CSR important for 93% of event planners

According to research carried out by Lime Venue Portfolio, only 32% of respondents would be more likely to book a venue which delivered social benefits.

A total of 60% of event organisers stated they may be more likely to book a venue with social benefits.

The study was conducted at Lime Venue Portfolio’s showcase event during International Confex, and surveyed 129 corporate meetings and events professionals.

While 77% of the companies represented at the showcase had official CSR policies in place, 84% of the corporate meetings and events planners surveyed claimed they consider the social impact of their events throughout the planning process.

Jo Austin, head of sales at Lime Venue Portfolio, said: “The contribution a venue makes to the local area and community is not always at the top of the agenda for event planners, with price, location and value for money being the three main factors.

“However, these survey results show this is undoubtedly a really important area for consideration, and we want to raise awareness of the CSR benefits when booking with a venue.”

However Charlie Banks, business development manager at Sustainable Events, told Event it “would be great if those percentages [of respondents] actually implemented sustainability”.

She added: “I think people like to think they consider CSR, but often location and price are more of a driver.”

Comment below to let us know what you think.

For more in-depth and print-only features, showcases and interviews with world-leading brands, don’t miss the next issue of Event magazine by subscribing here.

Green meetings go mainstream – Hotel News Now

You might be asking, “Wait, I thought we already had a green meeting program?” If you thought you were ready for green meetings, think again.

Green meetings programs have been around for years, and hotels have been able to develop and offer these programs to satisfy limited customer needs. A hotel green meetings program exists under the premise that the meeting client puts in a general request, and the hotel dictates the attributes included in the green meeting offering. The reverse is now becoming mainstream as more meeting planners are requesting green meetings with criteria they obtain elsewhere and are seeking the hotel’s compliance.

Furthermore, large citywide events are now looking to become sustainable events. The hotel is not the venue for these events, yet the event planners are still looking for sustainability attributes in the hotel block. They also use resources generated within their own meeting and event circle. These two circles—sustainability in hotels and sustainability in meetings and events—are now converging. Or perhaps better said, colliding. A significant indication of this is the recent release of the Accepted Practices Exchange/American Society for Testing Materials
Accommodation Standard for Green Meetings. That’s right, a new sustainability standard with not one but two acronyms.

An event planner incorporating sustainability into the program will affect hotels serving as a venue for meetings, where the planner may ask for a range of practices or specifications for the meeting. The requests can be comprehensive or simple depending on the planner, and could include serving local food; serving fair trade coffee; eliminating polystyrene from the buffet stations; having recycling bins in the meeting rooms; not placing individual pens and pads at each seat; not serving bottled water; etc.

A second and emerging effect is for sustainable hotel stipulations for citywide events. This gets more complicated because most downtown chain hotels are involved, not just a single hotel. The green hotel practices requested of the room block also vary, as planners will request between 10 to 150 items at each hotel.

Complexity begins to emerge as multiple clients start undertaking non-standardized surveying of multiple hotels for venue and hotel needs. And while green initiatives in corporate business travel have focused on trying to come up with alchemic value based on carbon numbers, meeting planners are more checklist-oriented. They care less about carbon metrics and more about how each type of material in the waste stream was handled.

Many hotel companies started out with their separate green meeting program. As a result, we ran into the familiar problem of these programs not being standardized while at the same time no one single corporate program stood out as a clear leader the others could adopt.

For those working in sustainable events for a long time the inevitable discussion took root years ago: “We need a standard.” This discussion was carried forth through the Convention Industry Council’s Accepted Practices Exchange, which set up a process to develop green meetings standards for both event planners and event suppliers through an American standard-developing organization and with the help of the Green Meetings Industry Council and the Environmental Protection Agency. This was to ensure rigor, transparency and global acceptance of standards.

Nearly a decade (yes, a decade) later, the first iteration of these standards is finally available for how an event planner, a venue, food-and-beverage menus, ground transportation services, the audio-visual setup, the convention center and even the destination can comply with criteria to achieve Level 1 to 4 of the standard. After being tied up and held in a three-year bureaucracy, the standard for accommodation was just released this month. Regrettably, the three-year bureaucracy did not include major hotel industry input or buy-in.

Now that the standards are out, we are entering into the next headache standards bring: certification. APEX and ASTM are focused on developing standards but not on the process of verifying or ensuring compliance with them. So no formalized, structured process exists as to how exactly an entity or organizer can become certified. Yet the green meetings community is heavily touting them to push sustainability forward in meetings and events. At the same time, companies with business models built around preparing for certification and “officially” certifying things are now pouncing on the opportunity. More noise has been created around a premature set of criteria that lack sufficient technical depth, which is now being certified through a process equally lacking in technical clarity.

As if that weren’t enough, another standard for sustainable event “management systems,” ISO 20121, was released last year and is getting traction among large, global citywide events. Entirely process-based in classic ISO form, this standard built off the successful ISO 14001 for environmental management systems, which itself was built off the equally successful ISO 9001 for quality management systems. So all that good document collecting, policy setting, monitoring, measuring, evaluating and so forth has evolved into a comprehensive program to make a citywide event as sustainable as possible. Though ISO 20121 will unlikely be applied to a small meeting held only within a hotel ballroom, it will be applied to citywide events in which case hotels are key suppliers for roomnights, and thus will be evaluated, engaged, measured, monitored and so forth. And there is a slight chance that an event held at a big-box convention hotel might have the resources to go the ISO route.

ISO 20121, however, brings us back to the earlier dilemma of what criteria to request and evaluate against for venues and hotels. At the basic level, simple survey requests come in to the properties to fill out and send back. More engaged event planners will embed sustainability criteria in to the contract language. And some events have even started rating hotels on sustainability criteria and then publishing that rating in the hotel list for attendees at registration, without reference to any justification for which criteria to use or how to weigh them in a rating. So all this is now bubbling up, while at the same time adding confusion to the majority of (non-green) event planners who now have to try to understand how and whether to use ISO 20121 and/or APEX/ASTM, while at the same time dealing with firms selling the related consulting and certification.

For hotels, this will likely result in two things: First, the clamoring around green meetings and sustainable events will generate more interest in asking for some type of criteria, and help get the industry to pay more attention to issues such as recycling. And second, the lack of clear industry buy-in on one single standard or certification will add another layer to the “which green hotel certification?” discussion. At least we don’t have the case here of every state in the U.S. trying to come up with its own green meetings standard. However, if the American Hotel Lodging Association quasi-endorses the Green Key Meetings rating as the AHLA did with their hotel certification/rating, then the plot thickens because meeting planners are about as aware of Green Key as hoteliers are aware of APEX and ASTM.

The roundabout result of all this is that at the property level, hotels will begin to face the complex landscape of standards and certification criteria coupled with the survey fatigue from abundant sustainability evaluation requests. This coincidentally is what corporate sustainability teams face at every major hotel company. So at least the empathy that builds will enable further collaboration to simplify or streamline the work and enable fair competition.

For now, the hotel-level managerial application to best prep for this is to get a checklist going of everything you do on property that is related to environmental and social practices, keep it updated and have it ready to provide to group clients or use it to respond to a survey quickly. Make sure that list includes key energy, water, carbon and waste performance data. Look more closely into sustainable FB criteria and give a cursory look to the new standard. And if your property doesn’t recycle, then get with the times because we’re going to be recycling a lot of criteria and indicators.

Eric Ricaurte works with the hotel industry and its leading companies to advance sustainability through reporting and measurement. His current activities include consulting, industry engagement, academic fellowship, column writing and publication authoring.

The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of HotelNewsNow.com or its parent company, STR and its affiliated companies. Columnists published on this site are given the freedom to express views that may be controversial, but our goal is to provoke thought and constructive discussion within our reader community. Please feel free to comment or contact an editor with any questions or concerns.

READER SUBMITTED: Marketing Connecticut To Meeting Planners

• Topics
• 
  
  Belief and Faith
  
• 
  
  Stamford
  

Laura Soll, Connecticut Convention Sports Bureau

Statewide

12:10 p.m. EDT, April 1, 2013

Connecticut had a strong presence at one of the world’s largest and most important conferences for faith-based meeting and event planners. The Connecticut Convention and Sports Bureau (CTCSB) and its religious group National Sales Manager Phyllis Anderson hosted a booth at the 2013 Religious Conference Management Association’s (RCMA) 2013 World Conference Exposition in Minneapolis. Joining Phyllis at the CTCSB booth to market Connecticut were Rachel Beardsley, sales manager for the Waterford Hotel Group, and Johane Morency, SMERF sales manager for the Hilton Stamford Hotel and Executive Meeting Center. The three hospitality industry professionals met with hundreds of meeting planners to show them, first-hand, what Connecticut can offer as a site for their upcoming conventions, conferences and meetings.

RCMA works to help planners increase event attendance. Its members currently plan roughly 14,000 faith-based meetings and events of all sorts, drawing in more than 11 million participants each year. More than 700 convention industry representatives attended the event.

For more information about the Connecticut Convention Sports Bureau, call 860 728-6789 or visit http://www.ctmeetings.org.

Copyright © 2013, The Hartford Courant

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Total Event Resources’ Lauren Bettcher Named Best Up and Coming Special …

3/21/2013

Total Event Resources, a leading Chicago meeting and event planning company, is proud to announce that program manager Lauren Bettcher has been named Best Up and Coming Special Event Planner by Illinois Meetings + Events magazine. Celebrating the finest of the meetings and events industry with its annual Readers’ Choice Best of Awards, every single winner in the annual Readers’ Choice Best of Award campaign is hand-picked by the meeting planners, event planners and suppliers who read Illinois Meetings + Events magazine. Lauren is part of the 8th Annual Illinois Meetings + Events 2012 Hall of Famers.

“It’s such an honor to have been nominated and recognized,” said Lauren Bettcher, Total Event Resources program manager. “This award represents my passion and drive and the path I’m on for success. The fact that I’m ‘up and coming’ means I have countless opportunities ahead to garner knowledge and strengthen relationships within the industry.”

A graduate of Grand Valley State University, Lauren Bettcher majored in hospitality and tourism management. At Total Event Resources, Lauren focuses on projects that require creative thinking and alternative perspectives. She is successful at developing corporate programs and events that encompass everything from large-scale national multi-day conferences with high levels of engagement and logistics to intimate corporate dinners or a holiday special event. Kathy Miller, owner and president of Total Event Resources, says “Lauren approaches each event with an enthusiasm aimed at achieving greatness and fun for clients, planners and attendees alike.”

The ambitious 26 year old says one of her favorite parts of her job at Total Event Resources is the time she spends with her growing list of clients. “If we can grab lunch, talk about the event, tie in some personal stories, laugh a bit and end with some action items”, she says. “I’ll walk away feeling absolutely comfortable in our mutually beneficial professional relationship.”

The Best of Awards are designed to honor the cream of the crop in the regional meetings and events industry. The awards are a celebration of the hard work and above-and-beyond service of suppliers who help planners be at the top of their game. The winners will be recognized in the Spring 2013 issue of the magazine.

About Total Event Resources
Total Event Resources, a leading Chicago meeting and event planning company, produces innovative events for Fortune 1000 companies, major trade associations and not-for-profit organizations. Recognized as a PepsiCo Supplier of the Year 2011 and a certified Woman Owned Business, Total Event Resources has been producing award-winning events around the world since 1995.

Total Event Resources, WINNER! 2012 NICE Awards – Best Fund Raiser/Non Profit Event over $75,000 and Best Corporate Event under $25,000. The company has also been recognized with multiple ISES Esprit Awards, Gala Awards, and the Business Ledger Newspaper Annual Award for Business Excellence in the Hospitality Category. For more information go to www.total-event.com.

Contact:
news@exhibitoronline.com

SignUp4 Announces Partnership with Pathable for Improved Event Networking

We can finally offer attendees the simple solution to their networking needs that they’ve been asking for.

Atlanta, GA (PRWEB) March 19, 2013

SignUp4, the leading provider of event management software, announced its new partnership with Pathable, the leading provider of private social communities for meetings and events. The integrated offering enables simple solutions for event planners seeking to provide their attendees a way to network at events.

In the past, event attendees have been largely left to their own devices when trying to find the right people to meet at meetings, and to coordinate a time and place within vast convention centers. Now, attendees are carried seamlessly from event registration through to community discovery and on to meeting scheduling. Pathable’s social networking tool makes it easy for attendees to discover relevant contacts in the sea of faces at an event, and its calendar tool allows for easy session selection as well as private meeting coordination and scheduling. Personalized agenda can be exported to Outlook, iCal or viewed on mobile devices. Attendees build the connections they seek out of the event, while event managers get valuable behavioral data, increased attendance and improved customer satisfaction.

“People attend events to network and meet other people,” explained Pathable’s founder, Jordan Schwartz, “but it’s just hard to do. By integrating these easy-to-use social and scheduling features directly into SignUp4′s registration system, we can finally offer attendees the simple solution to their networking needs that they’ve been asking for.”

Through SignUp4’s Event Management System, attendee details can be imported into the event’s social community incorporating attendee’s Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter profile information to create professional profiles. “Social is an industry best practice and often times getting attendees to network can be a challenge for our customers,” said Matt Curry, Director of Business Development. “This partnership with event management and social engagement will only bring more success to our customers’ events and improved experiences to their attendees.”

About Pathable

Pathable, Inc., a privately held Seattle-based company was founded in 2007. Since that time, it has served hundreds of events, including those of Microsoft, SAP, GE Healthcare, Meeting Professionals International, and Dell, with a private, branded on-line event communities that allow attendees to connect, schedule meetings, choose their session schedules and visit exhibitors for months around a face-to-face event. Learn more at Pathable.com.

About SignUp4

SignUp4 is the innovative meetings intelligence provider offering the highest quality event management and strategic meetings management solutions with an affordable unlimited usage model. The goal of SignUp4′s meetings intelligence is to streamline workflows, simplify and drive registrations, efficiently manage travel logistics, improve communications, and provide visibility into meeting spend for leveraging contract negotiations and increasing ROI. With over a decade of experience, 3,200 users and over 80 of the Fortune 500, we understand the value of your time and events. Learn more at SignUp4.com.

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Forget the printed program: QuickMobile app lets event planners update on the fly

For Patrick Payne, inspiration struck when someone pulled the fire alarm in the middle of a travel marketing conference. In the time that it took to get everyone out of the hall and back in again, the whole conference schedule had to be rearranged. Suddenly, the printed programs were useless, and there was a scramble for iPhones (then in their early years) with which to check the new itinerary.

“That’s when the light went on in my head,” says Mr. Payne. “This could have a big impact on the way that people run meetings and events.”

Today, Mr. Payne is the CEO of QuickMobile, a Vancouver firm of 116 employees that’s made good on that insight. Its apps help some of the world’s largest corporations facilitate in-house conventions and events and move beyond logistics by replacing printed schedules and speakers’ lists with document management and social networking. Its clients include the likes of Google Inc., Intel Corp., Coca-Cola Co., McDonald’s Corp., Microsoft Corp.and Visa Inc.

“In 2010, we did over 300 apps, and last year we did well over 1,000,” says Mr. Payne. Now, presented with clients who run not dozens, but hundreds or thousands of events a year, QuickMobile is reinventing its platform to match.

QuickMobile started off as a purveyor of text-message marketing in 2006, and moved into custom app development after the iPhone arrived in 2007.

Once Mr. Payne hit on the idea of moving into the event sphere, things fell into place. QuickMobile grew its business by producing custom applications for big, one-off corporate events, the kind of internal conventions that could host up to 15,000 or 20,000 attendees. But custom app-making is labour-intensive, and some clients host many smaller meetings, all subtly different. Abbott, a Québec-based health-care company  for instance, hosts 800 training events a year, says Mr. Payne.

So, to grow with demand, QuickMobile has relaunched its core offering as a content management system that companies can use to design their own events. Instead of downloading a new custom app for each event, corporate attendees download one corporate-branded app, which authenticates them and shows them whichever events they’re set to attend. QuickMobile typically charges an annual licensing fee, plus professional services. The firm recently raised $3.3-million led by the BDC-IT Venture Fund.

The single-app approach has also allows QuickMobile to add a social-networking layer to its service, so attendees can seek out attendees with similar interests at an event, forge connections within the company and use that same app to stay in touch once the event has ended. Corporate social networking is a booming space, but Mr. Payne says that the event environment offers a unique opportunity.

“When people go to events, they’re actively in social mode They’re trying to meet people and connect with people,” he says. “It’s kind of a grassroots connection tool for these companies to start to connect their employees together.”

QuickMobile app lets event planners update on the fly

For Patrick Payne, inspiration struck when someone pulled the fire alarm in the middle of a travel marketing conference. In the time that it took to get everyone out of the hall and back in again, the whole conference schedule had to be rearranged. Suddenly, the printed programs were useless, and there was a scramble for iPhones (then in their early years) with which to check the new itinerary.

“That’s when the light went on in my head,” says Mr. Payne. “This could have a big impact on the way that people run meetings and events.”

Today, Mr. Payne is the CEO of QuickMobile, a Vancouver firm of 116 employees that’s made good on that insight. Its apps help some of the world’s largest corporations facilitate in-house conventions and events and move beyond logistics by replacing printed schedules and speakers’ lists with document management and social networking. Its clients include the likes of Google Inc., Intel Corp., Coca-Cola Co., McDonald’s Corp., Microsoft Corp.and Visa Inc.

“In 2010, we did over 300 apps, and last year we did well over 1,000,” says Mr. Payne. Now, presented with clients who run not dozens, but hundreds or thousands of events a year, QuickMobile is reinventing its platform to match.

QuickMobile started off as a purveyor of text-message marketing in 2006, and moved into custom app development after the iPhone arrived in 2007.

Once Mr. Payne hit on the idea of moving into the event sphere, things fell into place. QuickMobile grew its business by producing custom applications for big, one-off corporate events, the kind of internal conventions that could host up to 15,000 or 20,000 attendees. But custom app-making is labour-intensive, and some clients host many smaller meetings, all subtly different. Abbott, a Québec-based health-care company  for instance, hosts 800 training events a year, says Mr. Payne.

So, to grow with demand, QuickMobile has relaunched its core offering as a content management system that companies can use to design their own events. Instead of downloading a new custom app for each event, corporate attendees download one corporate-branded app, which authenticates them and shows them whichever events they’re set to attend. QuickMobile typically charges an annual licensing fee, plus professional services. The firm recently raised $3.3-million led by the BDC-IT Venture Fund.

The single-app approach has also allows QuickMobile to add a social-networking layer to its service, so attendees can seek out attendees with similar interests at an event, forge connections within the company and use that same app to stay in touch once the event has ended. Corporate social networking is a booming space, but Mr. Payne says that the event environment offers a unique opportunity.

“When people go to events, they’re actively in social mode They’re trying to meet people and connect with people,” he says. “It’s kind of a grassroots connection tool for these companies to start to connect their employees together.”

5 Meeting-Tech Trends to Watch in 2013

This list was written by guest contributor JR Sherman, senior vice president of business solutions at event-management technology provider ACTIVE Network (activeevents.com).

After a period of decline prompted by the Great Recession, the events industry will continue to make a comeback in 2013. The Aberdeen Group predicts that corporate meeting and event spend will rise from 9 percent to 20 percent of corporate spending in the next two years.
 
Despite the expected expansion of event budgets, companies will continue to focus on controlling costs,  meaning organizers will need to clearly demonstrate the return on investment for their meetings and events. Here are five major trends that have the potential to increase strategic ROI for events in 2013.
 
1. Smart events will take center stage. According to the Events Industry Council, in 2011, 205 million people attended 1.8 million events that cost more than $263 billion in direct spending in the United States alone. But Aberdeen Group analysts estimate that only 25 percent of organizations maintain real-time visibility into what they spend against corporate budgets. Out of necessity, more organizations will choose smart event technology this year to help them operate more efficiently, better manage attendee engagement and grow their business.
 
2. Automation will help event planners reduce expenses. As event budgets are subjected to greater scrutiny, Strategic meetings management technology will help event planners identify new methods to streamline event-related functions and reduce costs. This will make SMM a key tool in 2013, as meeting professionals strive for more efficiency and transparency.
 
3. Planners will achieve greater efficiency through solution consolidation. In the past, many companies relied on patchwork solutions to handle individual components of events. This often meant eventplanners had to pull information from nonintegrated solutions to see the big picture. Over the course of this year, companies will invest more money in consolidated event technology solutions that offer a one-stop-shop for organizers. Ideal solutions will have the ability to provide organizations with a single view into their strategic meeting management, attendee and engagement management, and vendor sourcing, freeing up event planners to spend less time on manually pulling information from disparate systems and more time creating exceptional events.”
 
4. Event organizers will engage audiences with smartphones. Smartphones are increasingly used to conduct business and stay in touch. Technology research company Gartner Inc. predicts that mobile devices will surpass PCs as the tool of choice to access the web in 2013. Forward-thinking event planners will provide attendees with all-in-one apps they can use to track activities, connect with business contacts and share their experiences via social networks. These apps will also empower organizers to engage with users before, during and after an event.
 
5. Meeting planners increasingly will leverage technology to gather in-depth attendee information. Finding out what makes attendees tick is a crucial part of a successful event management strategy. More than ever before, event organizers will use technology to gather and compile information in real time, which will enable them to adjust their meeting strategy on the fly and demonstrate ROI.

Active Network Names Top Five Corporate Event Trends of 2013

After several years of contraction, the corporate events market is poised for expansion, according to event management software firm Active Network, which today announced five major trends it believes will fuel corporate meetings growth in 2013 by increasing the strategic ROI of events for event organizers and attendees.

“Analysts are estimating that total U.S. spending on corporate meetings and events is expected to rise by 20 percent over the next two years. Yet thanks to the corporate cutbacks of the 2008 recession, as well as pressure from shareholders and constituents for more responsible spending, organizations are expecting more from events than ever before,” the company said in a news release, in which it outlined the following five predictions for the top corporate event trends of 2013:

1. Smarter Events: Only 25 percent of organizations maintain real-time visibility into what they spend against corporate budgets, according to Active Network, which predicts an increase in the adoption of event management technology for the purpose of spending transparency. “In 2013, we expect to see more organizations choosing event technology that helps them increase efficiency, extend engagement and grow their business across various types of events in their portfolio,” said JR Sherman, senior vice president of business solutions at Active Network. “We anticipate there will be an increased demand for technology solutions that ensure ‘smart events’ from the top down — and the bottom up.”

2. Increased SMM Adoption: Industry analysts estimate that 9 percent of the average organization’s budget is being spent on corporate meetings and events. According to Active Network, that means the ability to reduce, track and understand costs will make strategic meetings management (SMM) technology “a vital tool for event planners in the immediate future.”

3. Consolidated Solutions: Although organizations have historically relied on multiple tools to manage the various aspects of events, Active Network predicts an increase in consolidated solutions. “Over the next year, we expect companies will invest more money in consolidated event technology solutions that offer a one-stop-shop for organizers,” Sherman said. “Ideal solutions will have the ability to provide organizations with a single view into their strategic meeting management, attendee and engagement management and vendor sourcing, freeing up event planners to spend less time on manually pulling information from disparate systems and more time creating exceptional events.”

4. Extended Audience Engagement: Smartphones will officially overtake PCs in 2013 as the most common method for accessing the web, reports Active Network, which says “it’s imperative that organizations fully leverage attendee use of these devices before, during and after events.” According to the company, opportunities for extended audience engagement include networking apps, social media integration and lead generation technology. “These mobile apps will offer organizers the ability to obtain real-time feedback on their events and allow them to adjust the attendee experience on the go,” it said.

5. Measurement: According to Active Network, the growing need to justify meetings spend means companies increasingly require hard data to back up their financial decision-making. “Technology makes it possible to gather in-depth information on attendees’ interests and attitudes. With that data in hand, organizers can gauge whether their event strategy is working and alter it if necessary to help maximize their return on investment,” Sherman said. “Organizations will have the ability to take advantage of these capabilities to measure their results and fine-tune their meeting plans to get the most out of every interaction with attendees.”

Topi Reinvents Event Marketing for Conference Organizers and Attendees with …

Cutting-Edge Functionality Fosters Attendee Engagement, Improves Interaction and Enables Rich Conversations

New York, NY (PRWEB) December 03, 2012

Topi today unveiled a first-of-a-kind mobile app aimed at increasing interaction, on-site networking, and fostering rich conversations among and between business professionals attending industry conferences, meetings and events. Complementing its mobile app, Topi also provides a powerful, self-service website for conference chair and event organizers, which allows them to quickly create a branded, customized event, engage with participants via the app, and access rich real-time analytics. Topi is the first mobile offering directly addressing both the needs of conference organizers and event planners, as well as attendees. According to the Convention Industry Council, $263 billion is spent on 1.8 million meetings and events in the U.S. alone.

Topi Raises the Bar in On-Site Networking and Engagement Amongst Attendees

Most people go to conferences and events in order to meet their next business partners, enhance their subject matter expertise, identify prospective hires, seek job opportunities, or simply connect with others who share similar interests. Not only are these connections left entirely up to chance, but the whole experience often feels like looking for a needle in a haystack. Topi was designed to overcome this scenario head-on so participants can maximize their investment in every conference and event they attend. With Topi, connections are the starting point to richer conversations that can begin before an event, throughout its duration, and extend well after the event has concluded.

“Without question, Topi has nailed it with their mobile app for business professionals who want to network with each other in a simple but powerful way. Topi helps people identify relevant professionals with similar interests and then helps foster interactions among event participants in ways no app on the market has been able to do so effectively,” stated Andrew Der, Senior Manager, Digital Strategy Innovation at American Express and co-founder of NYC Marketing Mixer. “Our Marketing Mixer members have been using Topi every month with great reception, and the level of engagement and connections members have made with each other is exceptional.”

Topi’s powerful capabilities put conference, meeting and event organizers in the driver’s seat to steer better engagement and adapt to a more mobile-centric attendee base of business professionals. In 2013, eMarketer is predicting there will be 137.5 million smartphone users in the U.S. ABI Research is projecting that by 2015, three-quarters of business users will be toting smartphones. With Topi, conference and event organizers can easily add a mobile element to stay in touch with their attendees and facilitate more relevant networking amongst attendees throughout the event. Further, Topi supports Android, iPhones/iPads and Windows phones, enabling planners to keep pace with the most popular devices that their attendees are using.

“We’re excited to bring social networking to the conference and meeting industry. We believe the quality of a conference is strongly correlated with how engaged an audience is. At Topi, we’ve spent months understanding how to simplify networking between like-minded people, and have worked closely with conference organizers and event planners to understand what kind of functionality they needed. In the end, participants and organizers together will make any event better,” said David Aubespin, co-founder and CEO of Topi. “While there are other mobile apps aimed at helping meeting and event planners share information for attendees to simply consume, we believe conference and event organizers will welcome the ease, speed, powerful capabilities and data that Topi uniquely delivers.”

For attendees who want to expand their existing professional network to make new connections with other like-minded peers, Topi’s cutting-edge features, include:

• Simple sign-on via Facebook Connect, and integration with Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram and LinkedIn.
• Convenient one-click LinkedIn requests to invite other attendees to one’s network without leaving the app.
• Searchable view of all conference or event attendees, sorted by relevance to each event participant, immediately accessible upon launching the app.
• Automatic suggestion of groups based on attendees’ common affiliations and interest.
• A “virtual lobby” for attendees to follow and participate in public conversations. Topi automatically facilitates group conversation around meaningful contexts, such as field of expertise or topics of interest it identifies as relevant.
• A broad range of conversation options, from private on-on-one or group chat rooms to public ones. Topi also enables the sharing of pictures, recorded audio, rich maps, and sketches.

For conference and event organizers, highlights of Topi’s capabilities include:

• In-app notifications that can be scheduled ahead of time, or pushed out immediately to attendees, providing important messages or updates.
• Instant, secure content distribution so attendees have immediate access to conference materials, such as presentations, the agenda, presenters’ bios, speaker handouts, etc. Attendees can open the documents right in the Topi app, email themselves, or print a copy later for additional convenience.
• Custom geo-fencing enables organizers to draw precise perimeters around different areas or locales, (i.e., a convention center, hotel or building). Attendees within the pre-defined perimeters, whether inside or outside the actual venue, can access the event on Topi, and still remotely participate in conversations, access event materials, etc. Event organizers can establish an unlimited number of geo-fenced areas to support concurrent satellite conference and event locations.
• Poll and survey participants to gauge attendee sentiments in real-time and retrieve graphical results immediately. (No more delays to tabulate results days or weeks later.) All interactions can be scheduled ahead of time or sent instantly.
• Rich audience analytics around attendees’ professional backgrounds, interests, and demographics. Topi will also display aggregated usage data for each conference, which is relevant for organizers seeking insight on how to best update and improve an agenda, for example.
• Twitter-like public chat feed of participants conversing amongst one another is easily viewable on the app. This public chat feed can also be projected onto a big screen during the conference or can easily be dropped as a widget onto the main conference or event homepage.
• Branding with sponsors showcased within a customized event via the Topi app. Organizers can include sponsor logos that rotate within the app and can include a hyperlink back to their respective homepages, or any other website they choose. Sponsors can also work with event managers to push out branded event updates, materials, coupons, etc. directly to attendees.

Availability, Pricing and Mobile Platforms Supported

Topi is available for immediate download. The Topi mobile app is free and fully native versions are available for the iPhone, iPad, Android and Windows Phone. The cost for Topi only applies to conference organizers and meeting and event planners producing events. Formal pricing will be released by the end of the month. Topi is available worldwide with a mobile app already translated in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.

About Topi

Founded in 2011, Topi is the first mobile offering squarely addressing both the needs of the conference organizers, meeting and event planners as well as the attendees. Topi’s breakthrough mobile app puts organizers in the driver’s seat to steer better engagement and support a more mobile-centric attendee base of business professionals. Topi delivers unprecedented capabilities to business professionals who are interested in expanding their existing network with other like-minded peers who share similar interests. Topi excels at enabling engagement and rich conversations between and among business professionals by enhancing the ability to conduct lateral communications via an industry-leading, rich set of interactive features. Based in New York City, Topi is a privately-held company. For more information, interested parties can visit http://www.topi.com.

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Press Contact:

Carmen Hughes

Ignite Public Relations

W: 650.453.8553

C: 650.576.6444

carmen(at)ignitepr(dot)com

For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/prweb2012_topi/event_marketing/prweb10195965.htm