“You can’t expect to meet the challenges of today with yesterday’s tools and expect to be in business tomorrow.”

As Meeting and Event professionals it is easy to get caught up in the world that we know. We spend a great deal of time managing, or better yet, taming, the chaos of the group mind. The process of planning an event is time consuming and challenges us to be creative on a far larger level than many of the attendees ever realize. In many ways it makes perfect sense for us to continue to plan and execute our events the same way we have in the past.

Or we can challenge ourselves to learn something new and be involved in the future of our industry. It is possible for the two worlds of technology and face to face meetings to co-exist and it is our responsibility to find the ways to help our compatriots and our attendees to embrace the new media available. It is our job as meeting and event professionals to embrace new technologies and use them as tools for increasing engagement and excitement, which ultimately drives more interest to our face to face events.

This is the true power of New Media! It builds excitement and engages our attendees in ways we could never have imagined.

With that said, here are four specific arenas that all Meeting and Event professionals work in daily and small collection of tomorrows tools for each. I invite you to look into them further and see how you can involve them in your event planning and execution. You may be surprised by the benefits you experience.

Collaboration

GoogleWave: GoogleWave invites are becoming more prolific and will continue to grow as the “go to” tool for collaboration. It is “a personal communication and collaboration tool” that is a web based. It is designed to merge e-mail, instant messaging and social networking. It is the strong collaborative and real time focus that allows a user to share documents with a wider group of people. Imagine your brochures, lists and registration materials being created and developed live.

Box.net: Where Google wave is about creation, Box.net is about sharing. Putting all of your materials into some of your favorite Social Networking applications and making it easy to track what was downloaded, when and by whom. it further promotes environmentally friendly practices by making all your materials easy to access.

Sourcing

Elite Meetings.com: a one stop shop for those looking to find a high end property for their next meeting or event. The site is comprised of property descriptions for over a 1000 properties across North America. It provides an in depth look at the available properties, detailing the most commonly requested information on hotels and resorts.

SpeedRFP: Keep an eye out for this one. We’re building a better mousetrap and you can be sure this thing is going to revolutionize the electronic RFP process by making it easy to use and reliable.

Promotion

Video: YouTube, Vimeo and U-Stream are all great examples of mediums that you can use to share video. If a picture is worth a thousand words then video is easily worth a million. It captures the emotion and excitement of your event through the people that are involved. Get creative and use Video’s to drive new attendees and build excitement among those who are committed.

Blog: It’s free and very easy to set up. From Wordpress to TypePad or Blogger, you can use a blog to post content about the event and share updates with those who are involved. Post photos, provide tips, updates and whatever else you can imagine. It’s easy to draw people into your work and make them a part of the community when you are using a blog.

Engagement

Social Networks: There is no doubt that Social Networks are changing our industry at a break neck pace. Use Facebook, Twitter, linkedIn and i-Meet to create a feeling of community and deliver the content you have created on your blog and the videos your are broadcasting. These are quickly becoming the “go to” channels for updating attendees while at events because they are available to everyone via mobile devices. Look for the opportunities to build a basic platform and identify your standards of communication.

Live Feedback: Keep attendees engaged through the event by using live feedback tools like Twtpoll and Polldaddy. They provide instant feedback on sessions, speakers, dinner or whatever you decide to get feedback on. Again, they are easily accessed through social networks and provide unbiased feedback that you can use to refine your events.

Tomorrows Tools are available today and will continue to evolve. They are exciting, engaging and fun to use. It is up to us to bring these tools into our industry and look for the ways they can re-define what we do.

What do you think?