Sponsorship Ideas for Events

There are some tried and true sponsorships that I need to fill in–things like lanyards and conference bags.  I have focused my attention more on new trends.

A few observations.

1. Customization: It pays to know what your exhibitor needs to do, even if you need to help them figure it out.  Awareness? Affirmation?  Engagement?  New prospects, upselling existing customers, or moving existing prospects along the sales cycle?  High price point or low price point.
2. Exclusive Engagement: Major exhibitors have a wish list of 50 buyers, either by name or by demographics, that they would pay for quality time with.  Organize this for them, at your event.  Private lunch, presentation, whiskey tasting…it will depend on your buyers’ interests.
3. Novelty: Games, music, oxygen bars are all ways to stand out by doing something the attendee hasn’t seen before, and will relate to the sponsor’s product.
4. Gamification: Creating a good game goes so much further than awareness…the player learns about the product or sponsor naturally while playing, moving the buying process forward.  Be sure to use a leader board…competition is its own reward.
5. Graphics: Are always improving and changing.  Your graphics provider can cling to anything.  Put up vinyl that acts like a chalk board.  Create a 3D-appearing floor graphic.  Check out what’s new.
6. Technology: Ads look amazing on digital signage.  Wayfinders, smart phone apps, cyber cafes, and connection centers, all add value to the attendee experience and awareness and/or leads for sponsors.
7. Social: Facebook and Twitter, and now Pinterest is on the cusp of importance in events.  They all build community while providing sponsorship opportunities.
8. Content: The biggest benefit a sponsor can receive is to deliver his information to the attendees.  Hands-on demonstration areas, product theaters, immersive education areas are all on the rise.

Do you have a great sponsorship idea that is missing from this deck?  Send it to me in the comments field!

All event producers are Content Marketers.  We attract buyers by our content, exhibitors by our buyers.  It all starts with our content.

Content takes lots of forms.  Conference sessions, certainly, but also contests, exhibitors, conversations, demonstrations, parties, keynotes, discussion rooms…  It is our content that makes our events must-attend.

This graphic gives us a probably unscientific but excellent checklist of ways to delight with your event’s content:

1. Content that reveals secrets.
2. Content that reminds us that dreams can come true.
3. Content where David defeats Goliath.
4. Content that reminds us that we matter.
5. Content that confirms our assumptions
6. Content that has unexpected twists.
7. Content that tells us a story.
8. Content that challenges our assumptions.
9. Content that inspires us to action.
10. Content that makes us laugh or smile.

Let’s use this list to critique our events and inspire our new initiatives!

I particularly like numbers 4 and 9 because the most powerful thing events do is help us be part of something larger than ourselves.  This gives our lives meaning, and inspires us in our careers.  And it is very hard to get this emotional high outside of the national industry event.  It can be your key unique selling proposition against local events, the internet, publications, and, worst of all, inertia.

There was a great article in the Boston Globe last week, front page no less, about one of the best maintenance supervisors at an apartment complex, JP Davis.

Davis, who works at the Brockton Commons Apartments, made it to the finals of the sixth annual Maintenance Mania competition, which recently pitted 3,000 of the nation’s top tinkerers in a battle to find out who’s best at installing fixtures, fixing appliances, and finding leaks.  Think of it as the Handyman Olympics.

The organizer of this terrific competition was the National Apartment Association, and the finals were held during the NAA’s annual National Education Conference & Exposition in Boston.

Similarly, the International Boston Seafood Show holds an annual oyster shucking contest on the show floor.  Oysters are provided by two major seafood distributors, as sponsors, who receive significant awareness during the competition.  The  competition is fierce, with each shucker demonstrating their own unique style.  The winner used a shucking knife he has custom made.

What role can these competitions play in your association/at your event?

• Inspire: Every industry requires certain skills, often unheralded, that individuals can be proud of.  A huge role of an industry event is to build on and encourage industry pride.
• Build Community: There’s nothing like a roaring crowd cheering their favorite contestants on, and it’s a great conversation starter at networking events.
• Sponsorship: I don’t know whether the seven timed trials at NAA were sponsored, but oftentimes the equipment used in the contest can be sponsored, or other ways industry vendors can appropriate fund and participate.
• Entertainment: Looking for a wow event to add to your conference? A well-designed competition is fun and attracts crowds.
• PR: I read about the NAA event in the Boston Globe.  Enough said.

Is your event in the retail field?  Why can’t your buyers show off their buying skills estimating value, or negotiating terms?  IT?  I’ve seen contests in which attendees had to put the hard drives into a storage unit, or configure a network.  Financial services?  Is there a problem set that can be turned into a time trial?  If your industry is a pure knowledge field, then try trivia.

While you want the finals to be held at the national conference, this can be a year-round, national event.  NAA held regional events all over the country leading up to the annual conference. Some contests could start online months before the event.

Inject a little fun at your event, but especially, call out industry pride!

First, be sure to offer private meeting rooms on the show floor to all exhibitors. You only build them on request, and you price them as a mark-up on the cost to build, so there is no risk, only upside, and more productive exhibitors.

Then consider whether there are categories of legitimate sellers in your community who want to talk with buyers, but do not have product that lends itself to a booth format.

At The Cable Show, the programming companies need a place to hold meetings, but not a promotion-oriented “public” store front. They do not have product to display. So these companies are allowed their own area to the side of the show floor, with extended hours, for structure meeting rooms that ARE their “booths”.

In most cases, these are highly branded presences, and while a template turn-key version is offered, many upgrade these as fully branded, unique spaces.

Some industries are so competitive that potential exhibitors want complete privacy, by-invitation-only.  Perhaps a meeting room off the show floor makes a better display area for them, without hurting your event.

At NAMM, several exhibitors want to display such an extensive line of merchandise that it makes sense to allow them to exhibit in the ballrooms of the hotel next door.

For some industries, the world revolves around a small number of super-buyers, who need to be wooed to come to the industry event, and aren’t going to walk around from booth to booth.  United Fresh builds these buyers their own meeting suites, right in the middle of the show floor, letting them experience the event in the way that is most efficient and profitable for them.  Salespeople from the exhibitors call on them, while others man their booths for the 99%.

Then there are the just slightly tangential product categories that you can add to your event with a little imagination and some creativity.  The non-endemic sponsors, like cars, if correctly matched to the consumer demographic of the attendees can work…but not in a booth.  Even better, stretch to accommodate the semi-endemic potential sponsors who may want a demonstration or simply awareness rather than a booth.  If you added Coca Cola to a show for gas station owners, they don’t need a booth.  The goal is simply to make attendees aware that they can add revenue by adding a Coke machine. A big, expensive sponsorship will do that well, without compromising the integrity of the core base of exhibitors.

There are good reasons shows adopted “you must exhibit to buy a sponsorship” rules, and require all exhibits to be exhibits and all exhibits to be on the show floor.  But many events have realized that being flexible for specific categories of potential exhibitors (not one-off exceptions) can maintain order while growing the show, by serving more components of the industry more effectively.

While I heard some good new takes on old themes, and was glad to see the updates to products I knew, I did not see a new break-out idea, product, or company.

I downloaded all three mobile event apps.  All were native apps (score 10 points); only one was available on my iPad, and that was only iPhone size (plus 10 points, minus 5).  So they quickly burned out the battery on my Android phone.  I broke one trying to tweet from the app (crashed and could not reopen).  Another had an old hashtag programmed into the tweets (MTENY instead of MTEDC).  Sloppy, guys!

Loved the presentation by Lance Fensterman, Group Vice President of ReedPOP, the group that concentrates on fan-based events (like ComicCon NY).  So much of what he said about Community, Quirk, Passion, and Connection definitely apply to b-to-b events–it’s just a bit harder to see than when the attendees come in costume .  Quirk is the key:  what are the unique or irreplaceable elements that prevent the event from being a commodity.  The things that cause you to attend even though you can get product information and receive education in your field online.

The big trend in mobile apps is for games and for social media…not just showing tweets, or able to tweets, but “liking” “sharing”, and even automatic sharing of notes and what was attended in a timeline format.

Gamification hasn’t finished its five minutes of fame, and while the term may fade, the concept is important. Russell Brumfield did a nice job breaking it down, so that it is clear that it relates to ALL audiences.  We all participate in rewards/loyalty programs. The lottery. Comparing our skills to others. Applying gamification to your event starts with knowing what behavior you are trying to incent  (learning, participating, attending something), and what motivates this particular audience (status, competition, gifts, early access…).

Christian Saucedo did a good overview of Audience Engagement.  I particularly liked his examples of good uses of ARS (audience response systems). It is not just about an ice-breaking poll:

• Consensus checking
• Prioritizing material
• Confirm learning
• Reinforce learning
• And real polling, like determining the current practices of the attendees

We don’t measure whether anyone learned anything.  Which, I realized at Virtual Edge Summit, is a very different thing.

The cool thing about Virtual Edge Summit is that the audience and speakers tend to be a fairly balanced mix of event professionals and education and training professionals.  And their approach to virtual conferences, and by extension, physical conferences, couldn’t be more different.

Training professionals exist to cause a group of people to actually learn.  To move from ignorance to mastery of a subject. Imagine being responsible for educating firefighters on how an electrical fire is handled differently from a gas fire.  Lives depend on assimilating the knowledge.  If you are responsible to ensure an employee learns a new piece of software you are measured by improvements in productivity.  If you are responsible for certification training, you are accountable to how many pass the certification exam.

So training professionals approach teaching in an entirely different way.  They look at the science of how people learn:  hands-on, note-taking, frequent testing, discussions, short-topics, repetition.  Training is interactive:  students engage with the problems, mentally, in discussion, and hands-on, so that they “own” the results.

There is a real distinction in most cases between the type of exposure to new ideas we want to achieve in a conference and actual training.  But not in all cases, and not, perhaps, quite as often as we think.

It could be very eye-opening to stop and think periodically how we might change our conferences if we actually cared whether the attendees learn anything.

Typically exhibitors in themed pavilions are offered a specific booth package put together in conjunction with the general services contractor.  This ensures that the area looks consistent, but also makes it much easier and more cost-effective for smaller or new exhibitors who may not exhibit otherwise.  A typical package might include:

• Wall Structure – Traditional booths: Hard wall panels
• Wall Structure – Elite booths: Vinyl covered hard wall panels
• Graphic Header – Company name
• Carpet
• Power for Showcases – 1000 Watts per 100 square feet
• Drayage and labor for installation and removal of structure
• Overhead banner
• Lead retrieval devices

Creative show organizers think beyond the operational aspects listed above and include specific marketing benefits, such as:

• A shared theater space for scheduled presentations within the area
• Special promotional section of show guide
• Themed area promotion piece describing technology and including blurbs for each exhibitor
• Related content track in conference
• Call-out of area in attendee marketing materials
• Directional signage promoting the Pavilion throughout the show

Themed areas are generally in-line 10×10 booths, either pipe-and-drape or hardwall packages.  But many exhibitors, depending on the type of product, do very well in pre-fabricated “pod” structures.  More of them fit into the area provided, and it provides a new look to this section of the floor.

Themed Exhibitor Areas and Pavilions

Some examples of themed areas and pavilions:

New Exhibitors (Start-Up City, Innovation Alley):  Set your own rules for this space; such as in order to participate it must be the exhibitor’s first time at the event; exhibitors can only stay in the pavilion for two years; or must have a new product released in the past year.

Areas themed by product category:  While a small number of show producers organize their entire show floor by product category, others only select certain product categories for special attention.  This works for:

1. a product category you are introducing to the show floor
2. a new technology with multiple vendors, where the pavilion helps the show organizer explain the new technology which makes it easier for each exhibitor to discuss their version
3. a product category in which most exhibitors tend to be small, and get lost mixed in with larger exhibits
4. a set of products that tend to be purchased only by a certain subset of attendees

Display areas:  A featured area in a non-booth format to showcase a certain type of product.  The Sweets & Snacks Show is primarily food products, so the Merchandising options are showcased in their own space that encourages more participation.  These areas can be sold to existing exhibitors as a supplemental display area or to a new set of vendors.  Generally these would be sold by the product included rather than by company (some would include multiple products) or by square foot.  Greenbuild is primarily about sustainable building materials, but it makes great sense to allow some green furniture products to set up branded lounges, priced as a flat sponsorship fee.

Semi- or non-endemic product categories:  The homeopathic remedies at a primary care event or the luxury items at a high-end medical specialty event are non-endemic additions to a show.   While these unique products can be mixed in with the rest of the exhibitors,  they are often more successful in their own areas.  And a dedicated space demonstrates to these exhibitors that show management is focused on their success.

1. Wayfinding Tool

Upgrade your attendee experience from meter board “You are here” signs to an interactive touchscreen wayfinder system, allowing full search of exhibitors and sessions, with mapping and directions.  Sponsorship opportunities include:

1. Main Sponsor: logo throughout
2. Quick Find Links: logos across the bottom of the home page
3. Category Sponsor: one per exhibitor product category
4. What’s New Sponsor: one per exhibitor product category, highlights new products
5. Animation/Video Spot: 15-second video plays from video area or from exhibitor listing
6. Enhanced listing: Highlighted booth on floor plan, with detailed information to product level

Going with one vendor for all three allows full integration, including packaging the sponsorship opportunities and measurement tools.

2.  Smart Phone Apps

Most events are now experimenting with smart phone apps, with usage between 30% and 75% depending on number of years of use (it does build over time), the amount of promotion, and how many features are being used. Typical sponsorships include:

1. One exclusive sponsor
2. Splash page
3. Banners across bottom of screen (typically one for entire app)
4. Enhanced exhibitor listings
5. Alerts (limit number per day, and let attendees opt in)

Since the amount of integration into the event is a key driver to usage, look for an app that includes social media, including “liking and sharing” exhibitors and sessions.

3. Digital Signage

Attendees tend not to read signs.  But they do look at bright, shiny objects!  The great benefit of digital signage is in its flexibility, to display multiple pieces of content simultaneously or on a schedule, and for live changes on the fly.  The great variety of signage includes agenda boards, session room signage, social media walls, and video display plasmas.  Since the application behind the sign allows for multiple windows running simultaneously, and for detailed scheduling of messages, one plasma can have multiple uses throughout the day, plus opportunities for sponsorship.

Pure message boards can include one or several logos across the bottom or side, or a banner ad from a sponsor.  Videos are a great draw and opportunity for exhibitors to demonstrate a new product.  Various plasma screens can be dedicated to sponsor ads, or they can be interspersed with event content on the same monitor.

4. Countdown Newsletter

Many event organizers are having success supporting their attendee marketing efforts with a weekly newsletter starting 4 to 6 weeks before the event.  Going out to the main prospect database and those already registered, it builds excitement with the latest content announcements and don’t-miss activities planned for the event.  Since “seeing new products” is always in the top three reasons people attend events, be sure to include sponsored ads in these newsletters.  To keep the newsletters fully news-oriented, require that the sponsor ads refer to new products being highlighted at the show.  These newsletters can be sold and produced internally, or use a third-party like Industry Connect or MultiView.  Of course, these aren’t limited to email distribution.  Use hyperlinks and Share functionality for viral outreach.

5. Games

With the rise in importance of social media to marketing campaigns, “gamification” is the buzz-word of 2012.  Of course, face-to-face events have always had the opportunity to draw people together with games and competitions.  Create a great interactive quiz game that is fully relevant to your industry for attendees to play at your association booth or at terminals throughout the show.  These can be tailored to one sponsor, or be more general with multiple sponsors.  Or put a similar game on the smart phone application, and on your Facebook page and website.  Run a leaderboard to show best scores to build excitement.  Let users Share their score on their social media and get extra awareness for both the sponsor and your event.

6. Interactive content area  

What new technology, regulation, or trend is important to your industry this year?  In addition to teaching it in your conference sessions, why not create an interactive demonstration area on the show floor to let attendees experience this information in a more dynamic way?   While the event should maintain control of unbiased content in this area, sell appropriate sponsorships to those exhibitors most connected with this technology or trend.  Build awareness of an important subject, serve your attendees, create more excitement on the show floor, and increase revenue at the same time.

7. Passport Program 

While the basic Passport Program—having attendees get a passport stamped by a list of paying exhibitors to win a prize—is not a new idea, there are a lot of new twists keeping it fresh.  Many organizers have started using QR codes or near-field RFID to take the passport program electronic, and adding games, like having a QR code scan call up a clue to lead to the next booth on the program.  Passport programs are a great way to offer a lower-priced sponsorship, and are very effective in helping drive traffic to smaller and first-time exhibitors.

Or take the scavenger hunt to the entire host city by using Foursquare!

8. eDocuments

There are several methods for replacing exhibitor brochures with pdf distribution, most of which require the exhibitor to pay a fee to upload their materials to your event’s exhibitor portal.  Attendees can download the documents from the smart phone event app, from the wayfinding tool online, from their own portal created by the registration company with the list of companies they visited (and scanned their badge at) and materials from those booths, or using a QR code reader built into the event smart phone app.  Another advantage is the ability for both the organizer and exhibitor to measure and track what is downloaded, by whom.

9. New Product Showcase

Attendees love to see what the new products are, and exhibitors need to showcase them.  It doesn’t lend itself to an overall sponsor, but each exhibitor can buy into the showcase for a nominal fee (go for volume rather than high fees).  Attendees can scan the products they are interested in learning more about (AllianceTech has such a system), or they can use a scanner next to each product to scan themselves, and be included in the regular lead-retrieval system.  QR codes, scanned by the phone app can also give the attendee more information and the exhibitor the lead.  Extra bonus points for adding a New Product Theater, where exhibitors can pay for the opportunity to talk about their new products.  Keep them short and focused, though.  5 to 10 minutes will keep the crowd interested.  You have complete control with the rules you set on what products are eligible and how they are presented, to keep the area sophisticated and focused.

10. Entertainment

Here’s a sponsorship idea that livens-up the lobby area.  We’re starting to see sponsored music groups and DJs.  Just keep the sonic experience in line with your event brand—some may go with techno while others are better for jazz.  The sponsorship provides awareness and branding, with a small banner and the opportunity to hand out literature if desired.  Take it up a notch with a flash mob dance routine!  We recommend sticking to the lobby area to let the music be a welcome uplift rather than a disruption to exhibitors.

11. Virtual Extensions

Virtual Extensions encapsulates every form of capturing content from your physical event and putting it online, making the conference information available beyond the event to a larger audience or for a longer time.  At the basic level, have your AV company capture your session content either via video or audio synch-to-slide, and put it on your website in a media player.  An ecommerce page can limit viewers to members, to those willing to register, to those who pay or physical event attendees, even including pay-by-session.  Including video on your website greatly improves your search engine ranking, and improves your ability to reach out to new potential attendees.  30% to 60% of visitors to virtual extensions go on to attend the physical event the following year.  Sponsorships are typically a banner ad next to or preceding the content, but can also include a prestitial ad (a short video from the sponsor before the session begins).

12. Semi-Endemic Sponsorships

We’re all familiar with non-endemic exhibitors and sponsors.  The cashmere scarves and jewelry booths or car sponsorships.  These have their place, especially if well suited to the attendees’ consumer demographics. Subaru for speech pathologists and Mercedes for cardiologists.  Particularly if they are just a bit off the show floor, rather than mixed in with the industry-specific booths.

Lately we have worked with several clients to get more creative with semi-endemic sponsorships.  Sponsors who are not in the mainstream of the subject matter, but still apply to the attendees as industry professionals rather than as consumers.  These have to be very tailored to each industry, but some examples in the medical field might include:  a mattress sponsorship linked to education about sleeping disorders or back-pain treatment programs or financial services companies that provide programs for small business (recognizing that a doctor is also an independent businessman).

Turns out research supports this contrarian view:  debate and discussion actually do make us more creative.

An excellent article in this week’s The New Yorker, “Groupthink, The brainstorming myth“, by Jonah Lehrer, gives a solid overview of research and examples around the best ways to drive creativity in groups.  (Unfortunately you have to subscribe to The New Yorker to see the entire article on that link, so I’ll give a summary.)

Alex Osborn, partner at BBDO, presented brainstorming to the world in his book Your Creative Power, in 1948. His most important rule was the absence of criticism and negative feedback, saying, “Creativity is so delicate a flower that praise tends to make it bloom while discouragement often nips it in the bud.”  Brainstorming took off like a rocket, and remains deeply influential to the point of unquestioned dogma.

Yet the research to quantify or disprove brainstorming’s effectiveness date back to 1958, at Yale University. Forty-eight students were told to brainstorm a set of puzzles in groups of four, while forty-eight other students worked solo.  The independent students were twice as productive in number of solutions, and were judged to have created solutions that were more feasible and effective.

Subsequent research consistently reinforces that conclusion.

On the other hand, Osborn’s observations from client B.F. Goodrich’s research center  that science was best approached in creative teams, has been reinforced in multiple subsequent studies and case studies, most notably in MIT’s Building 20, where a hodge podge of science departments worked side by side and were unusually productive.

What these example all have in common are:

• multiple perspectives and diverse backgrounds working together
• an atmosphere of debate and open challenge to ideas

Charlan Nemeth, at the University of California at Berkeley, demonstrated this effectively in 2003, with 65 undergraduates divided into teams of five.  One set of teams followed standard brainstorming rules, one set were advised to debate and even criticize each other’s contributions, and one set was left to their own devices.

The results were telling.  The brainstorming groups slightly outperformed the groups given no instructions, but teams given the debate condition were the most creative by far.

Even after the teams disbanded, the individuals in the debate teams continued to come up with more ideas.

According to Nemeth, dissent stimulates new ideas because it encourages us to engage more fully with the work of others and to reasses our viewpoints. “There’s this Pollyannaish notion that the most important thing to do when working together is stay positive and get along, to not hurt anyone’s feeling,” she says. “Well, that’s just wrong.  Maybe debate is going to be less pleasant, but it will always be more productive.”

Overall, the lesson seems clear:  creativity works best in mixed groups without the constraints of artificial rules of engagement.

Lehrer sums it up, “It is the human friction that makes the sparks.”

Lots of campaigns focused on near-field RFID with badges or wristbands.  Big push to register for event via Facebook and thereby have access to the full Facebook database on the registrant, as well as ongoing links back to their page to push updates to their network.

Favorite new tool (see below):  Sifteo.  If you Google one thing from this post, check that out.

Books: 

Phil Simon: The Age of the Platform (Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple as case studies for thinking beyond a product to a suite of products that constantly evolve)

Carmine Gallo:  The Power of Foursquare

Foursquare is much more broadly interesting than I gave it credit for.  Big trend now is to implant branded location-based “tips”.  Interesting potential for associations to provide almost a tour of the city they are in, particularly for shows with outreach potential, such as AIA assigning AIA-branded tips and points of interest to all the interesting architecture in the city they are in.

Cheap Useful Tools:

1. Prezi. Replaces ppt.  Free for basic version.
2. 99Designs.com.  Crowdsource design proposals.  Only pay for the design you use.  Starts at $295.
3. Yorn.  Combination of audience response system and Twitter.  Pretty useful way to use a Twitter-like platform to add another level of interaction at a session.  Starts at $450.
4. Ustream.tv.  Let’s anyone produce ustream video.  Free with ads or starts at $99.
5. Heywatch.  Converts video from one format to another, easily, cheaply.
6. Animoto.  Set a photo montage to music.  Free or $39/month for Pro version.  Professional way to create post-event “video” case studies, as text can be included throughout.
7. Zentation: Syncs video and ppt after the fact.  Free for YouTube version.

For my use, Yorn and Animoto seemed to have the most potential.

Cool emerging tech for engagement tool

Sifteo:  1” LCD video cubes that “sense” positioning (gyroscopic), proximity, and can act as push buttons.  Use for interactive games in exhibitor or association booth. Reposition cubes to solve puzzles or word games, for example.  $150/set.  Totally addictive to play with.

Social Media Aggregation

Twitter walls, etc are examples of “social proof”: you’re more comfortable doing things you see others doing.

1. CrowdReel:  Twitter photos.  Use to encourage attendees to post photos on Twitter and create a photo Twitter wall.  Or aggregate photos from the event on web site, etc.
2. Feedmagnet: Twitter moderator tool

Twilio: API to create apps that create SMS or voice messaging, inbound (customer service) or outbound (alerts).  Walmart uses to automatically convert their “Deal of the Day” tweets into SMS texts.

VanguardID makes near-field RFIP badges, wristbands, tabs.

Access Pass&Design…cool looking badges, etc.

Digital crowdsourcing

Incredibly powerful, but requires very large, rabid base.  Distinguish between core fans (actively communicate) and fans (passive), and assume only 20% of core fans will participate.  Then apply geographic screen for local events.  Requires Community Manager.

Key trends in consumer case studies

Starting promotions online and/or locally that culminate at the national event.  Use Facebook/Twitter/YouTube to build competition, fan base, accept submissions, crowdsource voting…  This works as well for b-to-b events as for consumer…see “Generation Green” YouTube video campaign for GreenBuild.

Register for consumer event using Facebook…all Facebook data moves with registration into your database.  Participants willing as it saves time registering, and they continue to be linked to Facebook:  use nearfield RFID chip in their badge or wrist band to interact with games, to get their photo taken and automatically upload to their feed.  Could be done just as easily with bar codes.  Does this work for b-to-b?  Just in its infancy, but you’re starting to see some events allow registration using Facebook or LinkedIn, and apps like eventSocial to use social media to reach out to friends after registering.