Abstract:

Most conferences are organized and provided from the top down. Social technologies, peer-production and open innovation models provide new opportunities for people to organize events from the bottom up. Social media applications can support event planners and participants before, during and after the event. Many alternative approaches exist, but most of them still demand a lot of technical skills, vision and labor from the part of organizers. There are also a lot of interesting concepts for running more participative events physically and how things might connect to virtual environments, but the information is scattered around the web. In my presentation I will go through some of the most interesting concepts, ideas and tools for running better, digitally mediated events. I have applied some of these principles for a project called Bantora (www.bantora.com), that I've been working on lately. Early on in the development we paid attention to what happens before an event: how people find each other online and turn their passion and ideas into great events. Everything starts and ends as digital. In this presentation I will go through lessons learned about the role of social media at events and how to make the best out of it. Finally, I would like to present a vision of how better events could fundamentally change the way we interact and do our work.

Biographical Information:

Teemu Arina is a consultant, author, speaker, blogger, and CEO of Dicole Ltd. He seeks to understand how virtual learning, online collaboration, social technologies, open innovation and digital ecosystems affect organizations. His company offers community platforms, strategic advice and change management related to the new digital business environment. Some of his projects include www.realtimeeconomy.net and www.bantora.com, the latter aiming to make events more participative, transparent, fun and mediated with social technologies. Teemu Arina blogs at: http://tarina.blogging.fi