Chapter 5: APPLICATION OF
TECHNOLOGY IN MICE
MANAGEMENT
CHAPTER OBJECTIVES
Recognize how technology currently impacts meeting professionals
Identify new technologies that support meeting/event marketing
and communications
Understand the critical technology terms that apply to the
hospitality industry
Recognize the best Web portals for researching industry
information
Understand how social media is impacting the meetings industry
HOW TECHNOLOGY CURRENTLY IMPACTS
MEETING PROFESSIONALS?
• Advancements in technology over the past five years are creating
seismic shifts in how meetings are marketed and produced.
• Social media and mobile devices have become an inextricable part of
the event landscape. Meetings that preach “turn your phones off” in
the meeting space now find that attendees believe this is an
antiquated model.
• Event and guest bandwidth needs continue to grow in importance
and in many cases become a tipping point in the site selection
process.
TECHNOLOGY SUPPORT TO THE MEETING PLANNER
Before During Post
BEFORE THE EVENT OR CONFERENCE
Virtual Site Technology and Meeting Industry
selection Site Inspection Information Portals
ONLINE RFPs
BANDWIDTH: From a
downloadable hotel app to
an in-room iPad acting as a
virtual concierge, this https://www.corbinball.com/
guest room enhancement is
becoming more heavily used.
VIRTUAL TOURS
Virtual tours
• https://youtu.be/Lyg73o8JHdA
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2P3bn5QoYeA
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NakltvfbYk0
Marketing and Communication
Web Sites and Strategic Communications
Event Web Sites
Social Media
Room Design Software: Meeting Matrix and Vivien, 3D-tour
Selling the Show Floor
Online Registration
Desktop Applications: MS Office Suite
Curation
Twitter tools
SOCIAL MEDIA Google+ Facebook
Linkin Youtube
DURING THE EVENT (1/3)
• BANDWIDTH: Simply defined, bandwidth is the maximum speed of
the Internet coming into a facility or a space such as a meeting or
guest room.
• Guest room
• Speaker/presentations
• HQ office needs
• Attendees meeting room needs
• Conference Apps: the conference app provides all of the information
that had previously been published in the conference program and
more: Native apps vs. Web-based apps.
DURING THE EVENT (2/3)
• Wired versus Wireless or Both?
• Digital Recording and Streaming Media: The event professional will need
to have cameras (and video/audio engineers) in the session to ensure that
the recorded material is of good quality. Also needed is a company to
digitize the video into a format that can be electronically distributed.
• NFC and RFID: RFIDs and NFC are finding a use in the MEEC industry as well, mainly in
use in interactive nametags.
• NFC (Near Field Communications: a short-range, high-frequency wireless technology,
allowing for information exchange between certain devices.
• RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) and are the tags (readers) that can be used to
access these signals. RFID tags are commonplace as anyone living in a city knows
with tolls from bridges or tunnels using RFID tags (known by a variety of names,
including EZPass, SmartPass, and others) to quickly pay these fees. They also can be
used to inventory products in a company’s warehouse, enabling workers to better
track their products.
DURING THE EVENT (3/3)
• Interactive Nametags and Networking Devices: CEU Tracking and
Interactive Message Centers
• Lead Retrieval Systems: trade shows and exhibits have used Lead
Retrieval Systems to help capture customer information.
• ARS (Audience Response Systems) and Speaker Interaction
• Attendee Blogging and the Social Conference
• AR (Augmented Reality)
POST-CONFERENCE TECHNOLOGY APPLICATIONS
• Evaluations and Surveys: web-based tools
• Marketing the Media: YouTube channels
• Virtual gatherings:
• Webinars
• Hybrid Meetings
• Virtual Trade Shows
FUTURE TRENDS
• Change will continue to be thrown at us at an exponential rate.
• Social media enables everything, including your events, to be shared in real
time.
• Mobile apps and services will continue to develop and not only provide
better realtime content, but hope to better alleviate some of the carbon
footprint of MEEC events.
• “Mcommerce” will help redefine how payments are made at events by
using mobile devices as the transaction model. Tools such as the Square
app are already in use today, helping to reduce costs of credit card
processing while expediting the experience for both the event professional
and attendee.
• There is concern about m-commerce and security, and clearly this trend is
something to watch in the upcoming months.
