Corporations across all industries are calling for the consolidation of their meetings and events organization-wide. Certain's Dr. Rick Borry discusses how event management software plays an important role as corporate meeting and event planners face this challenge.

Enhanced Access Permissions. Sounds a little boring, right? I would rather be thinking about the really fun event planner stuff like whether I should choose the Moroccan-French or the Pacific Rim Fusion catering menu for the symposium luncheon.

But as a meeting and event planner, you know too well that all the fun stuff runs even smoother when you have control over every detail from the beginning, including getting the right groups of attendees to register for those fantastic events you are planning.



With the latest release of Certain Registration software, Version 4.15, event planners can gain further control over who can access a registration form within an event by taking advantage of new Enhanced Access Permission options. The options include OPEN and INVITATION ONLY in addition to RESTRICTED BY REGISTRATION STATUS option.

• OPEN allows anyone to access your registration form regardless of registration status, without a password. OPEN permission allows your attendees to register, create a profile and add guests if the form is setup to allow additional registrations. This is particularly great if you have a broad attendee base to promote your events to and a diverse program offering to attract large groups of people with varied interests.

• INVITATION ONLY allows you to make registration forms accessible only to attendees who have been specifically invited. This Enhanced Access Permission option works well for a much targeted event that will be attended by people with specific interests or professional credentials. Training program coordinators will also like this option, as it helps manage what programs people can register for as they progress through their training paths.

• RESTRICTED BY REGISTRATION STATUS allows you to limit registration form accessibility to specified status levels of attendees within a particular event. When you have even more complex attendee types in for incentive based events or extensive training programs, this Enhanced Access Permission option is essential.

All new registration forms created in Certain Registration will default to OPEN, while existing forms set to RESTRICTED BY REGISTRATION STATUS will retain those permissions.

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Email has become the standard tool for event planners to communicate meeting, event and conference details with their attendees. It is quick, convenient and even green. With Certain Registration's high degree of customization the possibilities for creating dynamic email communications are great, but first email messages have to be optimized to make it through SPAM filters and get read by recipients.

Here are some best practices passed on from savvy business-to-business email marketers and some sound off from Certain Registration Chief Software Evangelist, Dr. Rick Borry.

1 - Get to the point.
Keep messages short as people typically skim emails to decide if they want to read deeper.

2 - Avoid big images or attachments.
Messages with large images or attachments often do not make it past spam filters.

3 - Stand out.
Make sure your subject line is compelling. Personalize your subject lines. This could make or break your chances of ending up being deleted. (For example, “Cindy, registration is now open for the 2008 Miami Tech Conference” as opposed to something vague like,“Tech Conference Registration.”)

4 - Personalize emails.
Connect with each addressee by personalizing greetings and content.

5 - Test before sending.
Send yourself and another colleague test emails to proof how content and formatting will look to your recipients.

6 - Pay attention to timing.
The best times to send email communications are Tuesday through Thursday. If you send on a Monday when people are sorting through emails from the weekend, yours may get lost in the shuffle.

7 - Plan ahead.
Plan all your communications strategically – sending too often may annoy, while too infrequent may leave you forgotten.

8 - Always include “Opt Out” instructions.
Not having an option for people remove themselves from your mailing lists is illegal.

9 - Avoid spamming.
Make sure your communications are up to date with the current CAN-SPAM ACT. Information can be found on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) website.

10 - Learn from the results.
Track and review the results of your email communications to improve on what is working and what is not.

Dr. Rick Borry of Certain Software, Inc. discusses email communications and online registration webistes.....

As the old phrase says, "knowing is half the battle." In the whirlwind life of professional conference planners, this saying couldn't be more true. With site visits to make, vendor contracts to negotiate, and confused registrants calling every two minutes, getting an overview of the meetings season and of the money that's being spent may sometimes feel like an unattainable goal.

Certain Registration helps event planners get control of the big picture by offering information about key meeting factors, and by allowing for strong Consolidation reporting across all events done that year (or multi-year). We offer:

1. A unified and easily navigable Events List that lets you see which events just finished, which are upcoming, where they are occurring, and how many people have registered so far for each.

2. Custom Event data fields to track extra details about each event that you may need, whether it's a departmental code, a travel partner, or the on-site manager's name and phone number.

3. Consolidation reporting that helps you see activity across multiple events at once. How many events did you do by location? How many registrants went to multiple events? What was your average attendance this year vs. last year?

4. Event budgets with General Ledger codes specific to your accounting practices. We let you build your own General Ledger matrix for spend categories and codes, or you can use ours. Then track your projected and actual spend for each meeting, and report on the numbers across events using Consolidation reporting.

In subsequent releases, we will introduce new functionality to help you get even more control. We'll let you track meeting requests and approvals, use an automatic budget estimator to easily build better budget estimates, and assign meeting planner staff to events, all within one set of tools.

Stay tuned to our Certain blog for updates on the latest in our Meetings Management product suite.

When it comes to creating software simulation and training, I’ve found Adobe Captivate is easy to use and makes polished video tutorials. Not only can you demonstrate how a software application works, but you can also create interactive simulations for learners to practice using the application. In addition to screen captures, Captivate also provides quiz and survey features and is flexible enough to allow you to import images, audio, Powerpoint slides, and Flash files.

I've seen training videos produced using TechSmith’s Camtasia, but it doesn’t offer the simulation component that helps make for a more active learning experience. As a learner myself, I find simple demonstrations fall short of effective instruction. If you are mainly interested in recording a presentation, then Camtasia might work well for you.

As an online registration technology provider, Certain Registration is committed to giving customers the tools and solutions you need to manage events successfully. That’s why we’re developing on-demand training videos to help your registration specialists and meeting planners get up to speed quickly on our application. Look for our videos online later this spring!

Nothing is better than hearing about 2008's trends in online registration technology directly from the source. Dr. Rick Borry, Chief Software Evangelist for Certain Software, Inc. has been behind many of the innovations in Certain's product line over the years and is an influential authority on all things technological for the meetings and events industry. Dr. Borry sounds off on his take on "hot trends" for event planning software, social networking and what meetings and events planners really want at the end of the day.

I enjoy being a Supplier member of The Society of Government Meeting Professionals (SGMP) and associating with meeting planners from federal, state, and local government as well as other providers of meeting services and facilities.  

Through the Annual Education Conference and Tradeshow, monthly Chapter Meetings, and Special Events, planners and suppliers come together to review the latest trends in meetings management.  It is very rewarding to help meeting planners improve the quality and cost effectiveness of their meetings.

On February 5, I participated in “Achieving Gold” the goal for this year’s National Capital (NATCAP) Chapter‘s 11th Annual Winter Meeting & Tradeshow.  The event included a selection of sessions designed to keep planners and suppliers on top of current issues.

Sessions included “What is Sarbanes Oxley?” an explanation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX ) and how meeting professionals must comply with this law from an ethical standpoint.  For instance, disclosing information that might provide one potential contractor an edge that others do not have; or bundling meeting services such as morning and afternoon breaks, internet fees, gratuities or perhaps even registration fees.  The bottom line is accountability.  Are we as meeting planners and service providers putting ourselves and our partners at risk of an ethical violation of SOX? Read more.    

A very hot and chic session topic was the “Greening” of Government Meetings.  This session demonstrated how the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is leading the way by making environmental responsibility a common business practice.  Did I mention the government has an acronym for anything and everything?  EPA is changing their contract acquisition rules to give preference to meeting services and facilities that consume less and manage resources in environmentally positive ways.  These topics were a perfect segue into the Trade Show.  I enthusiastically talked with attendees about the immediate benefits of using Certain Registration to “Go Green”.  Read more.

Mission accomplished.  I Achieved Gold!



David Dzergoski and Jeff Wilson from Certain talk with an attendee about "Going Green."

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As an online registration provider, we strive for 100% availability of our event management software.  This is very difficult to achieve in practice, and we occasionally have outages ranging from a few minutes on all servers to intermittent performance for hours affecting only specific customers.  Our customers' reaction to these hopefully infrequent episodes ranges from understanding ("oh well, I have a lot of other things to do right now - I'll check back later.") to complete outrage ("I'm losing paid registrations!  I have to get this report to the hotel now!").

This article, On-Demand Outages the "New Normal"?, takes the interesting view that as people become more familiar with daily usage of Software as a Service (SaaS) such as our online registration technology, users will realize that these outages are inevitable and they will adjust their expectations and actions during the occasional downtime.  No one is immune to the problem - the article references recent and period performance troubles at major SaaS companies such as Salesforce, Blackberry, and Google Apps.

I remember the early days of Windows when the "blue screen of death" was an unwelcomed part of my daily routine.  Reboot, stand up and stretch, login, get some water, wait for the programs to open, pick back up where I left off.  The blue screen probably did me more benefit ergonimcally by interrupting long sessions slouched over at my PC than they caused me harm - that is, once I learned to control my temper.

I'm not excusing poor performance or saying that we won't get better (as we have in the past).  But maybe we as users need to begin to consider intermittent outages of SaaS as unavoidable and expected, and thus we should create contingency plans for what we will do when they happen (besides freaking out). 

Here's to effective meeting management!

Whether you work in sales, training, product design, or another functional area, you’ve probably led or participated in webinars or web conferences. The webinar is a widely used method for communication and training these days. Although everyone’s using web conferencing technology and meetings are easy to setup, we mustn’t forget that it’s a real event. As a meeting or event planner, you’re probably concerned about managing your attendee experience. It’s worth it to do some planning and preparation in advance. Here are a handful of best practices I recommend:

·        Login 10 -15 minutes early to set things up and start on time

·        Ask participants to login 5 minutes early for similar reasons

·        Recommend participants mute their phone lines unless they have questions

·        Provide an agenda and/or key objectives to focus participants

·        Use presentation materials that are clear and concise

·        Pace your speech and content delivery

·        Avoid fast or unnecessary mouse scrolling

·        Check-in periodically with participants to see if they have questions

·        Pose questions to participants to encourage active participation

·        If possible, have a partner with you that can attend to any technical problems

These are just a few quick tips for delivering successful webinars. Here are a couple of more detailed resources you might want to check out:

Ken Molay's Blog on Webinars

National Service Resources : webinar how-to guide

While researching what Youtube clips exist out there on the meeting and event planning industry right now, I chanced upon this retro gem. From the looks of the hairstyles and clunky, old-school computer monitors, I am guessing this is from right around the early 1990's. Not too, too long ago, but definitely the pre-online registration days when things were still done manually with a huge paper trail, a simplistic desktop event management software program and shipments of slick marketing brochures.


 

Fast forward to the glorious digitized world of meeting and events planning in 2008 where business and communication are driven by the powerful engine of the internet. The hard way - manual processes, paper forms and printed collateral - have been replaced by convenient online registration websites that are hard at work for you 24/7.

These days, when you start planning a meeting, event, conference, convention or training program, you have to build a website first. And in this Web 2.0 era with so many great developments in sophisticated web design, social networking and back-end functionality, planners can't just publish rudimentary websites anymore. Your online registration website has to be creative, interactive, secure and.....in short, awesome.

WEB 2.0 FOR AWESOME ONLINE REGISTRATION WEBSITES

According to IBM social-networking analyst, Dario de Judicibus, as quoted from Wikipedia's Web 2.0 section:

"Web 2.0 is a knowledge-oriented environment where human interactions generate content that is published, managed and used through network applications in a service-oriented architecture."

This can be applied to create more appealing, effective, relevant and secure online registration websites.

TIP 1 - Custom design your websites

Even the least design savvy of people have grown accustomed to sleek, professional web design, so making your online registration websites have an engaging and sophisticated look & feel is just becoming a given. As a meeting and events planner, you are either creating a unique buzz around a specific special event or you are trying to conform to your client or organization's corporate branding standards. Good Web 2.0 online registration site design does not mean you need an art school or marketing degree, just access to an application that allows you to customize every element.

The number one guideline for Web 2.0 and beyond design is calculated simplicity. Make it readable, use clean typography. Use sophisticated color palates. Layout all the elements within a planned grid that makes them visible in the browser without scrolling down. Choose high aesthetic value, quality graphics.

If you aren't doing all this yourself, choose an online registration provider who offers event build services so you can engage a highly skilled web design professional with meetings and events industry experience to design the project to your specifications.

TIP 2 - Incorporate new media elements and relevant links

Well done Flash and video elements can deliver messages to potential registrants. A visionary address from the Board Chairman can put a face on an association and encourage old and new members to participate. A quick tour of a conference destination's amenities could entice more attendees to register. Increase program attendance by offering dynamic thumbnail previews or links to guest presenters' websites.

If you do not have the resources to create original pieces, look for ready-made media elements to incorporate from your host city's visitors bureau, hotel, conference venue or guest speakers.

TIP 3 - Optimize your websites for search engines

Optimizing websites to pop to the top of the list when people are searching on Google, Yahoo or other search engines is key, and even online registration websites can be search engine optimized. Determine what top keywords apply to the meetings, events, conferences or training programs you are marketing. Optimize every registration site by incorporating those keywords into the URL, web page titles, content and metatags. Because URL's are the very first part of any website that get crawled by Google, Yahoo and the other search engines, the ability to customize your online registration website URL is also incredibly huge, and not all software providers offer this capability.

TIP 4- Find ways to incorporate social networking and interactivity

In a sense, online registration is a social networking tool that is designed to bring people of similar interests together to meet face-to-face. But before that in-person meeting, you could offer ways for attendees to network with each other online before and after events. Create a Facebook page for the event, a Google group or a blog where attendees can have conversations with each other on specific topics. While these may exist independently of your online registration websites, offering them as "Meet Other Attendees" links within in your sites or in your email communications could be highly effective.

TIP 5 - Use hosted technology providers

One of the greatest things about how sophisticated meetings and events planning technology is today in the Web 2.0 era is that it is hosted. Unlike the days of paper and desktop applications, the availability of hosted Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions brings meetings and events planning professionals many more advantages. You gain the flexibility of on-demand technology that allows people to register 24/7 and you to track registrations up to the minute from anywhere. Because online registration websites capture so much personal data including credit cards information, hosted solutions offer a higher degree of security as well.

I’m excited that soon we’ll be launching a new set of on-demand training videos for Certain Registration! The first group of videos focuses on registration management topics. Our on-demand videos will help new users hit the ground running as well as offer experienced users the opportunity to refresh their skills with Certain’s online registration software. Meeting planners can watch and interact with the training videos at their convenience. Each video contains narration, animation, interactivity, and chances to review the content at your own pace.

The videos will be available to all Certain Registration customers at no additional charge. As a valued customer, we also supply you with online context-sensitive help, a searchable knowledge base, and live technical support so that you can achieve effective meeting management in no time!