At C&IT’s conference in London yesterday Rob Davidson of Westminster University gave an engaging talk on the changing face of events. He talked about research being published into trends towards virtual meeting environments, rss feeds, mashups and moblogs. Although he confessed he didn’t actually know what some of those things mean :)

Here’s a quick summary:

• Participation and interactivity is increasingly what delegates want.
• There’s a trend towards trying to incorporate some kind of ’social legacy’
• ‘Generation Y’ want shorter presentations and they want ‘infotainment’

If you want to know more about this he said you can download a free report from http://www.eibtm.com/

Haymarket’s Event and C&IT magazines have launched a new site, Virtual Venue Visit, showing the first in a series of specially commissioned event venue showreels. Following research which asked corporate conference organisers what they really wanted to see online from venues, they produced a number of short films and interviews which are tailored to meet the key needs of event planners and buyers rather than being just a one-way marketing tool for suppliers.

Paul Twite, publishing director of Event and C&IT said: “The filming is designed to bring out the character of each venue while answering the main questions raised by event buyers and planners in our research. The Virtual Venue Visit has huge potential for future rollouts.”

Kinura filmed and produced the video, developed the flash video site and players, and provides global streaming with detailed user statistics. You can also read a case study about online presentations we have worked on for Haymarket here.

Check this video and link out, from Jemima Kiss on the Guardian’s Organ Grinder blog.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2008/nov/10/society-of-editors-events

Nice to know there’s another web video guru out there. Check out his blog: http://rosenblumtv.wordpress.com/