eMeetingsOnline Event Technology and Services

Virtual Meetings Replacing Airlines?

admin — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 21:49:30 +0000

Ron Ashkenas writes another article regarding the disruptive capability of virtual meetings in his blog post “Rapid Disruption’s Next Victim” on the Harvard Business Review at http://bit.ly/9wIf8P. Although I agree there are economic and environmental benefits to virtual meetings, to assume that virtual can replace face to face is a dangerous oversimplification of human interaction.

So much of our interactions are about context. In order to truly understand the people we work with we have to understand where they come from, where they live their lives. This cannot be accomplished via a virtual meeting and the loss of understanding can create dangerous pitfalls for an organization. While in China and Mexico on business I spent a great deal of my time at lunches and dinners that stretched into the wee hours. These personal interactions with my business partners created a sense of camaraderie and provided a way to see what my hosts valued. I far better understood their motivations which helped me better negotiate and to drive projects to completion much more effectively.

In our rush to replace face to face to face with virtual we need to keep in mind that context is vital to understanding. Meetings, conferences, and personal interactions require more context than a virtual meeting can provide.

Easy design solutions for registration websites

admin — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 21:52:33 +0000

The planning cycle for events is getting compressed, yet event organizers still need to create compelling registration websites with branding and messaging.

Although it is possible to include design elements in your eMeetingsOnline registration website to match your existing website branding, it is easy to keep the design work to a minimum by inserting a registration page into your existing commercial website using the IFrame HTML element. You can see an example at http://www.emeetingsonline.com/?page_id=1230. This registration page was created using eMeetingsOnline so you still have the power and organization of eMeetingsOnline, but the page was inserted into an existing website so a completely new web design was not required.

This is a fully functional registration page, go ahead and register to see how it works! You can view the original event registration page on our servers at https://emo.emeetingsonline.com/emeetings/websitev2.asp?mmnno=602&pagename=ATTENDEE.

Microsoft SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas

admin — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:41:40 +0000

Dyanmic Events, one of our customers, has done a remarkable job putting together the Microsoft SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas at Mandalay Bay. It is a great experience for me, a technology professional, to see how meeting planners cope when they are in the trenches. It is one things to talke about ease of use and business processes in a software demonstration or a training but on the floor with lines of attendees waiting or speakers on the stage there can be no glitches, no errors, no mistakes.

It is easy to be proud of the role eMeetingsOnline has played in creating this event, but it reinforces the responsibility we have to produce a solid event management software solution, to be responsive and effective in our technical support, and to back up our customers in the trenches. What technology failures have you faced while in the heat of the battle?

eMeetingsOnline Webinar Series

admin — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:21:32 +0000

New webinars to enhance your efficiency.

eMeetingsOnline is announcing a new series of FREE Webinars designed to help you maximize your proficiency in using your EMO subscription. Webinars will be scheduled monthly with the first session planned for next week, the third week of October.

Date: Wednesday, October 28th

Time: 1:30 PM EST

Speaker:

Russ Hood

This weeks webinar: Building EMO Reporting Expertise.

If you want to improve your speed and build your skill in using the full functionality of EMO’s standard, custom and ad hoc reporting capability, don’t miss the first Webinar, “Building EMO Reporting Expertise”.

Space is limited so make your reservation to attend now by clicking on the link below.

Webinar Registration

You won’t want to miss this Webinar:

1. Get new ideas on using standard reporting creatively to evaluate your meetings and monitor information across meetings.

2. Learn how to add your custom reports to your private standard report inventory.

3. Become proficient with the powerful ad hoc reporting tools and generate your meeting information the way you want to see it.

4. Schedule automatic distribution of status reports to management to cut your routine report generating tasks.

If there are others in your organization that would benefit from this Webinar, please be sure to forward the link along!

Our CEO knows our customers dog’s name.

jfellows — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 22:52:19 +0000

It sounds a little strange but Jack Schaufele, president and CEO of eMeetingsOnline, knows the name of our customers dogs. And cats. And kids.

This may require a little explanation.

You see, Jack gets involved when a customer REALLY needs help. At 3:00AM on the day an event is going live and the meeting planner needs a special report in 15 minutes, Jack gets involved. When meeting registration is opening and the event manager needs style sheet assistance for their event registration website, Jack gets involved.

As the lead developer of eMeetingsOnline Jack knows the software intimately, when an meeting manager is in trouble Jack is sometimes the person most able to provide a solution. Jack has spent nights and early mornings walking customers through website design issues, custom report issues, and general “how can I do this more effectively” issues, and while resolving these issues Jack learns a lot about our customers. And this matters, it matters a lot.

Event and meeting management is not a rigid product. Managing meetings requires skill at improvisation, adaptation, and above all the ability to bring order to chaos. Every client has very specific requirements, every event manager has business processes specifically designed to meet the needs of each client. No one does it the same. This is where Jack and eMeetingsOnline come in. We have a great product that meets most of the needs of our customers and most of the needs of their clients, but in this industry there are always curve balls. We help the event planner stay ahead of those curve balls. Whether the solution is a small tweak to the software or a completely new feature, meeting planners know they can call us and we will help them adapt and manage the chaos. Even if that means calling our president and CEO out of bed.

Can your software do that?

eMeetingsOnline Custom Report Features

admin — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:25:55 +0000

eMeetingsOnline uses SAP’s Business Objects to provide in depth reporting and business intelligence capabilities. With direct access to the database fields users can create reports and queries combining data from multiple events or from one event, then export the data to excel or .pdf format. Automatic report delivery is available to run and email reports to stakeholders without user intervention. Tracking event data and making strategic business decisions has never been easier!

Event Registration Website Features

jfellows — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 21:06:24 +0000

eMeetingsOnline event management software includes a powerful event registration website builder that allows for full website customization including the inclusion of custom code (CSS, HTML, and JavaScript) and custom branding. The video below shows some examples of sites created using our event registration website tool.

eMeetingsOnline Slide Share Presentation

admin — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 22:22:33 +0000

Introduction to eMeetingsOnline

View more presentations from eMeetingsOnline.

Online event registration can “increase efficiency by 90% or more”!

admin — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 17:26:57 +0000

eMeetingsOnline has been offering event management software for 20 years and has long been a proponent of managing attendee registration through online registration methods. One of the core offerings in our event software is the ability to create unlimited custom registration websites for online event registration. Online event registration has the ability to reduce the tedious and labor intensive manual registration process.

According to Corbin Ball, using an online event registration software can increase efficiency by 90%* by:

automating the data collection process
streamlining the payment process
automatically sending confirmations
improving customer service (available 24/7)
Improving accuracy (the attendees do the data inputting)

In addition to saving time and improving accuracy, eMeetingsOnline online event registration allows meeting managers to generate reports both on a meeting specific basis and across all meetings, providing insight into business function and profitability. This business intelligence leads to better decisions and more efficient operations and cannot be duplicated when using spreadsheets to manage events. The efficiency and improved business processes realized through online event registration make it a solution every event planner should consider.

Learn more about eMeetingsOnline online event registration.

*(http://www.iccaworld.com/nlps/story.cfm?ID=260&NLID=3980)

Building Imagination into Event Management

admin — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 17:53:27 +0000

In order to be innovative one must first be imaginative, yet so many of us find it exceptionally difficult to break out of a rut and apply imagination to our daily routines both professionally and personally.

Imagination is a skill that, like all other skills, requires we use it for it to remain robust. Unfortunately most of the tasks we perform on a daily basis are so automated and organized as to require an absolute lack of imagination or thinking. In contrast, those who live in much poorer countries rely on imagination and innovation on a daily basis just to perform basic functions. A website called Africa Gadget (http://www.afrigadget.com/) documents the amazing imagination and ingenuity possessed by individuals forced to be imaginative every day as a matter of survival. I encourage you go to the website and be inspired, be encouraged by seeing ingenuity in action, and hopefully bring a small piece of that imagination to your life and business.

At eMeetingsOnline we find our inspiration from the meeting and event managers we work with every day. Like those in less developed countries, event planners are forced to find creative solutions to complex problems with limited resources, especially when onsite at an event and a vendor has not come through. As our customers innovate in the fly they continually bring us suggestions for features they would like to see that keep us thinking creatively. Thank you to all our customers for keeping our event management software a robust solution!