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.

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. The same ideas can be applied to face-to-face events.

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).

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.

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 [...]

If there was any common thread running through MTO Summit in Chicago last week, it wasn’t the technology innovations or even the focus [...]

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 [...]

Remember the days when you attended a trade show with a hard copy of the show program and a [...]

Reviewing event technology options can be both invigorating and exhausting. The good news is that there are many different online and mobile productivity tools [...]

Almost two weeks after Social Fish Maddie Grant, Lindy Dreyer and 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.