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.

Exhibitors: here’s a surefire way to attract more warmed-up prospects to your booth, learn about their needs and bond with them as a festive part of the conference. As a speaker, I’ve forged value-building alliances with exhibitors that you can adapt to your kind of exhibiting.

“Make Every Moment Count” is the title of a CD that a pharmaceutical company gave away at their exhibit booth at two major conferences. 

Half of the CD covered the company’s new product highlights and “how-to’s”; the other half featured companion tips to those I offered in my opening keynote on communicate to connect. The person who introduced me announced the CD gift from the exhibitor. At the end of my talk the introducer drew attendees’ attention to the descriptive gift cards on their seats. He added that they could get their gift (“limited number available”) at the company’s booth right after my talk, and that I would be at the booth for 30 minutes to answer questions.

At the booth, exhibitors offered a bonus gift: a free copy of my autographed book (with the company’s sticker on the front) to those attendees they pre-qualified as possible prospects who agreed to “take three to five minutes” to fill out a 15 question survey. (Speakers are thus able to bulk sale their books to partnering exhibitors as I did.) 

Exhibitors: Identify a popular presenter in the key conference and tradeshow in which you participate. Recruit that speaker to co-present a proposal to conference and exhibit staff at those high priority shows, one that leverages value for all parties. 

For example, your firm could underwrite all or part of a speaker’s fee in exchange for this integrated outreach.  As well, work with the speaker to co-create two PDF e-books, with a print version of each.  Offer the printed version as a meeting souvenir, combining the speaker’s tips and your company’s advice about buying and using your kind of product or service (with a special offer to the first 50 attendees who visit the booth). 

The eBook can have links to many parts of your web site including one with an online survey and follow-up offer. 

As part of your agreement with the organization hosting the conference, a reference to these free souvenirs could be placed on the their web site page with details for the upcoming conference.

Ask that the printed booklet be placed on attendees’ seats prior to your sponsored speaker’s presentation. Provide the second eBook and printed booklet to customers throughout the year.

Reduce your costs and increase your credibility and visibility by joining forces with one to three other non-competing exhibitors who often participate in the same trade shows as you do. Identify the speaker.  Ask that you have adjacent booths. Combine your tips into blockbuster eBooks and printed booklets.  That way you gain a warmed-up introduction to each other’s booth visitors.

It takes a tenth of a second to form an impression. So imagine how difficult it is to hold their interest for five minutes.  That’s a short time for you and a looooooong time to them. For practice in being memorably brief, find or start an Ignite group.  They are popping up all over, including in my hometown of Portland where an early social media mentor of mine spoke – Adam DuVander. Baltimore, Phoenix, Philly and Seattle are hosting them too. As in Pecha Kucha gatherings you are limited to 20 slides, advancing automatically every 15 seconds.

But that’s in a meeting room where you can rely on Powerpoint.  The next stage in communicate-to-connect prowess is to start an Ignite group where slides and PowerPoint aren’t allowed. In fact, ban technology beyond a microphone, if needed.

Yes, images help, but use them to warm people up to your idea before you are with them – or to reinforce it afterwards.  Use precious face time to connect. Anyway, in most everyday situations where you want to ignite a fire under your idea, you won’t have technology on hand, except, perhaps your cell phone. Besides, the most authentic messages happen when we see you saying them  – and come to believe in both.

At your association’s annual conference imagine having two sessions each day where ten  (pre-conference sign-ups ) attendees present their message, one after the other, Ignite-style.

Add a Wisdom of the Crowds feature:  Video the sessions and post them on your association’s site or blog.  Then all members could sign in for the first month after the conference and view and vote for their top five favorites. That might provide meaty insights into what most matters to members.  Plus it’s a palpable way to motivate and honor members for their best and succinctly-presented advice.

Update: Yet if you must use PowerPoint then get Nancy Duarte’s groundbreaking book Slide:ology and turn the pages in awe at the beauty and practicality of her approach. Like presentation zen guru, Garr Reynolds I am so delighted by her approach – and her generosity in including free videos of some of the presentations in the book.

He was in Bangalore and his co-presenters were in San Jose, yet Cisco’s CEO appeared live – on the same stage. How? By using a breathtaking 3D holographic-like technology. They tout it as, “the world’s first real time virtual presentation. Aptly, it’s called TelePresence.

See Sir Richard Branson – live at a London press conference, while standing at Necker Island, his Caribbean retreat. Or preview “the first space age Olympic swim suit.” On Wednesday a Telstra executive in Melbourne, Australia interacted with an audience in Adelaide.

My friend Rick watched a demo and raved about it. Suddenly, this is a competitive space. And, yes, this is Cisco’s big new business, partnering with Musion, yet it will have to cost less to gain traction. Why am I interested in it, aside from the astounding effect of a holographic human presence?

Because:

• The realistic presence it provides means people around the world can gather for what really feels like an in-person gathering.

• The best actors anywhere for a particular play can assemble to enact it, for more people to see – live and later.

• The top experts on a topic can appear on a panel, taking questions from audiences in many places.

• Crowdsourcing becomes easier.

In short, it enables more realistic “face-to-face” group collaboration. Cisco had an I-Prize contest in which anyone could propose novel ways to use this technology. Already it is in 28 countries, lightening the carbon footprint. Five years ago I spoke on Cisco’s global, in-house on-demand TV station. I still get emails from Cisco employees who clicked on their computer to see my presentation when they thought it might help them with a current need. Holographic-like appearances, however takes that kind of live and on-demand capability to a whole new level.

As useage goes up and cost goes down, the world will flatten for more Me2We opportunities. We’ll be able to get a better feel for each other, no matter where we actually are. I can hardly wait to try it.

Skip travel and lodging costs. Meeting Planners’ Alert:

For PCMA, SGMP, MPI, ASAE, NSA,MeCo, MeetingsNet, MiForum and others in the meeting or communication professions: bring the most relevant speakers and panelists to the same stage – no matter where they are standing in the world. Enable “attendees” to talk with them. Encourage convention centers and conference hotels to provide this capacity, offered by Cisco, HP or other firm. Set the bar higher.

First, Cisco CEO John Chambers is providing it for large conferences, concerts, events, awards ceremonies, multi-site meetings, high level briefings, retail, museums and product launches – even movies and soldier/family conversations. Then Chambers wants to bring it to our homes. (Well, not every room, in the home.) Stay tuned.

Our trend towards more collaborative conferences and other modes of knowing and learning has happened largely through the use of new technology. The pace of change in online tools is overwhelming even for geek gurus (no I am not one). From three of my heroes on making education more entrancing and available (George Siemens, Peter Tittenberger and Terry Anderson) read about six tech-based models that enable people to get more out of conferences:

1. Adding Technology to Conferences
2. Augmented Conferences
3. Blended Conferences
4. Simultaneous-Blended Conferences
5. Online Conferences
6. Unconferences, BarCamps, and Open Spaces

The article also covers the use of technology to support your conference planning. Consider using them for post-conference follow-up and yearlong “Learning Together” community- building as well. These models augment the tech expertise that Corbin Ball, Ben Martin and Jeff De Cagna provide conference planners.

Then if you, too, have a thirst for learning, peruse Mission to Learn’s fantastic list of more than 100 places to learn free online (hat tip to Robin Good) and see how to inject more cross-learning and fun into a fast-paced meeting.

Last Friday the members in my audience at EMC Venues’ MEET voted on questions I asked and saw their cumulative votes appear on the screens on either side of me soon thereafter. They loved it. I only wish audiences had more ways to share and compare all year long. That’s what moms in medicine are doing.

Whatever your profession or industry in which you work you probably get invited to join one or more professional associations. And if you have attended the annual conference you know, first-hand, the power of meeting peers face-to-face to keep up with the latest trends in your work world. Plus some of your closest friendships may have blossomed through gathering at those conferences year after year. That is especially true if you are a boomer or older. Let’s not fall into the Status Quo Trap.

Younger generations are accustomed to text messaging and emailing each other all year long, checking out each others’ profiles on FaceBook, LinkedIn and other social networks. In short, they are forging friendships and finding work contacts online. In fact, many of those entering college need a workshop to learn how to meet and talk in person.

So, like many sea changes, this gap between how people are used to meeting and collaborating is a two-edged sword. The burgeoning use of social media creates discomfort and opportunity. As a frequent speaker at conferences, I have been advocating more interactive meetings, storyboarding them to make them more meaningful and involving social media to deepen the in-person connections all year long. That’s why I wrote about the threat that association professionals face from “outsiders” if they don’t provide more ways for member to interact, as these have done. My fellow MeCo members have picked up the discussion as have Jon at Confabb, Amanda Fretheim Gates and Ben Zeitlin of West Glen.

As my friend Jeff Davidson notes, in this time of increasing social isolation we crave face-to-face meetings with our peers. The high tech of social media is getting user-friendly – even for non-geek boomers like me. That means the high touch of the conference experience can only get better as people can continue to get to know each other when they are not face-to-face.

I’m optimistic. Many of us predict that 2008 will bring a rush of social media adoption among some associations, opening the floodgates for more member organizations to jump in the pool. Certainly if a social media maven goes after an association’s members with an alternative offering, more meeting professionals will be shocked into taking a quick primer on blogs, wikis, vlogs, podcasts, social networks, online groups and more. Dan Parks, Corbin Ball, Joan L. Eisenstodt, Jeff De Cagna and others are leading the way for us. Research indicates this adoption will build trust and innovation. Not a small goal for 2008, eh?