meetsmart mobile - Patent approved!

meetsmart is pleased to announce the official approval of its trademark and patent by the US Patent and Trademark Office.

meetsmart mobile is the mind-blowingly easy conference navigation app & mobile show guide, developed by meeting planners. It works on all smartphones & mobile devices. It is built to monetize your meeting and engage your attendees.

http://meetsmartmobile.com/meetsmart/video.html

Go Green. Go Green. Go Green.

By this time we have all heard this phrase millions of times and possibly even many times today. Going green is on everyone’s mind, especially when we are now seeing more positive rewards for doing so.

It is no secret that the green initiative has taken off. Now most businesses, organizations, and associations have some sort of implementations in place to reduce their carbon footprint. Sustainable meetings are also becoming a new fad. Making a few minor adjustments can show off big time financially, environmentally, and will just make you and your attendees feel like you are doing your part for Mother Nature.

In the February 2012 issue of Associations Now magazine there is an article dedicated to planning sustainable meetings including some tips on how to start small to get big results.

You may have noticed that when you arrive in your hotel room there is now more than just your breakfast menu to hang off of your door placed on your bed. Most hotel chains have implemented a linen and towel reuse system. For example: “Place this Card on your bed when you require new sheets”. Giving guests the option to get their sheets changed everyday or not at all. Before there was no option and your sheets were washed every day whether you wanted them washed not. The average person does not need to have new sheets everyday of their stay. Some chains even offer a financial incentive for groups that agree to take on green initiatives by creating less waste, using less energy and adding in local foods to their food and beverage menus.
Saving money happens when you conserve energy and reduce the waste. This is just smart business. When given the option what group would turn down saving money? Convention centers and hotels are vamping up their efforts to encourage these options. The convention center and hotels charge the clients for what they have to dispose of after a meeting. The more you can divert to recycling, the better off you will be.

To get the conversation of sustainable options started with your upcoming meetings, start right with the RFP. Include environmental criteria and don’t be afraid to ask questions. Ask about the facility’s recycling program, energy conservation practices, waste conservation promotions and their environmentally responsible purchasing efforts.
Ask the venue what they have done in the past for green and sustainable efforts to get the ball rolling. Other groups may have done great things in the past that you can build on and use at your own meeting.

How can you get on board?

• Coordinate with a local food back to pick up food left behind. (Check on the in-house regulations on perishable foods.)
• Eliminate bottled water and use reusable containers. (Use a water bottle as the conference give-a-way!)
• Start incorporating locally sourced foods into your menus. By putting a little sign by the food that says you are supporting the local economy by serving fruit that is from ABC orchard down the road, they will feel like they are doing their part as well.
• It will be a long time before all conferences can do away with their paper programs but reducing the numbers of pages to what is totally necessary in conjunction with using a mobile show guide can get you started in the right direction

Things to look for during site selection:

• Public Transportation Options
• Pedestrian Friendly location
• Convention center technology to help facilitate virtual attendance
• Low-flow or double flush toilet systems
• Linen and towel reuse programs
• Use of alternative energy for powering convention center, hotel or city building
• Extensive and inclusive recycling collections cans
• Compostable or biodegradable flatware, plates, or cups.
• Local farmer’s produce and product

It is hard to change the ways of doing every day procedures. Baby steps. This is the key here. We cannot expect to wake up one day and see a 360° turn around. Even if you implement just one green practice at your next meeting you will see a positive impact financially, you are going to benefit the planet and this gives you leverage for PR and attendee engagement to add more practices at your next meeting.

Grossed out by hotel TV remotes? There's an app for that!

Shared and with thanks from MSNBC

Watching TV or a movie in your hotel room just got a little less icky.

LodgeNet Interactive Corporation, which provides on-demand or other TV-based services in more than 1.7 million hotel rooms in North America, now has a free mobile app that allows guests to use their own smartphones or tablets to control the TV.

That means germ-wary travelers no longer have to keep a washcloth or shower cap handy to cover the remote control in order to watch the evening news or an in-room movie.

“We didn’t have germophobes in mind when came up with the app,” Derek White, president of interactive and media networks for LodgeNet, told msnbc.com. “But that does seem to be a very popular aspect of the system.”

The app, which became available on Monday, can be downloaded online before check-in, at check-in in a hotel lobby or in-room via an on-screen QR code. Each guest receives a unique code to enter into the app, which then syncs the TV system with the personal device.

“We can’t remove the remotes entirely from the rooms yet,” said White, “because you still use the remote to turn the TV on to do the initial sync up, but after that, there’s no need to use the remote or, for that matter, the in-room phone.”

The app displays TV programming schedules customized to the channel line-up in that hotel as well as specific information about the hotel itself and restaurants, attractions and other information about the local area. Users can also click to dial the front desk to arrange for a wake-up call, ask a question, order an in-room meal or take care of other business.

That should please travelers such as Charles Gerba, an environmental microbiologist from the University of Arizona. Known as “Dr. Germ,” Gerba conducted studies of hotel rooms and found the remote control to have the most germs.

The app is available for iPhone and Android smartphones.

Hopeful Financial News

Some Hopeful News

Joseph Sanders Visa's Chief Talks Up Global Growth:

"Three years ago, in the throes of the recession, people who had money thought it was cool not to spend money. A lot of markets shrank. And those markets are beginning to open up.

The convention venues, resort venues, travel itineraries of individual families, business travel on a global basis. It's more than it has been in a long while. It's not as robust as it once was. But I think things are slowly and surely getting better."

meetsmart mobile - the mind blowingly easy mobile show guide

meetsmart is the mind-blowingly easy mobile conference guide.

Specifically designed by meeting planners, its understanding of Conference needs is astounding. It hits the mark by delivering exactly what all the meeting attendee and the host organization expects - AND the meetsmart concierge staff does all the work. No added workload for your staff.

Quick navigation. Cross Platform. Powerful search. Lots of detail. Maps. Create schedules. Build sponsorship & exhibit revenues. Alerts. Analytics.

Special offer - book meetsmart mobile by December 31 and receive a complimentary iPad2! Email Larry Wilhelm at larry@meetsmartmobile.com or call 410-849-2177 for details.

meetsmart mobile - Another success!

The Society of American Archivists (SAA) implemented meetsmart mobile for their 75th Anniversary Annual Meeting in Chicago. This was the first time SAA used a mobile app for their Meeting. During the week before the SAA Meeting, the app had already been visited over 1,074 times with 18,606 page views! On average, each user visited 17.3 pages and spent 9.5 minutes on the site.

SAA has 1,664 registered attendees. They had expected only a moderate use of the app because they thought their members were 'late technology adopters'. Surprise!! Everyone was thrilled by the very high traffic and the great feedback.

meetsmart mobile brought great new technology to SAA, put their Meeting into the palms of their members, added a positive new dimension to the attendee experience and provided great ROI to the sponsors and exhibitors. Another great success for meetsmart mobile and for SAA.

64% of Meetings Are Using a Mobile App

With so much new meeting technology being developed it can be hard to know what’s worth investing your time in, and what will simply be a flash in the pan. Our clients rely on us to keep them abreast of trends and technology, so our team works hard to keep our finger on the pulse of the meetings and convention industry.

Earlier this summer, Conference & Logistics Consultants conducted a survey of over 300 meeting planners to gauge our industry’s comfort level with new technologies. A key finding of the 2011 Meeting Technology Trends Survey was that 64 percent of meetings are already using a mobile app, or intend to add one this year. Another 16 percent intend to add one within three years.

If you’re not thinking about a mobile app for your meeting, you’re being left behind. Attendees are clamoring for instant access to information, and ways to personalize their conference experience. Mobile technology is an easy way to provide both. Mobile conference guides run the gamut from inexpensive web-based platforms ($9 – 15K) to high-end custom native apps ($25 – 100+K).

The survey also revealed a lot of other interesting information, which we will put out in a white paper later this fall. Stay tuned to the blog or subscribe to our RSS feed for future updates.