There are plenty of technological gadgets and gismos to keep your delegates amused, but unfortunately, many can be cost prohibitive. One of the most important things to ask yourself before utilising new technology is “do I really need it?”
Too often inexperienced meeting planners forget the basics when it comes to conferences and events and technology by trying to offer too much. One of the simplest ways around this is to deal with people and companies who have the track record to make things happen.
And the other important element is education. It’s great to have the state-of-the-art technology but if nobody understands how to apply it in the right way then what’s the point of having it in the first place?
Australia’s largest event service company, Staging Connections, has made a strong commitment to the training and development of its 1200-plus workforce, ensuring that they get the best out of the tools they are given.
According to Staging Connections’ technical training manager, Tuki Huck, Staging Connections staffers have benchmarked skills through a combination of formal qualifications, internal training and on-the-job experience.
“Staging Connections’ clients are guaranteed that their event will be delivered by experienced, skilled and knowledgeable people who have the expertise and passion to deliver first-class events,” Mr Huck explains.
“This mix of structured learning and on-the-job experience gives our people a unique set of high level skills. It allows them to successfully work with the important components that are a prerequisite to delivering a successful event - technology, operations, lighting, theming and customer service.”
 Training method
Tuki Huck is a perfect example of the results of Staging Connections’ successful training program. He commenced with the company in Auckland as a trainee in 2003 and in 2005 he became a technical director. In 2006 he moved into a trainer/assessor role in Auckland.
In 2004 the company received accreditation as a registered training organisation (RTO) and has administered its own internal training programs since 1999.
To date more than 150 staff have received qualifications through the RTO accreditation including the Certificate III in Live Production, Theatre and Events (Technical Operations). All new technical crew at Staging Connections across Australia and New Zealand are put through this rigorous training.
Staging Connections’ internal training program, the Technical Operators Performance and Service (TOPS), was initially developed in 1999 as a way of recruiting and training people with a passion for the events industry and aligning that passion with the company’s high service standards.
The program includes a course for technical operators; starting with a six-month trainee program which builds into a four-year program for level one, two and three technical operators. Training programs covering customer service, leadership, account and venue management are in place for event staging managers. The goal of these training programs is to develop a team of highly motivated people with the knowledge, skills, expertise and passion to deliver the highest standards of service to both internal and external customers. All trainees are supervised on the job by a senior technician.
“Our internal training covers customer service, in-depth knowledge of lighting, audio and vision equipment, the events industry as well as occupational health and safety. It is a structured and professional training program that delivers continuous training to encourage professional development,” Tuki says.
Technology partner training
Additionally, Staging Connections encourages its many suppliers to deliver specialised on-site training which supports new technology acquisitions and ensures that its cutting edge technology is used at its highest performance to achieve the right outcome for events.
Spotme is described as part messaging tool, part people finder, part program-at-a-glance, part navigation system, part voting keypad - and a whole lot of fun.
According to CEO of ICCA, Martin Sirk, Spotme accelerates communication and networking. “Our participants accomplish more in less time,” he said.
By the time the dust cleared and the conference was over participants sent more than 21,000 messages, exchanged 13,000 business cards, completed more than 2000 electronic feedback forms, and wrote more than 1000 notes, all on their Spotme devices.
“Our delegate feedback is still coming in, but the provisional evaluations for Spotme are incredible: almost 50 per cent of the respondents rated it as ‘excellent’, and almost 40 per cent rated it as ‘good’,” Mr Sirk said.
“Only one person indicated that they didn’t use it during the Congress.”
And, Spotme offered ICCA much more than networking opportunities. Spotme was a communication platform for distributing information and gathering valuable data including:
• The ICCA staff substituted paper-based feedback forms and the schedule-at-a-glance with electronic versions in Spotme.
• More than 70 pages of content were available in each Spotme device - including the silent auction items and eight maps.
• During an interactive panel session, Spotme’s audience response capability was used to gather live feedback from the audience.
• In education sessions, ICCA staff scanned participants that sought continuing education credits. These participants then received an electronic receipt on their Spotme indicating that they had attended the session and earned credit.
To learn more visit www.spotme.com.
Tour Hosts launched the ePresenter technology to the Australian conference industry at The Australia and New Zealand College of Radiologists (RANZCR) 58th Annual Scientific Meeting.
It is said to enable scientific research that was previously reproduced on paper posters to be presented in electronic format.
According to Tour Hosts, the presentations enjoy greater longevity and can be more easily shared between delegates. Benefits of the technology include:
• Enabling authors to edit posters via a dedicated web-based portal;
• Ease of poster review for scientific program committee approval process;
• Ability for other delegates to request a copy of the poster; and
• Sponsorship opportunities for related business sectors.
Tour Hosts managing director, Roslyn McLeod, says the beauty of the ePresenter technology is that it made posters more accessible, even after the event was over.
“Hard copy posters demand a lot more time in their presentation format and authors who forget to collect them have sometimes lost their valuable research,” she said.
“In addition to the ability for delegates to request copies of specific presentations, RANZCR will now make some of these available through its own educational portal after the scientific meeting is finished.”
RANZCR CEO, Don Swinbourne, said they were an exciting initiative for the College.
“It makes presentation of research findings easier for authors and more accessible for delegates and College members. It was met with overwhelming enthusiasm and [we received] requests for it to be available at next year’s ASM,” he said.
If you are interested in receiving a demonstration contact Fiona Grant on fgrant@tourhosts.com.au to arrange an appointment.
Online Registration Services, “Australia’s newest event registration service”, has a software application to capture and manage delegate information with the click of a mouse.
Unlike most web-based registration services, Online Registration Services is said to offer a product with no annual fees and no software for users to buy and install, making it one of the most cost effective registration solutions in the market today. An account manager is also appointed to every client, offering personal service and advice.
Fully customised online forms cater for all types of events and conferences and the use of company logos, graphics and colours allow a “seamless transition” from website to registration page.
Online Registration Services senior account director, Linda Winn, said the new website can be compared with some of the best management systems in the world.
“It is securely hosted in Australia and offers the user 24 hour technical support which is a great benefit for local users,” Ms Winn said.
Event manager with Empowerment International, Rachel Bourke, is a recent convert to Online Registration Services.
“We have previously used other registration services and Online Registration Services is the best by far. It’s not just the system, but the backup support and service from the company which really understands the nature of events,” Ms Bourke said.
Several comprehensive reports are available as part of the application giving users access to meaningful information at any time. Customised reports can be designed to match specific needs.
Delegate payments are collected immediately with instant, secure processing and approval of credit card transactions.
Event managers, both in-house and professional, should visit the website at www.onlineregistration.com.au to find out how this solution could save them time, money and energy!
The internet is a chaotic connection of computers that we have all come to rely on for email, research and marketing. By accessing it your computer becomes one with the vast IP network and you can get mugged, robbed, have your identity stolen and catch a debilitating virus. There are thousands of vulnerabilities and I hope that my article starts you all thinking about these issues.
Viruses are old hat. Most originally came from hackers who simply and maliciously wanted to prove they could write effective code to disable a computer. There are now more than 100,000 viruses (plus thousands that are polymorphic – can generate new variant viruses). They exist in all computing platforms – Windows, Mac, Linux, even for mobile phones, and you can get a virus simply by going on-line and visiting a website or placing a floppy/CD/DVD/USB in the computer. The average anti-virus program (like AVG, Norton and Trend) can catch most of these before they do any real harm.
Spyware is the new uber-threat on steroids and it is driven by organised crime that can and does profit from infecting your PC. There are now 509,988 known definitions that need to be protected against. Spyware is not as easy to detect and in most cases it gets on to your system because you agree to download a seemingly innocent program (“Click on this link”, download Smiley face icons, world weather or time or other dodgy programs, etc), but you can get it simply by visiting websites (now called drive-by infection).
Spyware can turn your PC into a “bot net” allowing your PC to be used to send spam mail (spammers can buy lists of infected PCs – this is where the money is as you pay to send their spam). It can steal your personal information by recording key strokes, or sift through your email address book. It can give spammers more knowledge about you to allow for “spear” phishing (spam emails tailored to use information about you), and it can empty your bank account simply by having your credit card number and a few personal details like date of birth, mother’s maiden name and your address. I defiantly don’t store that information on my computer.
You need specific protection against spyware and on the whole specialist programs like Spybot (free from www.spybot.info) or a commercial product like PC Tools Spyware Doctor (www.pctools.com) are very useful but still don’t provide complete protection.
More recently spyware and virus writers have been concentrating on the distribution method of propagating their “devil’s spawn”. You can now catch a nasty from Skype (voice over IP is the next deadly frontier), from your computer connected mobile phone, from wi-fi at the airline lounge or café and then there are the persistent “blended” threats that use a number of ways to get into your PC. You might visit a website that is really just a facsimile of the real site where the links contain a small program that checks to see if you have any vulnerabilities and if so downloads the right type of hidden root kit that can eventually take control of the computer.
Popular sites like MySpace, YouTube and FaceBook are riddled with these fake sites.
The problem is that blended threats need more than stand-alone anti-virus or Spyware – they need an integrated product that covers all bases like the internet security suites from AVG, Norton 360 and Trend. These suites cover an enormous number of vulnerabilities and check innocuous things like open ports (think of unlocked doors), internet traffic patterns, firewall probes, unusual program activity, wi-fi access and much more.
The meetings industry is a prolific user of the internet, yet most blissfully relies on outmoded methods of protecting their valuable data. Event managers, hotels and suppliers all store thousands of names, mail and email addresses and financial details of their clients. Despite many having good security, a single emailed file from a customer, a staff member browsing an infected website, or logging in from an infected PC at home or an internet kiosk is all that it takes to infect a business system.
If you are in charge of a such a system there is a very sobering read of the 42 page AUSCERT 2006 security report at www.auscert.org.au/render.html?it=2001 – and it is all, sadly, true.
Ray Shaw is an accredited meeting manager (AMM), IT journalist and chairman of Event Planners Australia. To contact him, email ray@im.com.au or visit www.eventplanners.com.au.
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