That being said, and again, with all respect to the 'cool factor' and perhaps I'm not someone that goes to events for the reasons others do, I'd love to see some of the conversion numbers related to the use of this tool. Is it a curiosity that my contacts are attending an event, or is it a registration driver? If it drives registration, at what costs? And, more importantly, is it incremental or exponential growth in attendance that's being seen based on the embedding of this?

From a technical perspective, the reason we turned away from this earlier this summer when Rob and I first discussed it, was the complexity of the setup and his insistence that "we'll talk with your client and make it work for then". Sorry, I'm not going to introduce you to our client guys.

So, I hope they've worked out these items because they're non-starters for us, and for the several clients we've talked with about this.

You ask good questions about the impact of the tool - Let me see if I can get some data to share.

Also, I am sorry that your company and Eventvue were not able to agree to terms for collaboration.

- Sam

The problems the event industry has are not 'technology' problems looking for a solution, but that definitely seems to be the way so many people are approaching it.

Look at the proliferation of all of the new 'tools' out there . . . are they making a difference? This widget and that gadget . . . all it's doing is leaving the producers, the exhibitors and the attendees confused - to the point of inaction. I don't believe we're going to 'tech' our way to success.

What I do believe makes a difference, and the things we've been having great success with are:
- Hosted Virtual Events combining the best of the live on site environment with the virtual opportunities.
- Data monetization of meaningful data where the event venue, the event producer, the exhibitor and attendee all get more of what they want and need.
- An all-inclusive conversation where everyone can participate, rather than just those with the right connection, device or attitude.
- Fiscally realistic 'green' components that are selected not for their carbon footprint aspects alone, but because of their positive financial impact.

And more . . .

The correct approach, again in MY OPINION, is not more technology, it's more activation and more ROI and more targeted conversations and more of what people are doing naturally and leveraging that. As we all know, people don't like change so making them change is not the answer; we should resist artificially layering things on because we can.

Experimentation is good and regardless of the tool, or approach, or idea being tried, I'm not against experimentation (and, I think perhaps in all of this I forgot to thank you for being open to sharing the ideas of anybody that might make sense, so thank you for that!). My concern is that in all of the 'noise', the events industry is spinning in circles looking for the thing that will make a difference . . . when in fact, those 'things' are already in front of us and we just can't see the forest through the trees.

I believe that Eventvue has a strong track record within the technology events industry. Conferences like Defrag have seen a dramatic ROI from attendees using the widget as they look up who is in their social network that is already registered. Defrag conference organizers have been able to put a dollar value on registered industry influencers because they attract other attendees to register. That’s huge ROI!

I think @busyevent, you are devaluing the importance of peer-to-peer connections and how people want to interact with each other. In the future, our social graph of connections will become more and more important and Eventvue has found a way to capitalize on that.

As a veteran event professional, content, location and venue don't really drive my attendance at event as every association and organization is vying for my limited dollars. What does drive my attendance is seeing if other people that I regularly connect with online are already attending. The opportunity to sit down face-to-face with them is much more important to me. So for veterans like me, EventVue’s widget makes huge sense.

I don’t believe the proliferation of tools causes attendees to inaction. That’s like saying the proliferation of hotel venues causes an attendee not to hold a meeting.

It’s really not about the tools anyway. It’s about strategy and the meeting’s goals. If one of the meeting’s goals is to help industry professionals connect, then this tool makes a lot of sense.

First and succinctly: I agree with what Jeff said :)

We at EventVue are committed to bringing new innovation to event organizers that help them produce better, more engaging events that draw more people. We are constantly pushing the envelope and testing new ideas. Our Discover widget answers the question that we always ask ourselves before attending any conference, expo, concert, really any event: "Well, who else do I know attending?"

We think there's a lot of untapped power in the social proof of attending an event and want to let event organizers use that to get more attendees.

Thanks for your support Jeff and for telling your readers about new tools that can be helpful to their events.