing a pink line over the exhibitors you wanted to visit or the sessions you wanted to attend was almost a ritual—a cathartic process to help you feel productive. Then, everything went online and so much more information became available. The only problem was that you had to lug your computer around in order to use the tools, until the iPhone came along and EVERYTHING changed.

Now, Smartphones including the iPhone, Blackberry, Android and others are the device du jour on the trade show floor. Mobile application developers have made great strides in developing applications that speak to the needs of event organizers, exhibitors, attendees, sponsors and even the surrounding business community. Event organizers have done their part by introducing these tools to the trade show and conference community and helping their stakeholders adopt them.

In recent months I have written about or learned of several of the breakthrough mobile apps for events. Here is a small sampling (I know there are others):

A2Z’s ChirpE allows users to access online show content and synchronizes event details and personal itineraries with Facebook.

Bartizan’s iLeads offers exhibitors such features such as voice and written notes, surveys and qualifiers, and the ability to integrate with Salesforce.com to track the number of leads gathered throughout the show.

Core-App’s Follow Me and Event Host is a native Smartphone app that offers networking, information sharing and marketing features for attendees, exhibitors (and now event planners and venues) including personalized schedules, interactive show floor maps, access to social media tools such as Twitter, coupons from local merchants, exhibitor advertising and digital brochure storage.

The Social Collective is a social networking and community platform that has partnered with mobile application developer DubMeNow to offer customized branding, sponsorship revenue opportunities, scheduling, mapping, functionality across multiple Smartphone platforms (including iPhone, Blackberry, Symbian and Android), one touch mobile-to-mobile exchange of e-business card information, social web contact info sharing, links to marketing material, video and notes, and messaging synched with the customized event social networking platform and Twitter.

Zerista is a full-featured white label social networking platform that is also Smartphone-enabled to offer personalized feed for real-time event updates and check ins from personal contacts at the event, event organizer feed for real-time updates on schedule changes and other event-wide announcements, personalized messaging and networking tools, advanced attendee and exhibitor search functions, personalized schedule builder with public events and personal meetings, integration with and aggregation of popular social tools like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube.

These apps offer event organizers more of everything:

• More productivity
• More money
• More attendees
• More savings
• More “green”

HOWEVER, in order to really take advantage of the interest in and demand for more of the same, event organizers must step forward to enter the discussion and let us know who is using these platforms, how they have benefitted, what new revenue they have earned and how much money they have saved, and whether these new apps are everything they have dreamed of or just cool tools to feel happy about (and get more press coverage for).

Hence, my mission for the MTO Summit in Chicago–to get to the bottom of this issue. As the moderator of the panel titled “Are Mobile Applications of Value to Events?” Chris Brown (NAB), Megan Tanel (AEM) and Rick Calvert (Blog World and New Media Expo) will be prepared to answer these burning questions and I will “help” them do it.

Hey, inquiring minds (like mine) want to know.

Reviewing event technology options can be both invigorating and exhausting. The good news is that there are many different online and mobile productivity tools available for social networking, bookmarking, scheduling, mapping, messaging, lead retrieval and polling. The bad news is there are so many different tools available. If social networking is hot, mobile apps are hotter. What could be better than a marriage that brings many of the stand-alone apps and a social networking platform together under one roof with mobile access?

Conference and tradeshow organizers are challenged with having to choose among separate platforms and technology that offer consistent branding, user utility, added value and a potential revenue stream. Training users on separate platforms can be arduous. Budgeting for separate applications can be cost prohibitive. Keeping the applications online only can reduce participation and usage.

One way that technology providers are addressing these challenges is by bundling applications into one end-to-end solution and going mobile with it. The Social Collective is one example of a social networking and community platform that has partnered with mobile application developer DubMeNow to offer community access, networking, messaging, mapping, geo-synching, scheduling and lead retrieval from a Smartphone. Their latest version will be rolled out at SXSW this month in Austin, TX.

The Social Collective’s Clinton Bonner is a blogger, tweeter and observer of event industry technology. “2010 is the year to nudge and become more hyper-focused about social media infusion.  We are going well beyond ‘you need to be doing this’ [social media] and evolving to ‘here is a platform solution that allows you to do the following, all under one roof, all branded in your imagery, all metrics and data owned by you, on less spend than building a singular custom iPhone app,’” he says.

The Social Collective’s new bundled mobile app offers the following:

• Customized branding that “wears” the look and feel of the event and offers options for sponsorship revenue
• Scheduling and mapping capabilities allow users to build schedules from the conference agenda, share schedules with other users and map the tradeshow floor
• Functionality across multiple Smartphone platforms including iPhone, Blackberry, Symbian and Android
• One touch mobile-to-mobile exchange of e-business card information, social web contact info, links to marketing material, video and notes
• Messaging synched with the customized event social networking platform and Twitter

Allowing access to event-centric social networking platforms from mobile devices helps event organizers grow their communities. With the appropriate community management, most networks function well before and after the event, but unless users are willing to carry their laptops around, the interaction during the event is diminished. With more opportunities to interact, community members will “feed” off of the experience and become more loyal to the community and the event.

The Takeaway: The new bundled mobile solutions are user-driven—users get what they want when they want it. The synchronization of the event social networking platform with mobile helps event organizers grow their communities (more opportunities to engage others using mobile). Apps that function on a broader range of Smartphone platforms will drive adoption. All event apps MUST be easy to learn and use. And, now that bundled apps and event-centric social networking platforms have married mobile, event organizers may be able to reduce the number of technology offerings while increasing the value and usability for participants. Where’s the Kleenex?

Almost two weeks after Social Fish Maddie Grant and Lindy Dreyer with a host of technology providers launched what they dubbed #Untech10 in defiance of the major snowstorm that forced the cancellation of ASAE’s 2010 Technology Conference and Expo, the potential long-term impact of their efforts has become clear.

There are a couple of great posts on other blogs about how things came together. Essentially, according to Grant, the unconference was launched with a Twitter hashtag, some nimble volunteers (willing to go without much sleep) and $6,000 (all donated by sponsors) and ASAE’s unofficial blessing.

The original ASAE conference was scheduled to open on Wednesday, February 10. The day before, there were rumors about a possible cancellation as “Snowpocalypse” was preparing to engulf Washington, DC. Rather than waiting, Grant, Dreyer and Aaron Biddar of The Port, hatched a Plan B and asked the Twitterati to stand by.

By mid-afternoon on the Tuesday the 9^th, ASAE formally announced the cancellation and plans for the unconference were put fully into motion with help from exhibitors already on site when the cancellation hit. The list included:

The Port’s Biddar handled hotel negotiations, sponsorship and installed cameras and broadcasting equipment at the Renaissance Hotel.

Omnipress set up the #Untech10 web site to serve at the online home for the event and organize the schedule, speakers, participants and content. The site was up and running by 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday.

Eventbrite offered registration for the live participants.

Peach New Media provided the live streaming of content alongside a Twitter feed.

NFI Studios sponsored the happy hour and reimbursed travel expenses for association executives.

Avectra offered their Webex account as a back-up system for the presentations and provided food, signage and miscellaneous support on site.

Speakers who had been on the schedule for the original conference were given the opportunity to present their sessions on Thursday before a hybrid (live and virtual) audience or Friday before a virtual only audience. Grant’s crew took special pains to be inclusive of all presenter volunteers while providing a broad range of topics. Some presenters with similar topics were grouped together in panels. The traditional town hall meeting scheduled for Wednesday evening at the original conference was replicated at #Untech10 using a fishbowl concept recently introduced by social media and event industry authority Samuel J. Smith.

While the logistics were unfolding, Tweeters who followed the #Untech10 hashtag were given an unprecedented glimpse of the behind the scenes action as @maddiegrant, @Lindydreyer and others tweeted a play by play. #Untech10 opened at 11:00 a.m. on Thursday, February 11 to 75 live attendees and 425 virtual participants.

In the end Grant was amazed with the results. “All of the vendors, some of whom were competitors, came together. It was almost like they were showing off by doing instead of just selling. The stuff that always goes wrong didn’t. Even the food never ran out,” she says.

Grant and Dreyer’s success with #Untech10 has much larger implications for the meetings industry. #Untech10 is the real-life story of what happened when the patients took over the asylum, especially patients who never entertained the notion of failure.

Associations must change. So many associations (and event organizations) take conservative approaches, focus on details that turn out to be less important and find the risk of failure too great to try anything new or spontaneous for fear of ruffling some board members’ feathers. ASAE made a bold move when they allowed (although unable to endorse or assist) the members to run with #Untech10 without seeing it as competition but as a way to meet the needs of their community.

Generation X works differently. Grant, Dreyer and others saw the cancellation of the conference as an incredible opportunity to serve their community, shape the future of hybrid meetings and showcase the technology that will one day be the norm rather than the exception. In true Generation X style, the door opened and rather than wait for group consensus, feasibility studies or permission, they ran through it with little more than their smartphones and chutzpah.

Exhibitors will sell differently in the future. The vendor companies that stepped up for #Untech10 with people, platforms and money are the other heroes of the story. In true social media style, they allowed themselves to be exposed, to risk failure, to be transparent and to sell by example.

Now that we’ve learned to live without, we may do without. In the future, it may not be necessary to have large gatherings of people in order to serve and build the community. We all love face-to-face but the success of #Untech10 revealed that meeting stakeholders are just as responsive to virtual meetings as live ones given the right conditions. The focus on “butts in seats” or “heads in beds” is quickly turning to butts and heads.

Spontaneity is the new black. Maddie Grant and I discussed the fact that #Untech10 was sort of like the conference version of a “rave” or the mobile catering trucks that drive around Los Angeles tweeting their locations and daily specials to followers who line up for the goods. Meetings in the future will have more spontaneity brought to them by the audience who will participate more and in greater numbers than before because it adds dimension and excitement to the event FOR THEM.

Meeting, conference and exhibition planners’ skill sets will change. Had Maddie Grant and Lindy Dreyer not known how to utilize Twitter and about the technology platforms for networking, broadcasting and capturing content, they could not have done what they did so quickly. This is a lesson to all planners to learn what’s going on in the new world of event technology and for hell’s sake, get on Twitter.

Being nimble pays dividends. The #Untech10 experience was a thrill ride for Maddie Grant. “I would totally do it again. I think doing things fast, collaboratively and openly takes away the stress of doing things perfectly. We just had to get it done. The reason we could do it with so many players was that we only had 24 hours to get it done. In the future organizations will need to be nimble enough to pull these types of things off,” she says.

There is no such thing as control. If anything, #Untech10 demonstrated that control over the content, the message and the brand is elusive. If the meeting organization does not provide compelling content, establish the message (by listening and acting) and reinforce the brand (by example setting not advertising), the attendees will do it for them.

Live and virtual audiences are part of an event continuum. There was incredible electricity in the room of live bodies gathered at the Renaissance Hotel according to Grant. Likewise, the virtual attendees were lively, active and a major component of the meeting. When done correctly (i.e. allowing the audience to be as much a part of the meeting as the presenters), the live experience and the virtual experience can function in complementary ways.

The Takeaway: The revolution will not be televised. It will be streamed live and on demand to a computer or smartphone near you.