curate

Recently, Corbin Ball shared his expertise regarding meeting curation with Midwest Meetings magazine. He identified six apps that will help spread the word about your meeting, tell a story and/or collect data across social platforms. 

I will share in today's blog five of those apps, the number of users on the channel, whether there is a cost involved, what platforms these apps run on, and how they can be scaled up with other interactive technology tool rentals. But first, let's define the term "content curation". Here is a quick definition: 

Content curation is the process of collecting, organizing and displaying information relevant to a particular topic or area of interest. People or systems that implement content curation are called curators. 

PINTEREST

A photo-sharing website that allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections for an event. Users can browse other boards, "re-pin" images to their own boards, or "like" photos. It is easy to create separate boards for speakers, sponsors, exhibitors and attendees. 

Number of Users: 70 Million

Platforms Supported: iPad, iPhone, Android Devices and Desktop

Cost: Free

 

SLIDESHARE

A slide hosting service that allows users to upload PowerPoint, PDF, Keynote or OpenDocument presentations. Slide decks can then be viewed on the site itself, on hand held devices or embedded into other sites. 

Number of Users: 3.5 Million (but may be more due to their acquisition by LinkedIn)

Platform Supported: Desktop

Cost: Free

As an event planner, you can upload the presentations to a Video Wall rental unit, email the presentations to attendees or embed the code into your website. All of these actions are green and will allow your speakers' presentations to grow legs beyond the initial presentation. 

 

CONFERIZE

Allows you to follow any live conference from anywhere at any time. It allows you to follow conferences on a real-time basis and find videos, presentations, photos and social feeds about that conferences all at one location. 

Number of Users: 2.5 Million

Platform Supported: Desktop

Cost: Free

This is a great tool to bring in virtual attendees into the conference, promote your conference and speakers ahead of time, and encourage your speaker to invite folks via their social channels. Potential attendees can register right from this site. In addition, you can use Plasma Displays to show content to attendees outside the meeting room. 

 

EVENTIFIER

Give them your event hashtag and they will fetch out all the event related content from across the social stream. Eventifier collates all the event related contents from various social media streams like Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, Flickr, and Slideshare. 
 
Number of Customers: 100+
 
Platform Supported: Desktop
 
Cost: $499 – $1,999+ per event
 
This would be a great tool to show on a video wall, what happened the previous day at a multi-day conference. In addition, what a great tool to archive the event after it is all over and show next year's potential attendees, exhibitors and sponsors this visual storyboard. 
 
 
 
Collect media from across the web, publish on Storify, embed anywhere, share and notify sources — and hopefully your story will go  viral. 
 
Number of Users: 1.2 Million
 
Platforms Supported: Desktop and iPad with iOS 6.0 or later
 
Cost: Free
 
When promoting speakers and sponsors you can search the web for all their information and post it on one story line and then insert the code into your website or blog. Also if you rent iPads for attendees (as long as they are 2nd to 4th generation), they will be able to curate content about your seminar as it is going on. 
 
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