Our industry has seen so many technological advances in recent years that it can be hard to keep up with the times.  Our new Technology Playground is ideal for visitors who want to check out the latest mobile applications, discover new ways of running meetings or simply sit down and ask questions about social media.

The Technology Playground gives you the chance to ‘play’ with new technologies in a relaxed environment and ask our experts any burning questions you might have.

Want to know how to get your events to trend on twitter? Chat to Carrie Cunliffe who’s running our Twitter Competition

Intrigued about using Apps at your events?  Mike Dugan is your man, and by visiting him you can bag yourself a FREE app for your next event

Ever wondered how WiFi can improve  your events?  Ask Max WiFi!  Richard has the answers for you.

What’s a QR code and do you really need one?  Jonny Ross knows and is willing to share! (check out our QR Code)

Whether you’re looking for ways to make your meetings more enjoyable and productive or simply need to streamline your event processes, or perhaps give your delegates access to information via their mobile devices one of our industry experts can help you.

Find out more about our Technology Playground experts below and remember to schedule a visit to them when planning your day at the Conference and Hospitality Show 2012

Mike Dugan – Falafel Software Inc

Mike is the Director of Marketing for Falafel Software Inc., a software services company providing custom software development and technical training to customers around the world.

In late 2010, Falafel Software created its first mobile event application prototype. Mike was tasked with evaluating the prototype, guiding its development and growing it into a business.

Today, the product is known as EventBoard, the low-cost, hassle free way for any event to create a mobile program. Events of all sizes and from all parts of the world have recognized the value of EventBoard and adopted it as their official mobile app.

With EventBoard, small 1-day gatherings have access to the same mobile application trusted by large international events like Microsoft TechEd Europe and the Sprint Open Solutions Conference.

Mike is joining us all the way from Colorado, USA to demonstrate EventBoard.

Jonny Ross – Jonny Ross Consultancy

Jonny specialises in Digital Marketing and Organic Search.  With more than 13 years’ experience in small business management, he has a proven track record in the retail e-commerce field.

Jonny has also created a highly successful operation in the field of e-business culminating in positive coverage by the press and the media and now he specialises in providing and enhancing digital services in the business to business sector.  Jonny will provide help with QR codes, how to use them and how they benefit your events.

Richard Hughes – Max WiFi

Richard Hughes’ understanding of event communications via wired and wireless technology is second to none. In the last 12 months Max WiFi has provided voice and data communication services for a number of high profile events including the Ryder Cup and Hampton Court RHS Flower Show.

Richard cut his teeth in the world of the Internet through working at BTnet, BT’s commercial Internet backbone provider. His experience of what is possible and what isn’t led him to join BT Ignite as the event manager for the UK and Nordics in 1998. There he delivered over 1200 exhibitions, events, showcases and road shows across Europe.

From 2002 Richard ran his own events business where his focus changed to technical delivery of events in the WiFi arena for key sporting events.

Richard set up Max WiFi in January 2006 and is very aware that as technology becomes more complex and the demand for real-time knowledge becomes more commonplace, the communications solution becomes more pertinent and relevant to today’s events.

Richard will also take part in the Panel discussion ‘Please Turn On Your Mobile Phones’ at 10.00

Carrie Cunliffe - Playf.es – the new trend maker on twitter

Playf.es is an innovative game powered by twitter, which creates interest in a fun way, to promote an event, company, service or product.  The game rewards people for tweeting about your product/service through using your hash-tag and is the crowd based promotion tool of the moment.

How Does It Work?

The game works by rewarding people for tweeting about your product/service by using your hash-tag.

Playf.es follows tweeters who use your hash-tag and they automatically join the game once they tweet using this hashtag. The great thing about this is, you don’t even have to promote the game to get players. If someone tweets a key word they then automatically unlock a playf.es  and the game sends them a return tweet with a note congratulating them, this makes the player feel a sense of achievement and it motivates them too  i.e. The game encourages people on twitter to tweet competitively to unlock “badges”  e.g. if someone tweets “game”, “gamer”, “games” between 9am and 10am they unlock the gamer badge (achievement).