Anyone seeking more meeting participation may be discovering new ways by attending Obama-led town hall meetings. Some opinion leaders find Obama’s inferred endorsement of google tools jarring. Yet the three he’s using would be helpful to most any event planner, cause advocate, online entrepreneur or global team leader.  They are free, easy to use and scalable:

  AppEngine (a platform), Google Moderator (a tool to vote on which questions should be asked) and, of course, YouTube (for spreading the show – I mean meeting). At the platform you can invite participants to submit and to vote on the questions they want asked.  Yes, it’s crowdsourcing the “best” questions. And priceless visibility for google, with Katie Stanton’s involvement, when the questions are directed at Obama and on a top-of-mind-topic, the economy.  Enable participants to gain bragging rights - as they do for the town meetings - by inviting them to video themselves asking their question.

Recession coming? Perhaps the best way to keep briefed on your profession is to attend the annual conference of your peers. Yet wouldn’t you enjoy the event more if you had a greater voice in the meeting design and formats, topics and speakers, participation and networking opportunities and ways you could meet online before and stay connected afterwards?

In this podcast hear about trends and fresh ideas for meetings from respected pros who cover all kinds of meetings for MeetingsNet. Meet The Meetings Group Editorial Director, Betsy Bair and Face2Face blogger and Association Meetings Editor Sue Pelletier. They’d just returned from PCMA’s big conference in Seattle, with fresh ideas on how to “Collaborate, Communicate, Innovate.

Betsy enjoyed a Pecha Kucha session.

… what attendees are saying about their presentation – in real time, no less?
You better pay attention to what that crowd in front of you may be silently texting to each other, according to one thoughtful social media thought leader, Rohit Bhargava. In fact, he gives six reasons why you should follow the Twitter conversation in your audience. And, he advises you, to “monitor that stream of Twitter conversations” at the event, use Twemes.

Whew! Imagine if you are on a panel, listening to the panelist who’s speaking before you. Would you be madly tracking and responding to what the audience is saying? Would you modify your panel presentation? Would you alert attendees to your willingness to respond to their comments? That might motivate them to text all the more furiously with “final” thoughts. Are you sure? Even an uber-geek can goof up sometimes with this new two-way conversation.

The rippling stream of conversation could turn into rushing tsunami waves. Bad metaphor, I know, as this phenomena is simultaneously multi-directional. (Now some – not all – meeting planners who reading are this are hanging their heads in despair over the inevitable chaos, the lack of control.) Recall the audience mutiny?

Boomer that I am, I maintain that real time interaction via texting is not helpful for all conferences. It depends on the demographics of the audience. For example ….

1. Are they social media tech-savvy (or social media fatigued)?
2. Is your topic related to the use of social media?
3. Does the audience skew young or is it mostly boomers and older?
4. Can you handle real-time feedback? That is, can you ….

• Read an individual’s comment(s) or,

• More intensely still, track a “thread” of comments from attendees

• Respond to their comments or questions

…. all without losing your train of thought?

It’s not just a matter of ability to concentrate, remember and think well on your feet. Multitasking reduces our performance ability, per some studies. Yes, I admit, as a social media-loving, tech-goof over-50, I am a bit defensive. So here’s tips to tweak your Twittering at conferences and elsewhere. If it does improve (a big if) then Twittering will spread. Or audience attendees and others will simply continue their conversations at Pownce or Jaiku. Either way I’ll struggle to catch up.

Yet for the tech-savvy and the non-geeks reading this, Rohit’s book is an idea-packed must-read for burnishing your brand and staying authentic: Personality not included. Then follow-up with Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff’s excellent, Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies.

(Wondering what social media is? Commoncraft literally shows you in four minutes.) For more ideas for making meetings interactive see these posts.

… rather than restless to leave. Recruit a diverse conference planning committee with different perspectives on the attendees and brainstorm fresh ways to get people actively learning, collaborating and considering ways to follow-up later with what they learn at your meeting. Here are four rather obvious yet rarely-used ideas that cost little to implement.

1. Adopt varied meeting formats for learning and idea exchanges between attendees.

Two benefits: meetings are interesting and enable people with different temperaments, needs and interests to get to know each other better, learn in different ways and find others with common interests.

Plus bring in more experts from way outside the ostensible topic/industry/professional area of the meeting attendees to get a fresh perspective. What reporters, financial analysts, seasoned exhibitors research, cover and/or serve the kind of people at the meeting? They can offer fresh, perhaps even brash advice, forecasting and other insights.

Examples:

“Our Best Advice”

Invite a panel of three outside experts to offer their best three tips in seven minutes. Invite a popular leader in your organization to act as moderator, introducing the session and it’s format, invite attendees to write their questions as the panelists speak – for volunteers to pick up – and to ring the “seven minute bell.” After the panelists are finished with their fast, to-the-point advice, the MC will read the questions asked by attendees. As the attendees leave this 60-minutes session, they are given a handout with the written version of the panelists’ tips and their background.

“Meet the Experts”
Provide three 30-minute expert-led round table sessions in a ballroom.

At the end of each session, ring a bell to notify attendees to move to the next table. Attendees reserve their seats for each session via online early registration and/or upon arrival at the meeting. NSA chapters regularly offers a version of this popular format called Meet the Pros.

2. Create more memorable multi-sensory moments that reinforce the meeting’s “storyline.”

Storyboard more of the moments along the main paths and byways that attendees will walk, from the moment they enter the meeting space and between meetings. Involve more sensory cues and points of interest, from “Burma Shave-style sequential signage along hallways to localized “overheard” audio conversations.

3. Create digital audio and video recordings of meeting sessions + on-site interviews with experts.

Cover attendees, exhibitors and speakers. Assign staff and invite attendees to interview others – perhaps with a suggested list of questions – with audio recorders (I favor the tiny Olympus) and video (I dream of getting the Flip Video that Kara Swisher uses). Also invite attendees to blog the meeting. In the hallways and waiting and gathering areas, show this coverage. Post conference, offer as streaming downloads from your Web site, perhaps free to some (members, attendees or employees) and for-fee to others (non-members, non-attendees and the general public).

4. Provide year round follow-up for continuous learning and community-building.
Before the conference announce a contest and/or way that people can keep in learning and interacting with each other so that the conference/meeting is the launching event of for the “community” of attendees.

Build on the learning, sense of affiliation, peer-to-peer idea exchanges and other collaboration. More firms, associations and other organizations should consider adopting the features of an online social network or be at risk for losing their members’ (or employees, customers or other kind of meeting attendee) top-of-mind attention/loyalty.

Then provide companies more value. In one of those “Why didn’t I think of this earlier?” moments the leaders at Professional Convention Management Association adopted a simple and very successful change.

They invited would-be sponsors to underwrite events and other programs throughout the year, not just at the annual conference or other one-time opportunity. The basic offer to major companies: Pay more for a multi-year time period and gain considerably more “touch points” with members. Result? PCMA tripled its revenue in just three years. Now that’s a great example of SmartPartnering. Done wrong, sponsorships annoy or even anger those one seeks to serve.

For more ideas on doing it right read this interview with sponsorship expert, Emily Rogers. Any size or kind of group could adapt this model to reduce costs and to offer more value to attendees.

PCMA is even co-hosting a conference on the topic (with sponsors of course). And the current issue of their magazine, Convene, features a cover story on how cities are partnering to offer meeting planners a package: rotate your annual conference between our cities and, together, we will offer you extra value. SmartPartnering can be efficient, profitable and contagious.

Want still more ideas on how to attract sponsorship money while making your meetings more interesting – and less expensive to attend?