EIBTM’s Worldwide Technology Watch (WWTW) is the meetings industry’s most significant technology award. The winner and four finalists for WWTW 2008 were recently selected from 39 applications. These companies highlight several paths of technology progress for the meetings and exhibition industries.
The winner is …
This year’s EIBTM award winner for meetings technology innovation goes to MeetingMetrics (www.meetingmetrics.com). It was felt by the judging committee that this product provides a systematic and well-crafted way to improve meetings through measurement analytics to determine return-on-investment (ROI).
MeetingsMetrics ROI measurement system features include:
- An integrated pre-meeting/post-meeting measurement process to measure meetings effectiveness.
- A collection of specialized, customizable survey templates to support this.
- A real-time report center for comparing multiple meetings and results over time.
- An online, session evaluation survey with real-time online reporting including the use of mobile technology.
- An ROI survey questionnaire builder and automated online ROI report center endorsed and recommended by the ROI Institute.
- A library of over a thousand meeting/event survey questions.
- Libraries of meeting objectives and ROI business impact measure.
And the finalists are…
Additionally, four finalists highlighted a number of additional significant technology trends:
MeetingMatrix Online Room Diagramming and Meeting Space Viewing (www.meetingmatrix.com)
MeetingMatrix was the first company to provide room diagramming software to the meetings industry. The recent innovations recognized are the ability to view very accurate meeting space online in an intuitive manner coupled with the ability for the meeting planner to create specific, highly customized room setup diagrams using the web (www.activematrix.net). These products integrate with their standard room diagramming software and are accessible via a large meetings facility databases including SiteVisit (www.sitevisit.com).
A2z Gadgets Dashboard Widgets (www.a2zinc.net)
This application provides customizable key performance indicators for meetings and exhibitions in the form of widely used widget technology used by Google, Yahoo!, Facebook and others. Personal web pages (such as iGoogle) are easy to set-up; provide useful and targeted information; and automatically update themselves. The incorporation of this technology into the meetings and exhibition space is felt to be both innovative and beneficial.
VisionTree Rich Mobile Web Information for Meetings (www.visiontree.com)
VisionTree provides onsite meeting information services including the conference agenda, audience polling, electronic Q&A, speaker evaluations and bios, meeting space maps, and CME tracking. This system uses rich mobile web capabilities provided by the new generation of mobile phones such as the iPhone, Android, Blackberry and others. The judging committee felt that this product helps to reduce paper at meetings and highlights the importance of emerging mobile technology in the meetings arena.
Fish Software Real-Time Marketing Intelligence and Measuring System (www.fishsoftware.com/docs/FishSMALL.mov)
This product uses active-RFID (radio-frequency identification) tags to measure precise attendee movement throughout an exhibition hall. This system helps attendees find the products they are looking for as well exhibitors to attract and connect with potential clients. The “tell me more” feature will allow attendees to accumulate data regarding specific products with a push of a button. Installations using this technology will be able to provide and extremely rich data set of attendee behavior including position, exhibit dwell-time.
The field of applications this year was “one of the closest yet,” said Corbin Ball, CMP, CSP, the judging committee chair. “There were many viable candidates who were close to the top. This bodes well for the meetings and exhibitions industry with continued advances in meetings technology innovation providing better services and increased efficiencies for event planners, exhibitors and meeting attendees.
