You might not expect to find analytics or business intelligence at a party, but social networking– and the online tracking of interactions — is making your conversations and connections the next frontier for event planners and conference organizers.
Tools such as Evalu8Pro, SpotMe and IML Communicator are just a few of the new ways to identify and measure, predict and account for who talks with other people at in-person events. Evalu8Pro claims it has analytics for 50 metrics that measure the success of your event – interactions, responses, questions or “What if” scenarios of attendance, charts or graphs. IML produces handheld devices that let audiences interact with conference speakers and records who asks questions or participates in the discussion — and you can see the results later in a download.
Devices such as Minglestick or SpotMe can replace name badges, sharing your details wirelessly and even helping you to find conference speakers or attendees you need to reach. Minglestick is USB-compatible,letting you download the details to your contact manager software. And an event organizer can see the most popular or well-connected people.
How are you measuring the success of your networking events? The biggest stack of business cards isn’t the measure of success any more — it’s time to put some BI (business intelligence) in your F2F (face to face) ASAP.
David Wallace
Spotfire Blogging Team
Image Credit: Microsoft Office Clip Art
