The Registration Doctor

Online Registration - Best Practices Today and Tomorrow

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 24 May 2010 21:07:00 +0000

Last Thursday and Friday I was at the Society of Government Meeting Professionals (SGMP) 2010 National Education Conference in Kansas City. You can view the slides from my 90-minute presentation on Online Registration - Best Practices Today and Tomorrow.

Education is now about filtering information, not finding it

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:00:00 +0000

Last week at the MPI Texas Hill Country Education Conference in Fort Worth, our session panel discussed the application of social networks to events and event planning. We clearly had overwhelmed most of the audience with the vagaries of Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, Pathable, etc. They knew that "everyone is doing it," but they weren't sure what it would do for them.

For example, look at a typical "share this page" icon bar like the one on the left. The social network world asks you to connect with everyone you've ever met, and then to share everything you do with all of those people, plus the people they know, and so on. As "connecting" and "sharing" have become easier, the amount of information bombarding you grows exponentially. Things are completely out of control when CNN reports live Twitter feeds from Iran as "breaking news", without any clue as to what is true and who is providing the information.

The Way Education Is
This reminded me of a recent experience. I was helping my 4th-grade son Cade with his homework - a research paper on piranhas. Like any Generation Z student, he first Googled "piranhas", and then started browsing through the top 10 results (out of 1,820,000). He already had more information than I possibly could provide for his two page paper. Shaking my head at the advantages he has in school over my experience, I went downstairs to finish some chores.

A few hours later, I returned to our playroom to find him still at the computer, hitting keys like a madman and laughing hysterically. "You've got to see this!", he screamed as he replayed "7 piranhas kill and eat frog" on YouTube. I looked at his Word document and saw that he had formatted the title and date on the top of the first page, but nothing else.

The Way Education Was
During my education, the hardest part of the assignment was finding information. Given the same research assignment, I would have had to get a ride to the library (during the hours it was open), search through the card catalog, write down the Dewey decimal codes for a few books on the topic, find the books and browse through them to see which ones looked the most promising, check out those books, go home, read the books (or at least the table of contents) while taking notes on key facts, write the paper, and then finally type it in the mandated format. This process would take me at least half a day.

My children, however, could accomplish the same task in minutes with Google and Word on their home PC. Yet Cade spent about the same amount of time to finish his paper as I would have without his technological advantages.

The New Task of Education
That made me realize - my education was about finding information and storing it for future retrieval. Cade's education (and my ongoing education) is about filtering the flood of information coming at you every second.

In the past, it was so difficult to find information that once you found it, you better memorize it so that you could retrieve it quickly the next time. Thus open-book tests did not help the unprepared.

Now, you get more information thrown at you in 5 minutes than we had in 5 days, before the Internet and Television. The key is to figure out:

What is true
What is important
Who I can trust

And, as Cade demonstrated:

What should I ignore

Social Networks can help you filter, or they can flood you with more information

Back to the point of this analogy. The best aspects of Social Networks are ones that help you connect with friends, and through mutual association help you answer the question of "Who can I trust?" The worst aspects of Social Networks are those that increase the flood of minutiae, unsolicited marketing, spin, and out-right lies.

Hopefully, we will improve our mental filters as part of our ongoing education in an environment of limitless information.

How Social Networking Will Affect Privacy and Data Security of Your Events

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:55:00 +0000

Last week, Certain Software exhibited with other meetings technology companies at the HSMAI Affordable Meetings conference in Washington, D.C. The show hosted a separate Event Technology Expo for companies like ours, whose booths surrounded a 40-seat demo area where vendors spoke each half-hour on event technology topics. Rather than repeat the product sales pitch that I used in our booth, I elected to speak about the emerging data privacy and security issues as social networking applications work their way into face-to-face events.

Event Technology Expo Short Seminar

I prepared these slides before I read my speaker instructions and learned that the 15-minute presentation was audio-only. But these are the talking points that I used at the expo.

Using Technology to Reduce Housing Costs at HSMAI Affordable Meetings in Washington D.C.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 19:35:00 +0000

Rob Wilson of Meeting Sites Resource and I spoke at the HSMAI Affordable Meetings national convention in D.C. last Wednesday (on my birthday no less). The show was under new management, and J Spargo rose to the high standards set by George Little Management over the past decade. Once again, the separate Event Technology Expo worked well for meetings technology companies like Certain. Overall, attendance and business attitude were the most positive I've seen this year, although, speaking relatively, Washington may be having a better year than the rest of the country.

Event Technology Expo Session
Many of the attendees were local commuters, so our 4:45pm time slot was a bit sparse on traffic. Below is our perspective on using meetings technology to reduce housing costs, both before and after the event's contract is signed.

Twitter: I don't get it, but I'm going to give it a chance

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:14:00 +0000

I set up a Twitter account long ago, but I have never used it. Today I decided to give it a chance, so if you are interested in following my short posts then go to http://twitter.com/rborry and subscribe.

I don't follow others on Twitter, but I just read an article about how Dell used Twitter to clear out refurbished inventory at rock-bottom prices to the tune of $3 million. So maybe, like the Web itself, there are both good and bad uses for Twitter. I will try to follow a few rules:

1. I'll post when I learn or do something that could help others immediately. For example, last night I stayed in a 9th-floor suite overlooking Union Square at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco. What is amazing, however, is that Yahoo Travel offered a package with the room and flight for only $60 more than the flight alone at Virgin America.
2. I'll only post when I'm doing something out of my normal routine

This is an experiment, so please give me feedback on your experience with Twitter.

When technology saves you time but does not help your work.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:25:00 +0000

I work from my home in Dallas, while my colleagues are spread in offices from San Francisco, Seattle, Sydney, Brisbane, and London. So I set up my work phone extension to forward to my home office phone, which is a virtual "softphone" from Skype, which will then forward to my cell phone if I don't answer on my laptop. Finally, my cell phone will collect a voice mail if I still do not answer, and it will email me that message in an attachment.

Technology to the rescue

At least that's how I thought it worked, until this week when a couple of people told me that they called and received a "Mailbox full" message, even though my cell phone mailbox is empty. I checked with our internal IT and found out that the number of rings my work line waited before going to voice mail was the same as the sum of the number of rings my home office and cell phone waited before recording a message. And so sometimes my work line would take a message, but it wasn't sending me an email since the system was upgraded, and I had no indicator light telling me that I have a message.

So, today and I have 100 unanswered messages going back to January 28th. I apologize to those who think I never return calls, but I also wonder about how much productive time I had recently without all of those interruptions...

My phone solution

In case you have a similarly disconnected life, after much trial-and-error I finally settled on using a Skype In subscription, a Freetalk wireless headset, and a Sprint data card. The quality has been acceptable for business use for the most part, and it keeps me connected anywhere I travel as long as I have Internet or cell phone access. Just be sure to check the forwarding settings every now and again.

Think you'll never attend a meeting in a Virtual World? Look out behind you!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 29 May 2009 21:57:00 +0000

I've heard meetings expert Corbin Ball speak for several years now about the coming era of Virtual Meetings in Second Life and similar sites. The typical audience response is something close to "not in my lifetime", but Corbin keeps plugging this vision.

I may have been one of the skeptics in Corbin's presentations, but I've recently been converted by three experts in my own house.

Toontown vs. Second Life

The other day I walked over to our computer table to see three of my kids (Kyra age 10, Cade age 9, Izzy age 6) excitedly switching screens and looking over each others' shoulders as they played a new game they discovered at Disney.com - Toontown. Basically, you pick a Disney character to represent yourself, and then you run around a virtual Disney world, talking to other kids' Toontown characters and trying to figure out how to defeat the evil Cogs infecting the world.

To my kids, this environment was more natural than the pictures of real trade shows that I show them when they ask me why I went away last week. Their response is, "You stand in that tiny booth all day waiting for people to come see you?!?"

There is Izzy above, using her dog's name "Ginger" for her Toon.

Izzy talking to a Cog (they are bad).

Izzy talking to a town employee for help.

The Coming World of Virtual Trade Shows

As the Toontown generation becomes the working class, the age of virtual trade shows is inevitable. Inc. magazine recently published an article ("Nice meeting your avatar") on three leading providers: InXpo, Unisfair, and ON24. I've also seen Digitell at the Meetings Tech Expo shows and have explored their version of Active Worlds platform.

I tried the Active Worlds platform but found the experience lacking. There were too many key controls to move around, visiting booths took longer than I was willing to spend, and the booths were too cumbersome to customize (in my opinion). The experience was too close to reality - at a real show I don't mind walking across the floor for five minutes to find a booth, but I'm used to everything being instant at my computer.

The systems will improve, however, and if it's in Inc. this month then it will be in Forbes next year and in Newsweek the year after that. By then you may have attended one yourself. If so, please let me know about your experience.

Society of Government Meeting Professionals 2009 National Education Conference

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 May 2009 16:12:00 +0000

Last week I attended the 2009 National Education Conference for SGMP in Louisville, Kentucky. Like all trade shows this year, attendance was down by nearly half, and of those about three times as many attendees were suppliers compared to buyers. The meetings world has not stopped, however, and I continue to meet customers who renew their licenses and new prospects who want to make their operations more efficient.

Online Registration Presentation

Thursday morning, I spoke on "Online Registration for Government Meetings" with about 60 planners. Below are the slides that I presented.

Strange visitors at the door

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 18:57:00 +0000

One interesting aspect of working for a global company is sharing local experiences that seem out of this world to your colleagues.

Here's a photo of a 3 am visitor to the front door of our Support Consultant Julian in Brisbane:

I had a similarly startling experience at my office door last week while on a conference call. I hope that the client didn't hear me snap this photo. (Notice that the "child fence" in the background didn't do its job.)

I don't think that any amount of bad economic news can withstand the smile of a baby (koala or human)!

Keep your pre-registration money in your bank account

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 18:15:00 +0000

I have read of a few meeting management companies going bankrupt this year, taking some of their clients' pre-registration revenue with them. Having lived through the event registration carnage of 2001-2004 (remember Event411.com, Procurepoint.com, Bthere.com?), I thought that large event producers had learned to process fees directly into their own bank accounts. Meetings technology companies seem to be stronger this time, but I don't think these will be the last bankruptcies.

If your event produces a substantial amount of money (whose loss would severely hurt your organization) then I suggest you set up an Internet-ready merchant bank account and have your registration service provider process payments directly into your account. This is standard practice for many companies like Certain Software.

Don't trust your vendors bank accounts, and don't trust escrow services as funds can be diverted by criminal or accidental negligence.

Technology Integration in the Meetings Management Sector

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 16:06:00 +0000

At the end of February, I had a chance to speak with Tom Belden, the "Winging It" business travel columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, about an upcoming article in Business Travel Executive. Here's some of what we talked about:

1. How much meeting technology does the average company really need?

I know this is an obvious answer, but planners need just enough technology to meet the requirements of each component of their meeting.

For example, a marketing road show needs to have email marketing and search engine optimization tools in order to drive attendance to their events. A mandatory employee training event, however, only needs an email broadcast capability in order to communicate with the attendees, and sometimes Outlook can serve those needs. The planner needs to start their analysis with the business requirements and processes, then select technologies that streamline these processes, and then use the features of the best technologies to modify the processes in order to take further advantage of their technology investment. Process requirements drive technology selection, but technology capabilities can drive process changes.

2. Hotels are increasingly providing meeting technology for their clients through their own websites or in collaboration with companies like Passkey. Is that all some organizations need?

Hotels typically limit their technology tool offerings to electronic RFP submission and rooming list management. For some meetings, these are sufficient, but most professional meeting planners must deal with more complicated situations requiring their own technology. For example, if your attendees are going to stay at multiple hotels, you will likely need to have a single system recording your event’s housing reservations, instead of flipping between each hotel’s own housing application. Also, planners need to be aware that hotels’ proprietary tools, such as RFP / meeting space search, are designed to drive business to their properties. You won’t always find the best deal for your meeting by sticking with the hotels’ tools.

3. What's been integrated so far? Why were those areas/ partners chosen and how difficult was it to accomplish?

In general, the industry has seen Registration systems integrated with housing systems such as Passkey, travel systems such as corporate booking tools (GetThere, ResX) and GDS’s (Sabre, Worldspan), customer relationship management systems (PeopleSoft, Salesforce.com), employee/human resources databases (Peoplesoft), and credit card processing networks (Paypal, Authorize.net) – in addition to many other integrations with niche applications. The effort involved in these integrations vary greatly between partners and processes. Credit card processing, for example, is a fairly mature technology with established standards and so was the first (and easiest integration) for most registration companies.

We need to make a distinction between technical integration and business process integration. For example, if you want to pass a name from your employee database to the registration system, then you will likely need a technical integration between these two systems. On the other hand, if you want to use email broadcast, blogging, and search engine optimization in order to drive traffic to your event, then you can likely use three different applications without doing any technical integration. You only need to synchronize your use of these technologies as you seek attendees.

Lastly, technical integrations must be maintained. Even though we first integrated Certain Registration with credit card processing in 1998, we spend at least one release every year maintaining that integration - adding new processors, dealing with mergers such as Verisign and Paypal, updating to the latest security standards like Payment Card Industry compliance.

4. What's next in integrating meeting technology? How long will it be before we see any of that -- by the end of 2009?

The next phase of integration will be deep support for programming tools loosely called “Web Services”. Web services provide an interface for other applications and computers to interact with our product. For example, if you want to change your last name, a human user can log in and manually update their last name using an online form. Or the employee database, which already has a record of the name change, can contact the registration application and update the last name for a specific person – automatically and without human intervention. Many suppliers, including Certain, offer “Web services” to a limited extent now, but you will see all vendors expand their support to allow integrating systems to do anything that human users can do.

Another longer-term trend will be the adoption of data exchange standards such as the APEX (Accepted Practices Exchange) and OTA (Open Travel Alliance) XML (Extensible Markup Language). This will allow a single application to interact with a wide market-place of other applications, without having to re-write application code and establish business partnerships with one company at a time, as is the time-consuming norm today.

5. What reasons do meeting planners or travel managers give when they turn you down and say they don't need Certain software to help them?

Inertia is the biggest issue if we are competing against an existing in-house system or process. Although managers recognize the inefficiencies in their existing processes, they sometimes cannot generate the internal motivation to change to a better system.

Cost should never be an issue, since Certain Registration as a Software As A Service (Saas) product offers pay-as-you go plans with little up-front expenses.

Some planners cannot adopt our products due to company policies or internal issues trying to integrated with other in-house systems, such as employee or customer databases. Although technically Certain can and has integrated with many types of systems, the internal resources on the client’s side may not be available and put the entire project on hold.

Alliance Tech Acquires Leading Face-to-Face Social Networking Technology

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 20:33:00 +0000

I heard today that nTag emerged out of its December 2008 bankruptcy in the arms of Alliance Tech. While I admired the nTag technology and founders, I was never fully convinced of its value relative to some of the pricy products and services offered. In general, I think that Social Networking as applied to face-to-face meetings is in its infancy, and we are seeing some products over-priced and some over-hyped. But in the long run I think that someone like Alliance Tech is going to hit the right value proposition and finally put Social Networking into the professional event planners' standard toolkit, along with online registration, Web sites, site selection, and email marketing.

Press Release

AUSTIN, Texas – March 23, 2009 – Alliance Tech http://www.alliancetech.com/, the leader in RFID enabled event measurement, announced today the company has acquired the technology and assets of nTAG, a pioneer in face-to-face social networking technology and the creator of the world’s first interactive name badge.

The acquisition of nTag’s technology further strengthens Alliance Tech’s position as the leader in event marketing intelligence, and will add significant value to the company’s overall portfolio of offerings.

“We are excited to offer our clients more value by incorporating the nTAG solution,” states Art Borrego, CEO of Alliance Tech. “nTAG’s on-site social networking system, combined with Alliance Tech’s intelligent event solutions—lead management, surveys, RFID attendee reporting and marketing business intelligence—provides event planners with the industry’s most comprehensive suite of technology to measure events in real time, ensure meeting objectives are achieved and increase return on investment.”

A cornerstone feature of nTAG’s solution is real-time monitoring that provides event directors with dashboard views on session, exhibitor, and event evaluation, interaction levels among attendees, as well as networking connections shared between attendees. Evaluating these activities allows planners to make necessary adjustments onsite and for future events. Additionally, conference managers are able to effectively engage and communicate with attendees, as well as have the ability to view information on what attendees are doing during the conference.

Event attendees who use the wearable technology benefit from targeted networking opportunities via networking contests, real-time audience feedback and increased satisfaction from better connections. The nTAG technology has been used at events for IBM, Procter and Gamble, Alcatel-Lucent, WellPoint, MasterCard, General Electric, Freescale Semiconductor, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pfizer, and many others.

Mike Taylor, a former Vice President of Sales at nTAG, now working at Alliance Tech states, “nTAG’s solutions are complementary to Alliance Tech’s current offerings which focus on marketing intelligence for events. nTAG clients will be able to seamlessly transition to Alliance Tech for implementation at their future conferences.”

Alliance Tech will assume nTAG’s assets, and will retain key staff to ensure a smooth transition and consistent implementation of each solution. nTAG is now on solid financial ground, as Alliance Tech is rated 1A1 which is the best credit rating of Dunn & Bradstreet’s business appraisal system.

For more news about Alliance Tech visit: http://www.alliancetech.com/

About Alliance Tech
Alliance Tech enables companies to increase their return on investment (ROI) of tradeshows, conferences and events through an industry leading marketing intelligence platform. Alliance Tech is the leader in intelligent events that utilize radio frequency identification (RFID) to track attendee interests and preferences. Alliance Tech solutions include RFID attendee reporting, lead management, surveys and social networking. Alliance Tech is a two time winner of Corporate Event Marketing Association’s (CEMA) technology shootout award, and the 2008 Top Technology Supplier by Meeting Tech Online. To learn more, visit http://www.alliancetech.com/.

Contact: Alliance Tech
Allyson Albertson, 512.320-5774
aalbertson@alliancetech.com

Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) - an emerging standard for Section 508 Compliance documentation

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:37:00 +0000

In 2001, the Information Technology Industry Council partnered with the General Services Administration to create a tool that would assist Federal contracting and procurement officials in fulfilling the market research requirements specified in Section 508 (governing the accessiblity of Web sites and software applications to disabled users). The result of their collaboration was the 508 Evaluation Template – a simple, web-based checklist that allows Vendors to document how their product did or did not meet the various Section 508 Requirements.

Today, I finally got around to producing a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) document that defines our committment to Section 508, which I've blogged about many times. Recently, we have seen versions of the VPAT attached to several RFPs from various federal agencies and public institutions, so it appears to be heading towards becoming a standard first step for 508 Compliance evaluation.

Now we are at the point with Section 508 compliance where we were in 2001 with PCI compliance (self-assessment). Over time, I expect that we and others in our industry will move towards fully-audited compliance and independent reports for Section 508, as we now have with PCI level 1 compliance.

Third Annual MSR Partner Forum

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 20:11:00 +0000

On march 12th, I attended the Meeting Sites Resource Partner Forum in Anaheim. Tim and Jennifer Brown and their son Rob Wilson have built a great site selection company, and they hosted a first-class event. Because Certain is focused on the meeting planners' perspective, it was interesting for me to see the events industry from hoteliers' viewpoint. I also enjoyed seeing the new features for hotels in Meeting Evolution, their new web-based application for Site Selection and Event RFP management.

Exchanging cancelled meeting space - A great idea, right?

The event had two round-table brain-storming discussions. The first was on the benefits and issues involved in trying to broker cancelled meeting space to companies that could use it. In theory, taking cancelled meeting space and re-selling it to another group seems like an effective way to offer discount meetings to a new group while saving cancellation penalties for the original group. After listening to these discussions, however, I believe that in practice the concept of re-using cancelled meeting space can only work profitably when exchanged within a single organization.

Only very large organizations would need enough meeting space to potentially be able to switch groups into cancelled space without changing the contract with the hotel. And these companies tend to cancel a large number of their meetings at once, as is happening now during the current recession, making it less likely that the cancelled space can be re-used on a broad scale.

I've read a lot of sales pitches about the benefits of re-selling or exchanging cancelled meeting space. It's worth a shot to try doing so internally within large organizations, but I don't think I'd want to be in the business of brokering cancelled space among different organizations. If someone has a proven way of doing this profitably, I'd love to hear about it.

The Law of Unintended Consequences

The second round table discussion covered changes in hoteliers' business practices in this recession. During the 2003-8 expansion, many hotels' ownership structure changed dramatically. Hedge funds discovered that they could buy hotel chains, sell the land, lease the buildings to franchise owners, hire hotel management companies, and move hotels under different brands. This created a profitable re-organization of assets for a while, but now that occupancy rates are falling and cancellations are rising, the sales managers at my table discovered they have multiple owners, with conflicting goals.

During the 2001-2 downturn, one sales manager received a call every day from her boss, imploring her to drive more business into their hotels. But now she gets calls from three "bosses" each day. The first comes from hotel owners who want business driven to their property, not caring about the other properties in the same brand who may be a better fit for the business. The second call comes from the hotel management company, who wants her to maximize sales and profit across the entire chain. The third comes from various brands, who want leads to come into their brand over others. With the media mania about companies hosting "extravagant" events at resorts, high-end brands are competing for business that previously would have gone to mid-range brands, who in turn want the business of economy brands.

Somebody made billions re-organizing the hotel industry, but I think a chain who owns and manages it's hotels and brand could have an advantage in this market over the complexity of multiple competing "owners".

Identity theft - the most prevalent crime in America?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 21:39:00 +0000

I spoke at the Society of Government Meeting Professionals regional meeting in Oklahoma City this weekend. If you haven't been to Oklahoma City recently, its Bricktown area is nice - with a great baseball park, new NBA stadium, and a nice "riverwalk" (really a concrete canal, but well done anyway).

Enter the Secret Service

Daniel A. Baker spoke immediately before me. He's a Special Agent from the Oklahoma City Field Office of the U.S. Secret Service and he gave a fascinating talk on identity theft. I spend most of my time trying to prevent credit card and information theft, so it was interesting to see the law enforcement perspective that takes over when prevention fails.

One statistic that hit me was that 3 or 4 out of ten Americans have been victims of identity or related theft (e.g. credit card fraud) either directly or through family members. To me, that implies that identity theft is the most prevalent crime in America.

Do we spend most of our time fighting crimes people don't commit?

Another interesting statistic came in my mail from the City of Lewisville. Homeowners with registered alarm systems now must pay $50 per year, because 99% of the 6,000 residential alarms that Lewisville police respond to are false. So, last year our police spent more time responding to about 50 break-ins (and nearly 6,000 false alarms) than to the several hundred identity fraud crimes that I'd expect in a city of 100,000. As I've blogged in the past, I've had $1500 stolen (and refunded) from credit card fraud and an attempted theft of nearly $24,000 in check fraud, yet no law enforcement agency I contact has the resources to tackle such "small" crimes.

I'll keep working on fraud prevention, but I wonder if the criminals are staying a step ahead of us with these newer electronic crimes?

How long do you want to be a clerk?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 23:55:00 +0000

I spoke about the APEX Initiative at MPI's Meet Different conference in Atlanta on February 9th with Terri Breining from Concepts Worldwide. During the Q&A period at the end, Alisen Herman stood up in the back of the room and explained how her organization, Acord, had helped the insurance industry through electronic data standards. These standards allow you to submit an insurance bid online and receive dozens of quotes within minutes. Such response is expected in the insurance and banking industries, but is not common within meetings and events.

I thought her final comment, to the audience, was especially relevant. She told the collection of meeting planners that they needed to insist that their suppliers and software providers adhere to the APEX standards, or else the industry would never move forward while everyone waits for "everyone else" to move first. She said, "How long do you want to be a clerk?", because that is what meeting planners often end up being when they spend the majority of their time copying information from one place to another and re-typing data over and over.

Welcome to APEX

Here are the slides we presented:

Losing customers without letting go completely

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 17:44:00 +0000

I just cancelled my home VOIP phone service, which Lingo raised to $33/month from $21/month in 2003. The service agent was polite in handling my cancellation request, and then she offered me the option to downgrade to $7/month for a “basic plan", which allows free incoming calls forwarded to my new phone number and $0.03/minute for outbound calls. Since many people still have my old number, I took their offer because it's worth $7 not to lose incoming calls while I transfer people to my new number.

Losing customers the wrong way

No one wants to lose customers, but companies handle this inevitable situation differently. AOL made it easy for me to sign up for a "free trial", but I found it almost impossible to figure out how to cancel after the trial ended so I wouldn't get charged every month. I finally cancelled and never would consider going back. When my wife cancelled our weekly house-cleaning service, the owner lost her temper and verbally berated my wife before slamming the phone down. The business owner never got to hear my wife ask about the bi-monthly or periodic service we wanted to switch to.

Let go, but keep the door open

Lost customers are still customers, and the conversation around cancelling a service is also an opportunity to offer another service of value. For example, a meeting planner may want to cancel their online registration service, but still retain access to their data for past events. So we offer a low-cost basic service that allows access to existing data and retains their web site and event configurations in case they return to use our service in the future. Many clients don't know that they need all of their historical data, but they are terrified of losing it - and they'll pay us to keep it stored, just in case they need it later.

The APEX Toolbox: Bringing Standards to Event Management presentation at MTE in New York City

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 16:22:00 +0000

Last November, I had the opportunity to present at the Meetings Technology Expo in New York City. E.J. Siwek asked me to fill in for the APEX session, so I modified his standard presentation with some of my experiences working on the APEX standards committee and trying to apply it to our software.

The APEX Toolbox: Bringing Standards to Event Management

PCI Data Security Standard Version 1.2 Takes Effect

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 15:14:00 +0000

The PCI Data Security Standards will update to Version 1.2 as of December 31, 2008, when Version 1.1 will "sunset". On October 1, the PCI Security Standards Council released version 1.2, which did not change requirements, but provided additional clarity and flexibility and addressed evolving threats. Windows IT Pro provides a nice summary table detailing the changes between version 1.1 and 1.2.

The end of Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) wireless security

The major practical change that I found in PCI v1.2 is that new implementations of WEP security in Wi-fi Internet access are not allowed after March 31, 2009. Current implementations must discontinue use of WEP after June 30, 2010. WEP is a popular security option for Wi-fi installations, however, it became obsolete in 2004 with the completion of the Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) standards, and WEP is dangerously vulnerable. Nevertheless, WEP remains the default option for wireless security with many Wi-fi routers.

If you haven't migrated your Wi-fi networks away from WEP yet (or if you are still using unsecured Wi-fi), make it one of your New Year's resolutions to update your wireless security.

Happy New Year

2008 marked my ten-year anniversary working on Certain Registration (originally Register123). I wish you all a Happy New Year and best of luck in 2009.

EIBTM 2008 in Barcelona

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 19:38:00 +0000

I worked our booth at the EIBTM 2009 show in Barcelona last week. This is a well-managed show (they use Certain Events for attendee management and 1-on-1 appointment scheduling) and I noticed several differences between it and the comparable shows in America (such as MPI and HSMAI).

Comparing European to American Shows

The show layout was more like a World's Fair than a trade show. Every country and major European city had huge multi-level booths with all sorts of give-aways and theme-based networking areas. I visited the real Oktoberfest in September and the Munich booth was a scaled-down dead ringer for the beer houses. The free booze (for attendees) starts at 10am and goes through to 6pm (1800) every day.

EIBTM has less of an educational component than you see in the U.S., however, prospects spend a greater time speaking with staff at the booths and understanding the products. I rarely give even a brief demo at shows in the States; typically a 30-second elevator pitch is all you get before scanning the attendee's badge. At EIBTM we had a dozen prospects each day who would sit in our booth for 15-30 minutes and watch a full sales demo. Attendees made appointments with exhibitors and then they showed up on time!

The show was more work for the booth staff, but the leads generated were higher quality and further along in the sales cycle.

Lift Conference = Events 2.0?

My favorite session was the annual technology debate with Corbin Ball and Laurent Haug. The debate was less interesting to me than Laurent's description of the Lift Conference.

A group of bloggers, academics, and entrepreneurs got together and designed this conference from the attendees up - with no marketing budget, no brand awareness, no budget for technology infrastructure, and complete openness (anyone could see anything). A few years later, they have a very successful conference that combines the best of traditional face-to-face meetings and new technology.

Although the conference completely relies on technology before and after the event (there is only online registration and no paper documentation or advertising), they try to minimize the use of technology on-site. They found that a room full of people fiddling with their laptops and web phones actually decreased social interaction (yes, to technology people this is a surprising conclusion), and they are better off without those for 3 days.

They also found that complete openness does not scale. In early years, the seminar planning page would have 10-15 proposals and attendees would comment and vote on the speakers and topics they wished to hear. As the number of proposals expanded to dozens and hundreds, this method began to suffer - very few people will invest hours review all proposals and so the ones listed at top tended to get the most votes.

Meetings Technology Expo in New York City

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 14:00:00 +0000

I'm speaking twice at the Meetings Technology Expo in New York City on Wednesday, November 12th. Please come by if you're able to and introduce yourself to me.

Security for Web 2.0: Staying on top of new Issues in Meetings Technology
9:15am-10:15am

Just when you thought you had a lock on data security with your meetings management software, along comes social networking, webcasts, and all the web 2.0 applications – wikis, blogs, forums. As with any technology, security issues are always a chief concern among technology users and providers. In this session you will learn what you need to know to keep your data privacy intact and what new security issues surrounding new technologies are on the horizon.

Session Take-aways:

What you need to know about protecting your customer information
How to evaluate the security of your vendors
Top 10 Things you should do Right Now

The APEX Toolbox: Bringing Standards to Event Management
4:45pm-5:45pm

Discover how to improve your communications with vendors while enhancing your overall professionalism by using the recently released APEX Meeting & Event Planning Toolbox, a project of the Convention Industry Council. Learn what is on the horizon that will allow the industry to electronically transfer event management files.

Session Take-aways:

Develop an increased awareness of the APEX Toolbox and APEX technology developments
Have checklists when preparing an RFP, rooming list or event specifications
Learn how to develop your own RFP and event specifications
Learn what application developers are currently developing toward the APEX standards
Discover the soon to be released APEX Power Shop for event professionals

Amendments to Americans with Disabilities Act Broaden Coverage, Portend More Employment Litigation

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 15:13:00 +0000

Last week, President Bush signed into law amendments to the American Disabilities Act (ADA). Effective January 1, 2009, these changes broaden the definition of "disability", and large employers should expect an increase in employee disability claims.

ADA and Section 508 Compliance for Web Sites

For the most part, event planners outside of the Federal government ignore ADA compliance for their Web sites and online registration forms. Looking at the history of ADA applicability to the Web, a trend is becoming clear:

1. Originally, only public Web sites of U.S. Federal Government agencies had to comply with ADA Web guidelines.
2. Later, enforcement extended to state and local government Web sites if those agencies accepted federal funds (as most do)
3. Recently, Target v. National Federation of the Blind set a precedent that commercial Web sites must be ADA compliant if the site is accessible to the public
4. Now, these new ADA amendments broaden the definition of disability in the employee-employer relationship. This makes me think that soon employee-only Web sites (such as Intranets and employee event registration forms) may soon fall under ADA regulation.

What to do as a Meeting Planner?

I don’t hear a lot about ADA compliance in the meetings industry press or trade shows, but I think now is the time for organizations to create long-term plans for all of their Web sites to become compliant with the international W3C Web Content Accesibility Guidelines (which include the U.S. ADA and Section 508 guidelines).

I've previously described our strategy at Certain for doing this.

Online Registration and Housing Technology Presentation

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 16:37:00 +0000

Continuing my recent road trips, I had the opportunity to present with Jim Gowell from Passkey at the new Event Technology Expo within the HSMAI Affordable Meetings National program on September 10, 2008 in Washington D.C.

Online Registration and Housing Technology - Do More With Less

Below are a copy of our slides.

Online Travel Systems for Meetings presentation at MTE in Washington D.C.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 16:46:00 +0000

Wednesday last week, I had the opportunity to present at the Meetings Technology Expo in Washington, D.C. On short notice, Paul Paone asked me to fill in for the Meetings Travel session, so I created a new presentation based on my experience integrating Meetings and Travel systems.

Unlike much of the marketing hype around "Travel Integration" systems, I've found that sometimes inexpensive process modifications can achieve the universal goals of unified meeting-travel reports and proper travel expense assignment for meetings.

Online Travel Systems for Meetings

Below are the slides from my presentation. Click on any image to see a larger version.

Security for Web 2.0 presentation at MTE in Washington DC.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 13:47:00 +0000

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to present at the Meetings Technology Expo in Washington, D.C. I modifed my Web Security presentation from the Chicago show to include "Web 2.0" technologies. I loosely define "Web 1.0" as technology where the site owner pushes content to a user. "Web 2.0", by contrast, includes technologies where the site owner provides a platform that allows users to publish, consume, and interact with each other in a community. (For example, Blogs, wikis, social networks, forums, etc.)

Security for Web 2.0

Below are the slides from my presentation. Click on any image to see a larger version.