So what is Crowdsourcing?

Crowdsourcing is the practice of acquiring needed services, ideas, or content by seeking contributions from a large collection of people, and especially from an online community.

The main advantage is that there’s strength in numbers when it comes to crowdsourcing. Rather than relying on one person or agency to work on a project, you can select the best ideas from a community or “crowd” of people you solicit online.

In many ways, the Boston Marathon provided one of the most compelling cases for crowd involvement, ever. As one of the largest athletic events in the world, event planners estimate upwards of 500,000 people attend each year, the vast majority of whom have smartphones, and a generous portion of whom were actively taking pictures and videos throughout the event.

Surveillance cameras have become omnipresent, but are often fixed in place and have large blind spots and can get damaged. Spectators, on the other hand, can provide multiple points of view of the same situation. For that reason, it’s a natural fit for Big Brother to look to tens of thousands of “Little Brothers” for their help in gathering intelligence. Here are a few of the crowdsourcing variations (and this is not a complete list!):

• Solution Finding: This is where you use a crowd to solve a complex problem.
• Opinion Seeking: Crowds can be used to provide feedback and suggestions on how to improve products and services. Symphony provides an excellent platform for opinion seeking, in that you can create multiple online forms and surveys and can then report on the data collated.
• Content Creation: Want to create an advertisement for your company or event but don’t want to hire a costly design agency? Various platforms can be used to help companies crowdsource the creation of videos. News broadcasters are also doing this to help collect videos from individuals who shoot newsworthy footage on their iPhone.
• Data Collection: This is a growing area of crowdsourcing. Instead of sending your employees out to inspect venues and services, get anyone to do it.
• Manual Tasks: Break up your work into bite-sized chunks and get people to do these activities for a minim fee. There are many platforms for doing this in all shapes and sizes. Although it is not technically a crowdsourcing platform, one of my favorites websites is fiverr.com; a site where people will do almost anything for $5. Symphony provides its users with a ‘Tasks’ section providing a very efficient medium for delegation. In the Tasks section  you can assign and manage tasks and configure notifications and reminders for these tasks.
• Programming: One of my favourite crowdsourcing platforms is TopCoder. This is truly amazing. They have nearly a half million programmers, designers, testers and program managers who compete to create wireframes, designs, code, and algorithms, and then test everything for customers. This is one of the best end-to-end solutions out there.
• Crowd funding: Need money for an initiative or cause? Crowdfunding may be the way. Platforms such Symphony can be used to help people raise money for their projects. Symphony can be integrated with a number of popular online payment gateways and can therefore be used as an easy way to ‘crowd fund’ and collate donations for your cause/project.

On Christmas Day 2012, more iPhones, iPads, Galaxy devices, Kindle Fires and other mobile devices were activated than on any other day in history, according to a report from Flurry Analytics.
There is no escaping this mobile revolution which is forcing event managers across the globe to think more strategically about the supply and demand of onsite Wifi at their events.

The use of mobile telephones and devices (iPhones, Android, iPads, tablets, etc.) will continue to grow exponentially at work and at home. Attendees have multiple mobile devices and expect the same broadband experience they receive at home and at the office – even though there may be thousands of people trying to access the Wi-Fi signal at the same time.

According to a June 2011 study by Meraki, Inc., a company that provides cloud services, iPads consume about four times as much Wi-Fi data on a monthly basis than the average iPhone, Android or iPod device. This issue is further emphasised as the iPad is the fastest-selling device ever, according to the 2011 Guinness World Records.

It’s not just attendees, event managers require Wi-Fi access too, as so they can manage their events using Symphony across all their mobile devices. Symphony gives event managers the flexibility to stay on top of event and session sign ups, cancellations, trigger emails, reporting, payments and contacts, with real-time access anywhere, anytime without a laptop or desktop.
The good news is that the technology exists to provide very high density delivery of Wi-Fi. The bad news is that the equipment and bandwidth is expensive and many event venues are lagging far behind in the ability supply the explosion of demand.

Both event planners and venue providers need to be more proactive in educating themselves and in managing delegate expectations when it comes to Wi Fi access.
Here are some points to consider:

• How many devices, not people, need to connect to the WiFi?  Most people will carry a smart phone, tablet and laptop – that’s three devices per person.
• What level of Internet interaction should you be expecting? A conference on basket weaving is unlikely to have such an Internet demand as a social media conference for example.
• Have an idea of the amount of speed you think you might need both upstream and downstream on the network. Remember that if you have media at your event they will require fast upstream as to allow them to quickly upload photos.
• Which areas of your venue will WiFi be required in? Just the conference suite? What about the bar, bedrooms, breakout rooms?
• What else do I need the Internet for? Many production offices expect to be able to print over the WiFi or set up demo networks, private WiFi for crew or speakers etc. If you are using a public service network like BT Openzone or the Cloud that won’t be possible.

These are just a few questions that should be addressed there are of course many more. It is generally advised that if you have more than 100 devices on a network, or any requirements that you are not sure about, talk to the venue’s technical team and ask about the network, its bandwidth and the technical support available to you, on the run up, duration and de-rig of your event.

Globalisation has significantly impacted on the events industry, more specifically upon the size and range of conferences and events. By making online registration pages and web contents multi-lingual, a wider and more diverse audience can instantly be reached.
English, Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, Portuguese, German, Arabic, French, Russian and Korean are, in that order, the top ten languages on the web, according to Internet World Stats. 

That order may soon change. Chinese, Arabic and Russian have seen over 1500 percent growth in internet penetration since 2000; China is set to reach 700 million users by 2015. That's a huge opportunity for outward-looking commercial and B2B global events.
To keep up with the demands of globalisation, nearly all event organisers will soon need to run an event in different languages, either for an international symposium with a single foreign speaking audience, or a multi-national conference with multiple language options. Whatever the case may be, Symphony can help.

Over the years, we have accumulated a following of international event professionals wanting to expand the reach of their events by having mulit-lingual websites and registrations.

Symphony’s multi-lingual functionality will make your event registration easier to follow for non-English speaking delegates and will promote the multi-national appeal of your event - filling more places.

We have 12 languages all available for immediate use with a single-click. We also have access to most other languages with a bit of notice and can have this available for you to use in the system. Thus enabling you to dramatically increase the attendance of active participants to your public or private event by instantly turning your event from local to global!

Want to find out more? Get in touch!

Call us on +44 (0) 114 279 4990 and talk to one of our event management experts or alternatively watch our online video.

The most convenient way for any delegate to register their attendance at an event is online. It’s fast, effective, convenient and removes any excuse a delegate may have for not making their booking including having enough time or hesitation to pick up the phone. 

Successfully taking online bookings is about creating an elegant registration process and, most importantly, creating trust. Delegates become more trusting and more likely to make a booking onto your event if they are familiar with your event website and have confidence in the site’s security. It’s important to integrate your booking system with your current website to ensure that you retain the delegate’s trust when he/she enters the registration process. Make sure that, with any online registration software you use to manage online booking, you have the ability to be brand the registration page to match your website and other marketing material.  

Further to the registration page branding, there is a lot more to creating an “elegant” booking process. The questions you ask the delegates at the point of registration can have a big impact on people completing a booking or abandoning the process half way through. Make sure you only ask questions that are relevant to the type of attendee they are, and from the previous answers they have given. You don’t want to have fields to provide flight details displayed if the delegate has selected “travelling by car”.  Consider the possibilities of being able to display/hide fields depending of the type of attendee and previous answers provided when sourcing an online booking system. 

If you would like and further information about how to let delegates register online, give me a call on 0114 279 4990.

Keep an eye out for Part 2: Taking Payments

Many organisations are planning and selling commercial events, also known as seminars, offering information/tuition by experts in their field on a subject such as sales training, professional development, property investing, internet marketing etc. Seminars generally involve bringing together a small group of people where all attendees have the opportunity to actively participate. There is no doubting the benefits of face-to-face seminars to both the organiser and attendees; however a number of disadvantages also exist. 

Cost - The organiser and all participants must absorb the costs associated with travelling to the seminar location.

Time – Seminars require both the organiser and participants to spend a considerable amount of time away from their day-to-day business activities resulting in scheduling problems.

The above factors may influence a prospects decision as to whether he/she will attend your seminar or not. It is becoming increasingly popular to conduct seminars via the web. This is known as a webinar (web-based seminar).

Why Webinars?

The biggest advantage that webinars have over seminars is that rather than having to be somewhere in person, you can deliver your material from the comfort of your own office over the internet using software such as GoToWebinar. Using this software still allows your participants to engage and interact with the organiser by viewing the content material, listening to the audio and typing in their questions. Three key advantages are listed below:

1. Cost effective – No travel expenses for organiser or participants

2. Efficient – No time wasted by organiser or participant (prospects more likely to attend).

3. Scalable – An increased number of sessions can be organised in a shorter period of time.

Once you have your content prepared, the only thing missing is to promote and sell tickets to your webinar.

Sell Tickets to Your Webinars

Once you have your schedule of webinars organised in your webinar software, the trick is to make it easy for delegates to register, and ensure that people who haven’t paid cannot get access to them.  That’s where we can help you.

Symphony’s online registration and delegate management software gives you all the tools you need to take automated online booking for any webinar. Setup your webinar schedule; choose your maximum audience numbers per session, and let the system do all the work for you.

How it works

1. Use the web-page builder to create a website and registration page to promote your webinars

2. Our marketing tools allow you to create customised invitations and invite your prospects to attend

3. They can register online and make an automate online payment directly into your account

4. Send out auto-emails confirming your attendee's booking, notifying them of payment success and provide the access details to their chosen webinar using out emaling modules

5. Sit back, relax and watch the booking roll in!

6. After the webinar has taken place, record and report on attendance levels, and gather feedback with a post event email campaign.

If you would like to learn more about how to sell ticket for webinars, give our experts a call on +44 (0) 114 279 4990 or email info@symphonyem.co.uk and we’ll be happy to help.

Images - FreeDigitalPhotos.net

David Castillo Dominici

Jon Curtis, Managing Director of www.myhrtoolkit.com sets out some thoughts on HR administration software.

It’s not just the field of events management where online software is changing the way we work. In the area of people management – human resources – online software packages are taking a sizeable chunk of the market, particularly where small and medium-sized businesses want easy-to-use solutions rather than complex, function-rich software.

Online software – software as a service – lends itself to HR, just as it does to event management. Multiple users can log in from multiple locations: workspaces, home, travel and so on. There is no longer the traditional resistance to posting employee data online with trusted partners. Such tools are becoming commonplace whereas even five years ago eyebrows may have been raised at the thought of employee data being online.

Managing employee holidays is one area that is easily dealt with online. The holiday chart is available to all, and requests and permissions lend themselves to email. The beauty is the full accountability that comes with such a system, no more arguments about who requested what first!

Other areas that work well online are: documents management (full audit trail of who read what and when); sickness absence (for instance staying in touch with the long term unemployed); task delegation; and appraisal management.

One of the real benefits of online software is that maintenance remains the problem of the provider, rather than your problem.

Online HR software is here to stay and as integration with other modules such as payroll, time and attendance, and recruitment increases the use of software as a service for SMEs will increase too.

For more information about HR software generally or myhrtoolkit itself, call Jon Curtis on 0114 2721903 or visit the website at www.myhrtoolkit.com

Alternatively, you can watch a short demo film at http://www.myhrtoolkit.com/video/

The most important thing for any successful event is, of course, selling tickets! When you send out your event invitations using Symphony’s Campaign Email Management System, it’s essential that the design and content is high quality and effective at achieving a good response rate or any desired outcome. 

There are many elements which can affect the response rate of an email marketing campaign including copy text, images, design colours, banners and call to actions. As there is no definitive right or wrong way to determine the best structure for your email, it is vital to put them to the test with your own database. This will allow you to find out how your target market responds to variations in these elements of your campaign. This can be done by A/B Split Testing.

What is A/B Split Testing?

A/B Split Testing is a method marketers use to analyse the effectiveness of changes made to the elements mentioned above and involves creating two versions of the marketing material. Usually, version “A” is the original (commonly referred to as the champion) and version “B” is the alternate (commonly referred to as the challenger). Your database is then split to create two sample distribution lists of the same size. Version “A” is sent to one sample and version “B” is sent to the other sample. If the challenger proves more effective at achieving the desired outcome of the campaign, then the challenger replaces the champion and becomes the new champion to be tested.

When conducting A/B Split Testing it's important to only choose one element for testing in each split test. This will give you one specific reason for any difference in results. For example, an event management company wants to test the effectiveness of an alternate “call to action” on a banner created for an event invite. The purpose of the “call to action” is to entice people to make a booking onto an event using a discount code provided. The original (champion) call to action states “Limited Time Offer: Use Code: SYM1”. The alternate (Challenger) call to action states “Offer Ends 31st January: Use Code SYM2”. All other elements of the email remain the same. The company then splits their targeted contacts database and sends version “A” to 2000 people and version “B” to 2000 people. When the discount code has expired, the company analyses the results and finds that 3% of the recipients used code SYM1 and booked onto the event (60 of the 2000 recipients) and 5% used code SYM2 (100 of the 2000 recipients). The challenger was proven the most effective “call to action”.

It's important to have a clear purpose or desired outcome of the element you are testing before A/B Split Testing any of your marketing material. In the example above, the purpose was for recipients to book onto the event using the discount code. However, if the purpose was to test which call to action would generate the most website visits, then the results could have been different. For example, the original version may have achieved a higher click through rate but, with no expiry date placed on the discount, did not entice people make a booking at that moment in time.

Many companies are using A/B Split Testing as a base for their marketing decisions. Companies with a large database can test more than two versions of an element in the same test by doing an A/B/C Split Test and including two alternate versions.

How Can I A/B Split Test My Email Invites Sent From Symphony?

Symphony’s powerful Campaign Email Management tools allow you to create invitation, follow up and post event emails. Once you have designed your email and customised it with your chosen banners, logos, images and text content. 

1. Export your contacts list from the central contacts database within your Symphony account, separate them into two samples of equal number and save as CSV files to your files area.

2. Attach the first sample to your original (champion) email which will now be ready and waiting to be sent.

3. Go back to the Campaign Email overview screen, click the “create new invite” button and select “copy from a previous campaign”.

4. Select the original campaign and make alterations to the element to be tested.

5. You can then go on to upload the second sample of contacts, send both versions of the invitation and wait for the delivery report to come in to analyse the results.

6. You have now completed an A/B Split Test using Symphony’s Campaign Email Management System!

If you would like to know more about getting the maximum possible attendees to your events then contact our Digital Marketing experts who can provide you with advice on A/B Split Testing and much more! 0114 279 4990

Christmas Day is getting closer and closer and we‘re running out of time to find the perfect gifts for our family, friends and colleagues. We know it’s hard to think up useful gift ideas for any Event Managers so myself and the Symphony team thought we would help. We have been brainstorming Christmas gift ideas to help you choose the present that an Event Manager will really use and appreciate. We have managed to narrow them down into our top four choices:

4. Stress Ball

When it comes to choosing a career in event management, you need to have a certain temperament and possess a certain set of abilities in order to be successful. Event Managers are required to work under constant pressure in terms of meeting deadlines, being able to manage time efficiently, negotiating with suppliers, and keeping their clients satisfied which can be a full time job in itself.  And that is only before the day the event takes place, not mentioning all the eventualities that can, and do, crop up during the event implementation. 

It’s safe to say that a day in the life of an event manager is quite stressful and any gift that can help alleviate that stress would be useful. Number four on our list of useful Christmas gifts for Event Managers is the Stress Ball which is a small toy used to exercise the muscles of the hand and relieve stress and muscle tension. A few squeezes of the stress ball can leave the Event Manager feeling cool calm and collected ready to take on their week.

3. Hangover Kit

As well as being one of the most demanding career choices, event management is also one of the most rewarding. There’s nothing like the feeling of being involved in organising a fantastic event and seeing hundreds of happy faces on the day. After all the stress comes a well deserved celebratory night on the town. It’s important for an Event Manager to be well prepared for the eventuality of a big hangover the next morning so why not buy them a Hangover Kit to make sure they have everything they need right there.

A Hangover Kit is filled with useful hangover remedies, information and hygiene products which will help an Event Manager recover from the after event party. Here are a few items you could include in a Hangover Kit:

• Vitamin Multipack
• Sports Drink
• Bananas
• Toothpaste and toothbrush
• Painkillers

2. Spa Day

After an Event Manager has pushed through and delivered a successful event, some luxury spa treatment may be just what the Doctor ordered. Here’s an example of a spa day package which may help an Event Manger relax and unwind:

• 

  Face and Body Sensation 
• Deep Tissue Back Massage
• Modern Skin Facial
• Light lunch

1. An Online Demo of Symphony's Web-based Event Management Software

Most of the gift ideas we would normally think of for Event Managers are based around managing their stress levels and relaxing after a lot of very hard work. But what if you could forget about a cure and just go straight to prevention and buy them a gift that will let them relax and unwind right from the start?

Well, guess what, you can! Why not book them in for an online demo of Symphony’s event management software and let them see everything they need to manage their events online and streamline their event management process. And the best thing about this gift is that it won’t cost you a penny because our online demos are absolutely FREE!

What will an Event Manager learn in an online demo?

An Event Manager will learn how to:

• Quickly create personalised initiation, reminder and follow up emails
• Configure an event’s micro-website and online registration page in minutes
• Save time and money by taking secure automated online payments
• Setup automated confirmation emails 
• Stay firmly in control of the team allocating tasks, setting reminders and managing them all in one place.
• Instantly report on real time event information and make life easy
• And, much more!

Click Here and request a demo now! Or call us on 0114 279 4990

Images - FreeDigitalPhotos.net

David Castillo Dominic  jscreationzs  Jeroen van Oostrom  photostock

The latest hot topic in the IT industry is the Cloud. Put simply, the Cloud is the delivery of shared resources, software and information over the Internet. It is a relatively new model, but provides users with a cost effective way to deploy software solutions and manage IT platforms.

The Cloud has many benefits to different industries, particularly the management of events. Some benefits include:

Cost

Cost can be greatly reduced since capital expenditure is converted to operational expenditure, lowering the barriers to entry. 

Local Independence 

Users can access systems using a web browser, regardless of their location or device they are using. 

Peak Load Capacity

Using software on the cloud means that companies can manage peaks in demand with ease. 

Reliability

Reliability is improved making it a safer option with regards to disaster recovery. 

Maintenance

Maintenance is easier on cloud computing since the software is not installed on the user’s computer; meaning that support and upgrades are managed and taken on by the provider themselves.

Event managers are able to take advantage of cloud computing and use it to improve efficiency and reduce the cost of their events. Event management companies can use the Cloud as a management solution; it offers the opportunity to manage event teams and service delegate and booker requests, from any location at any time. Additionally, event promotions, bookings, cancellations and updated can also be undertaken using the Internet as the key delivery vehicle. 

Companies offering event management services utilise event software to help organise and manage their events.  The software includes features such as: 

• Website integration
• Online registration & Online payment processing
• Invitation management
• Email marketing
• Resource management
• Integrated reporting and analysis
• Event surveys

Using event management software on the Cloud will take care of high volumes of outbound transactions such as emails and newsletters, and inbound transactions including event bookings and cancellations. This will save time and money, whilst providing a smoother experience. 

It enables you to be in real time control of all the events activities such as, giving event managers an accurate view of the active event, assessing what stage event marketing campaigns are at and obtaining feedback received on your on-going events programme. Third party partners such as speakers or sponsors can also be granted easy access, should they need it. 

If you are new to organising events, then it is usually best to hire a company offering event management services. They can take care of the entire event planning process, including the software used, to ensure your event runs smoothly. 

As previously outlined in our recent blog post ‘Mobile Technology and Events’, the progression and development of Smartphone applications is affecting how event organisers manage their events. As more and more people are using their mobile phones to browse the internet, send emails and shop online, there is even more potential for digital communication in the events industry.

The development of the QR code reader had provided event organisers with another method in which to communicate with their delegates.

Quick Response (QR) Code Creator and Reader

QR codes are two dimensional barcodes that can contain any type of alphanumeric text and commonly contain URLs directing people back to an organisation’s website. You may have seen QR codes on billboards, in magazines, shops and even on t-shirts. They are designed to be read quickly by mobile phones and require a QR reader application to be installed on a Smartphone.

So, as an Event Manager - How Can I Use QR Codes?

No matter how large or small an event may be, event managers can use QR codes in a variety of ways to communicate with delegates and direct them to any desired information, website or online registration page. Why not use them on any printed or electronic advertising material:

• Business Cards – Include a QR code on your business card directing people to your website’s ‘about us’ or ‘meet the team’ page.
• Event Invitations – Include QR codes on your advertisement material directing people to a special offer page, downloadable coupon or discount code. 
• Event Posters – Direct attendees to your register now page when they scan a QR code on your event poster. 
• Merchandise – Reduce costs by letting attendees purchase merchandise via their mobile phone by scanning a QR code and buying online.
• Event Registration – Why not send your delegates directly to your Symphony event registration page?

If you would like to find out more about how you could use QR codes with online registration, scan the barcode above with your Smartphone's QR reader, or give us a call on 0114 279 4990.