Over this past weekend I had a chance to spend the afternoon with the developers of a new social networking site called EventMingle. I was blown away so I thought I would write a review to tell you about it. I think I’m the first to write about it!
This isn’t a dating site per say, so don’t expect to find your soul mate on this site, though I guess it could happen. This is a very cool new social networking site based on one commonality, “you’re going to the same eventâ€.
These events can be large corporate events, like company meetings to trade shows and conferences. Here is how it works. EventMingle teams up with the company putting on the event. When you, as an attendee or exhibitor sign up to attend an event, you’re sent an invitation to join a specific site on EventMingle for your event. Remember, everyone from the event is opting-in, attendees, exhibitors, speakers, editors, analysts, job recruiters, investors and other participants. You get to meet people who are planning to travel to the event, before you actually arrive! This is pretty damn neat!
I was invited to log in as an attendee on their testing event, TechDemo 2006. As an attendee I was able to meet other attendees who planned to attend the event and lived near me. It was cool to meet other people from my city who had the same interests as I did. I could easily see how valuable of a networking tool this could be! I was able to see who was planning to attend the same technical sessions and could participate in a message forum regarding these technical sessions by exchanging messages with the speakers on the panel. With a click of a mouse, I could add people to my personal contact list and request to exchange business cards. EventMingle makes it possible for me to actually look for these new online friends when I actually show up for the real session. I think this is going to improve the dynamics of these sessions a great deal!
There are so many features on EventMingle I don’t know how to cover it all. For example, you can keep up-to-date on all the exhibitor news in one section where exhibitors post their press releases. Exhibitors also post special event times, like keynote addresses, booth demos and even VIP parties. If you want to make note of any of these items you simply click the mouse and the activity is added to your daily planner which you can later have emailed to you. Speaking about exhibitors, you know how exhibitors like to give stuff away to get us to come in their booth to watch a presentation? EventMingle allows exhibitors to post their giveaway items (called Treasures) so you can plan some of your booth attendance around items you want to take home. One can never have too many of those stress balls!
EventMingle keeps your true identity, like your full name, company, phone and email address a secret until you give someone access to it. So you don’t have to worry about being contacted by a telemarketer. And there is no spam because EventMingle has it’s own Email system, so all your messages regarding the event, people and exhibitors is all maintained on the system. It ever touches your external email address.
EventMingle also has a full JOB BOARD on the site. Companies can post their job openings and individuals can post resumes. The more I played around with the Job Board the more I really understood how logical it was to have a job board around an event. I think this is going to be a big hit!
I got to peek at the Exhibitor Tools available to exhibitors; they have the ability to create a full Exhibitor guide that includes their company description, product descriptions, booth activities, giveaway (treasures) items and job openings. Pretty extensive, but the neatest thing they can do (in my opinion) is also list their booth staff so you know who is going to be in the booth and you can make appointments with them!
EventMingle.com is truly a unique experience that I think is going to change the way people network at events. Though the developers created it for trade show and conferences I told them that I think they could easily adapt it to other events. For example, Cruise Ship operators could use EventMingle to allow people to meet prior to taking the cruise. How cool would that be! Sporting Events and Concerts could be another use for this technology.
If you attend trade show or conferences you should check out the demo on EventMingle. You should tell the trade show administrator about this new technology. It is truly cutting edge and in a couple years, EventMingle.com may very well be a name many of us trade show junkies know by heart. Just remember, I wrote about it first!
admin on January 6th 2007 in Dating