Virtual events may not be as mainstream as early advocates expected them to be by now, but the momentum behind virtual and hybrid meetings continues to grow, and the companies serving that market are multiplying fast. To that end, the Virtual Edge Institute recently launched a virtual events directory, cataloguing and profiling the services and solutions of more than 400 suppliers in 20 categories, from digital engagement consultants to content capture to webconferencing services. More, plus a link to the directory.

One of the buzzwords of 2011 is “community.” Everyone wants to build one, sustain it, and potentially profit from it. The question is, how do you build one around your event that is vibrant, active, and passionate? That’s one of the things we asked Justin Ramers, director of social media, and Eric Olson, general manager of events, with The Active Network, which offers online event management, marketing solutions, and registration software. Here’s what they had to say about building community, aligning technology with your goals (not the other way around), and leveraging your audience.

Can your hotel’s in-room safe fit a laptop? Can you pick up a phone signal everywhere in the meeting space? What’s the cost and speed of the in-room Internet service? A new technology site inspection checklist, TechSpec, covers all those issues and many more, and it is available free from meetings technology specialists Jim Spellos, CMP, and Corbin Ball, CMP, CSP. More on the new downloadable forms.

What’s that you say? You want to make the lives of guest presenters more difficult, make their materials look worse, and make them invest unnecessary prep time so that they hate you and never want to work with you again? Sure… you can do that! One of the easiest ways is to insist that they design slides in a proprietary format that’s as difficult as possible to comply with. Here are seven fun and easy ways to ensure just that.

I used to write articles and hand them to an art director. Now I blast them out in an e-newsletter, post them to multiple Web sites, record them on a podcast, discuss them during a webinar, link you to them on Facebook and LinkedIn. And still, they want me to tweet. More…