Midwest Meetings took five with Dave Serino, Founder of the Social Media Tourism Symposium, at the Explore Minnesota Tourism Conference to discuss social media engagement, strategy, and more.
 The New Year brings new possibilities for virtual meeting technologies and virtual meeting organizers, reports Michael Doyle, founder of Virtual Edge Institute. As the organization brings together leaders from the digital meeting industry at the 2012 Virtual Edge Summit in San Diego, CA from January 9-12, Doyle released his top seven predictions for the virtual meetings industry for 2012.
1. More movement toward a simpler, “less is more” approach. The trend toward a more simplified, Web page-based graphical interface for online events and meetings will continue in 2012. Platform vendors are moving in the “less is better” direction with their new versions. 2. More embedded event and meeting solutions. Events in 2012 will be open and easily accessible to attendees wherever they are located. Many event and meeting producers will want to take some code and embed their events and learning programs into their existing websites to simplify the attendee experience. photos courtesy Brandon Williams Midwest Meetings took five with Dave Serino, Founder of the Social Media Tourism Symposium, at the Explore Minnesota Tourism Conference to discuss social media engagement, strategy, and more.  Dave Serino, SoMeT Founder Here at Midwest Meetings, we’ve been hearing all about how anybody who’s anybody in tourism should be at SoMeT - that is, the Social Media Tourism Symposium, which took place in Tunica, MS in November.
What’s SoMeT? Just another conference about social media marketing in the tourism industry? Not even close - it’s way cooler than that. For starters, SoMeT is an actual product of social media marketing in the tourism industry. In fact, the whole thing is practically planned on Facebook. Once we got a grasp of just how all-encompassing this event experience is for tourism, hospitality, and destination marketing professionals in the social media space, we started wondering… from a planning and logistics perspective, how on earth do they pull this thing off? So we got founder Dave Serino on the phone to tell us all about the vision, process, and community behind SoMeT, and why this is probably the conference model of the future.  The inaugural IMEX America tradeshow last fall flooded meetings media pipelines with US and global industry buzz, plus tons of post-show survey data. From there, the IMEX Group released its predictions for the 2012 meetings, incentive travel, and events market, including the following.
1. Business is looking up – globalization is increasing. In post-show survey comments, buyers indicated an uptick in business over the last 12 months — though predominantly at a conservative rate and mostly short-term focused. There is also a trend toward more, but smaller or shorter, meetings and events and slight growth in attendance at association meetings and events. by Jim Carroll  I had a conference call with a client with respect to an upcoming leadership meeting. I’ll be helping the organization think about some of the barriers they have toward innovation and what they need to do to overcome these challenges. As we were talking, I scribbled down a short list of some of the issues I was identifying.
tradition: Some organizations are too caught up with the past, which causes them to lose sight of opportunities for the future. culture: Often, corporate culture can be stifling, if not deadening. Some build up an organizational sclerosis that eventually clogs up their ability to try to do anything new. by Justin Locke  One of the reasons you spend the money on a professional speaker is so you won’t have to worry about that part of your event. After all, you have enough to worry about with the hotel, the audiovisual, the food service, the florist, and the volcanoes in Iceland messing up your attendees’ travel plans.
Professional speakers understand that our purpose in life is to make your life as simple and easy as possible, and our highest priority is to make you look good. But you can significantly improve your event by helping your speakers help you, and it’s not terribly difficult or time-consuming to do. One very important step: inform your speaker about where he or she lands in the overall flow of the program. by Justin Locke  An issue that comes up more and more these days when hiring a speaker is that of “electronic transcription,” or simply put, making a recording of a presentation. Meeting planners and speakers both complain about this issue, and a big part of the problem is a lack of communication. Now, I am not an intellectual property lawyer; I am, however, a speaker, publisher, and former union musician. So here goes.
1. When asking for permission to record, be specific as to the scope of your use. Back when I played in union orchestras, recordings were prohibited by default, but folks who hired us could always get permission to record a concert for no extra payment as long as it was only for “archival and study purposes” - or, in other words, for in-house use, and not to be broadcast or sold. Transform Event Workers Into Event Superstars | How well do your representatives represent?11/21/2011 by Amanda Jasmine Williamson  What’s the Wi-Fi password? You asked a doorman who doesn’t know, who asked the lighting technician, who also doesn’t know, and now you’ve been told to look for Jean, who’s wearing a red top and walking around with a folder, but you don’t see Jean anywhere.
The joys of uninformed teams. They waste our time and don’t leave a good impression on our guests. Our lead developer went to a very classy event last week. Despite all the branding and the free giveaways, patrons weren’t impressed. Why? Because they didn’t have the information they needed to get the most out of the occasion. Attendees didn’t know where they were going, what time the speakers were starting, or even where the bathrooms were located. The well-intentioned workers couldn’t help the guests because the organizers hadn’t told them anything to begin with. by Jessica Levin I have a confession: I hate sitting in conference educational sessions. Well, not all sessions. Mostly, I don’t like the sessions where there is a presenter droning on for an hour. I tune out. People tune out.
Recently, I was having dinner with Paul Salinger, who is a thought leader in events working on the Oracle OpenWorld team and serving as president of the Green Meeting Industry Council. Paul asked me if attendees are ready for change or if they’re happy with the same ol’, same ol’. This was a great conversation starter. Many times, when people go to meetings and conventions, it’s the only “break” they get from their regular jobs. They view the experience as a reward and don’t always want to “work.” People have been conditioned to sit back and watch a speaker present. They’re used to being passive viewers, not active participants. People are resistant to change. When it comes to technology, some people love it and others run like it was the devil. by Pat Ahaesy So often I speak with event or conference planners about their annual or monthly events. What I hear is that they’ve been doing the same thing over and over, month after month, year after year. Certainly, some things need to be the same, but maybe it’s time to re-evaluate the programs you’ve been doing.
Are they becoming lackluster? Has attendance fallen? Are attendee survey results showing a decline in results? Quite frankly, are you feeling downtrodden from anticipation of your next conference or event? | 
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