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Newsletter Archives
Event Scheduling: Managing Time and Place 
Think you attend a lot
of meetings? You’re right.
The US events industry
is a $96 billion annual business with nearly 100 million people
attending more than 1.2 million conferences, seminars, corporate
meetings, trade shows and conventions.
1
The National Statistics
Council states that 37 percent of employee time is spent in meetings.
According to a recent study, American workers attend an average of 12.2
meetings per month involving travel or audio/videoconferences plus an
estimated 49.6 internal or local face-to-face meetings, for a total of
61.8 meetings per month!
2
Considerable time, money
and effort are applied to ensure these gatherings are productive,
deliver results and encourage teambuilding. Technology that caters to
the meeting and events industry continues to evolve and provide
effective solutions to make more efficient scheduling, resource
allocation and asset management.
Event scheduling
software has developed into an essential meetings tool over the past
decade, centralizing the roles of event organizer, purchasing agent and
room manager. Users have a single source from which they can manage room
schedules, assign resources and deliver real-time event information to
electronic room signs. New room sign technology provides affordable,
stand-alone systems as well as network-wide resources for room schedule
displays.
The benefits of these new technologies
are being exploited in virtually every sector – business, non-profit,
education, convention, hospitality, entertainment, government, worship,
healthcare, retail, transportation – the applications are virtually
endless. Popular content being delivered to room signs includes:
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Room
and event schedules
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Event
information
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Welcome greetings
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Speaker biographies
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Meal
and break information
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Restroom directions
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Cell
phone/portable device notices
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Organizational announcements
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Industry news
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Transportation schedules
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Related advertising
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News,
weather and stock updates
Meeting managers are
constantly discovering more uses and associated advantages for their
room sign systems. By delivering communications that are significant to
an identified group in a particular area – be it a single room, block of
rooms or entire convention area – at a particular time, managers are
able to deliver relevant, targeted messages and schedules that inform
their audiences and make events more efficient.
An
overwhelming majority of attendees (92%) value meetings as providing an
opportunity to contribute, and busy professionals (89%) believe that
technology will make meetings easier in the future.
2
Event scheduling software and electronic room signs will
continue to be effective tools in meeting these expectations.
Copyright 2006. Tech Electronics, Inc. (TEi). All rights reserved.
1
http://www.barternews.com/archive/10_23_01.htm
2
http://e-meetings.mci.com/meetingsinamerica/uswhitepaper.php
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