Over the past five years, new technologies have transformed the meetings industry for both planners and attendees. Rather than slowing down, innovation is running rampant — and there is no end in sight to the almost limitless number of ways new applications will improve the ways planners do business.

Next Generation Mobile Technology

“In effect, every meeting planner now carries around a supercomputer in their pocket,” says Bellingham, WA-based meetings industry technology guru Corbin Ball, CSP, CMP, MS, of Corbin Ball Associates. “And especially since these devices have been attached to the cloud, they are very powerful computers with very extensive capabilities. And all of that has happened in the last five years.”

Since then, Ball says, smartphone and tablet technology for devices such as the iPhone and iPad have accelerated the tech revolution. “And the major change was that it made these powerful technologies easy enough that a three-year-old or a grandmother could use it,” Ball says. “So there is a whole different approach to technology now. And there are hundreds of thousands of apps now — and thousands of those are applicable to meeting planning and attendees. That’s a quantum shift.”

The factor currently driving next-generation technology innovation and capabilities for planners and attendees is mobile technology. “And that,” Ball says, “includes everything from interactive programs to lead exchange to audience engagement tools to attendee surveys to social media.”

There are now hundreds of mobile companies and mobile apps targeting meeting professionals. “I have more than 200 linked at my regularly updated website CorbinBall.com,” Ball says. “And although there will likely be a shakeout similar to the dot-com deflation of the late 1990s, the companies that survive will continue to change how we do business.”

One of the hottest areas of mobile development at the moment is the proliferation of low-cost, do-it-yourself apps that can be customized by individual users. “It is now possible to create a fully featured, cross-platform business app for your iPhone, iPad or Android mobile device with customized logos, colors and content using Biznessapps.com for as low as $39.95 a month. And it’s very easy to do because the site provides very easy-to-use video tutorials.”

Other leading-edge providers of DIY technologies include Grupio.com, GenieMobile.com, EventKaddy.com and the more high-end QuickMobile.com, Ball explains. “And oftentimes, these are provided at a fraction of the cost of a standard application built by mobile app programmers selling products.”

The other sea change is represented by the ongoing empowerment of attendees to have more of a hand in the creation and execution of the meetings and events they attend. “That’s one of the most important ways that all of the social media tools are being linked to meetings now, so people really can get engaged before the meeting and make suggestions about how to make the event better from their point of view,” Ball says. “And as a result of that, more and more events are actually being organized by attendees, based on what their specific desires are. And that kind of engagement is just going to become more and more important because social media tools allow it now.”

At the same time, however, increasingly rapid technological innovation is helping meeting planners become more productive and effective by giving them specific tools that meet the demand for precise, individual functions.

New Applications Raise the Bar

Over the past year, technology providers have introduced a flurry of new products for both planners and attendees.

Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT), a global leader among travel management companies and an established innovator in strategic meetings management capabilities, has introduced a pair of proprietary applications for its clients.

Developed in partnership with StarCite, CWT Meeting Optimizer helps planners find the best destination for a meeting by inputting the number of attendees, their locations and the meeting dates. The app then generates a list of optimal destinations worldwide, including facilities with Telepresence teleconferencing facilities in order to add a virtual meeting component to the event. Based on CWT’s analysis, Meeting Optimizer saves companies an average of 25 percent in total event costs by promoting unprecedented efficiency in the selection of destinations and venues.

CWT 78 BizDays is a new mobile app that helps planners find the most convenient day and time to hold an international conference call, video conference, meeting or event. Developed in partnership with HEC Paris Professor of Management Michael Segalla, the app identifies the best — and worst — times for scheduling events in foreign countries. It also sends attendees meeting notifications via email and provides a wealth of information on individual countries, including national holidays. CWT 78 BizDays is available for iPads and iPhones from the Apple App Store, or via the Internet at CWT78BizDays.com.

Another innovative new app designed to make planners more efficient and effective is Talent Chaser’s plus-in Meeting Manager, which facilitates creation of a meeting with the touch of a button. Meeting Manager allows planners to easily upload and download documents, as well as view and access various kinds of documents, spreadsheets, videos, and other relevant files. It also empowers planners to manage information about all of their meetings and events in a single location and access data from past meetings easily and quickly. It also allows tracking of all individual attendees and the definition and setting of security levels for each. A one-month free trial is available. For more information, visit TalentChaser.com.

Another convenience-enhancing tool for planners is VoiceCal, the fastest, most user friendly technology for recording calendar events into an iPhone via voice recognition. It eliminates the dangerous habit of entering calendar events manually while driving or walking. VoiceCal offers a “no touch” interface that enables users to simply launch it and speak. Spoken events appear instantly on a user’s iCal and anywhere iCal is synchronized, such as Google Calendar.

The app’s biggest single innovation is that it allows users to speak multiple events at one time, without a need to recycle the app’s functionality. It is backwards compatible with all iPhone platforms 3G and above. System requirements include iOS 4 or above and data connectivity. VoiceCal is available for $1.99 at the Apple App Store.

The new website VenueBook.com is being hailed as the Open Table of event planning. The site matches planners with New York City meeting venues. In addition to traditional spaces such as hotel ballrooms and restaurants, VenueBook features bars, loft spaces, galleries, nightclubs and private event venues. It also lists more eclectic and offbeat venues such as a boxing studio, classic car museum, yoga studio and trendy retail shops. It includes up-to-the-minute information of the availability and features of the city’s latest hotspots. Users can custom-build event menus and coordinate details such as decor and music.

Once attendees or exhibitors are at the location, Video Tattoo offers what it calls “the ultimate accessory.” Its extremely innovative name badges — which won a Techno-How award at this year’s IMEX show — programs video content or other custom graphics into highly visible badges that command attention. A line of related products embeds similar devices into articles of clothing, such as jackets. The striking new capability can be used by planners to highlight individual attendees and their role at the meeting, or be used by vendors or exhibitors to promote their products or booth activities. Any moving images, still photographs or graphics can be programmed into Video Tattoo for public display. The devices have already been used at the Consumer Electronics Show and Las Vegas Sands Expo Center. For more information, visit VideoTattooInc.com.

Social Networking Opportunities

Forced to do more with less in a post-recession working environment, planners often need all the help they can get in planning a meeting or event. CanWeNetwork from Austin, TX-based CanWeStudios, is a new and unique mobile business networking tool that can help planners find collaborators and creative talent across the country. Recommended contacts are mined from LinkedIn data on location, skillsets, experience, shared interest and personality traits. Once downloaded, the app runs in the background of a planner’s mobile device to facilitate the quick and easy recruitment of logistical and creative allies. For more information, visit CanWeNetwork.com.

On an even larger scale, the Social Media Command Center from digital marketing agency BarkleyREI helps organizers and hosts of major conferences, conventions and events deploy aggressive and far-ranging outreach efforts designed to maximize the onsite impact of and participation in the event. For example, a Social Media Command Center helped the Kansas City Convention & Visitors Association serve as a virtual concierge for more than 15,000 visitors to Major League Baseball’s All-Star Week last summer. The service delivers a team of highly trained destination marketing and social media professionals who use Facebook and Twitter to initiate, curate and respond to large-scale social conversations created by individual events such as a trade show. For more information, visit BarkleyREI.com.

For attendees who want to network or collaborate, the new app Topi offers the capability to create topic-based discussion boards and an attendee search function, both designed to connect attendees with shared interests. Topi (Topi.com) was conceived as a location-based social networking app, but CEO David Aubespin, a former Google engineer, shifted the product’s focus early on, convinced of its ability to improve the meeting experience.

Attendees populate their Topi profiles by connecting to Facebook. They can also link to their accounts on LinkedIn, Twitter, FourSquare and Instagram. The app automatically suggests attendee users should meet, based on the affiliations and interests pulled from their social media profiles. When users launch the app, they see a list of up to 10 discussion groups. The first includes all attendees, sorted by relevance to the participant, and the rest are custom groups generated by Topi.

Venue Technologies

As new and unique technologies continue to arrive with the regularity of tides, innovative hotels and venues have gotten in on the action in order to set themselves apart by making life easier for planners.

Omni Hotels & Resorts has partnered with eMarketing360 to develop a new planner app optimized for the iPad. Created for proprietary use by planners hosting a meeting at an Omni property, the new app eliminates the need for traditional binders and reams of paper. But it also helps planners expedite everything from menu management to floorplan reviews. Developed from extensive research with a customer advisory board of top meeting professionals from across the U.S. and pre-loaded onto an iPad provided for a planner’s use during the meeting, the app includes all of the key practical details related to oversight and facilitation of a successful meeting. In addition, with the tap of a button, planners can request immediate assistance from a dedicated conference services team. The new tool has been rolled out at some of the company’s premier properties, such as the new Omni Dallas, Omni Fort Worth and Omni Amelia Island Plantation in Florida. By early 2013, it will be featured across Omni’s full portfolio of meeting hotels.

To help planners assess and use its facilities, Florida’s Boca Raton Resort & Club, a Waldorf Astoria Resort, has created Boca Meet 360, a new app that gives planners a detailed virtual tour of the 356-acre complex, including its meeting facilities, levels of accommodations, amenities and leisure activities. The unique, state-of-the-art app uses the built-in functionality of a gyroscope to provide a panoramic floor-to-ceiling view at 15 key points of interest on the sprawling property. Features include high-resolution photo and video galleries, as well as floorplans for meeting and function space. It also features a live Facebook feed and LinkedIn group feature. The new app significantly raises the standard for the range and quality of visual information a hotel should provide to planners.

Market Dominance

While individual vendors promote individual new products designed to deliver specific benefits to planners, the big players such as Cvent continue to strive for overall market leadership and brand loyalty. At the same time, however, some are quickly expanding their capabilities.

Cvent was not a force in the mobile market segment until recently, notes Vice President of Sales Brian Ludwig. However, in 2012, the company aggressively pursued key acquisitions that would shore up its product line. It bought mobile vendors Seedlabs, which it renamed Crowd Torch and targeted toward consumer events, and Crowd Compass, which is aimed at major meetings and trade shows.

But both companies were important innovators whose product development work enhances Cvent’s constantly evolving leadership position in the meetings market.

Meanwhile, Cvent continued to focus on its core strengths. For example, it introduced a new resource management platform, geared toward its strategic meetings management platform, that planners can use to track and manage speakers, meeting space, equipment and vendors. The company also improved upon its integration with Concur’s travel management platform by adding to its real-time flight booking functionality the ability to track and manage hotel and car rental bookings.

But the long-term holy grail for Cvent — and the meeting industry — is mastering the principles of maximum efficiency and comprehensive meeting management, Ludwig says.

“What we want to ultimately be able to do is allow for clean and easy flow of all expense data into our system,” he says. “And that can either come from Concur’s expense management function, or from a purchase card, which a lot of companies and planners use now to control and track expenses. The goal is for the planner to not have to key in anything manually in order to have all of that data at his or her fingertips. And the driver of that is strategic meetings management and the need for companies to really get their arms around their meeting spend.”

In the meantime, however, the impact of technology on meetings is still in its infancy, Ludwig says: “We’re still at the tip of the iceberg. Only a tiny percentage of all meetings have really been touched by mobile technology and real engagement yet. The best is yet to come.” C&IT