We are excited to be the mobile solutions provider for the upcoming DMA09 conference in San Diego. Here are a few tips for getting the most out of DMA09 Mobile built on the SwiftMobile platform.

1. Complete your profile page. Once you log in you’ll see a link—edit my profile— and you can update your profile information from this link. If you are on a lap top or desktop, you can use Facebook Connect to populate your profile. Just click on the Facebook Connect at the top of the page. We will grab the public information from your Facebook page and use it to populate the corresponding fields in your DMA09 profile.
2. Be sure to add your photo. People are likely to scan the people tab for profiles that are complete with photo. This is the best way for people to quickly find you.
3. Be sure to add your Twitter credentials. Once you add your Twitter user name and log in to your profile page, you will be able to send tweets directly from mobile. DMA09 Mobile embeds the proper hashtag in the status update window. All you have to do is hit the bird and tweet.
4. Make favorites. You can “make favorites” of people, sessions, and sponsors/exhibitors. This gives you quick navigation to your favorites for tracking your schedule and people you are interested in seeing at the event. Everything you “make a favorite” will also be added to your trip report.
5. Trip Report. Your trip report is visible from the web view of your profile page. It captures everyone you have made a favorite and all of your notes.
6. Find people. From the People tab, you can scan profiles of attendees. If they have enabled Twitter and private messages, you can follow them on Twitter and send a private message. This is a great way to improve your networking at the live event.

Twitter and Smartphones demand new presentation strategies. Here’s how to adapt.

The real-time web defined

Writing in Read Write Web, Ken Fromm characterizes the real-time web as a new form of communication, with a new body of content, published in real time.

Twitter has emerged as the dominant platform for real-time web communications. Twitter has also become the dominant channel for conversation at live events.

Twitter offers new ways of engaging audiences in presentations.

Because it is immediate, Twitter can be used to build audience participation into your talks. Twitter is limited to

140 characters—Twitter’s limit is defined by the text message limit of 160 characters with 20 reserved for the address. Used cleverly, Twitter’s brevity can be the soul of its wit. The space constraints can be used to communicate only the essential idea.

Unlike other synchronous forms of communication (IM, SMS, voice) Twitter is public. It is also distinguished by a built-in social graph in that each person publishes to a social network of followers who each in turn have their own network of followers.

Twitter’s social graph means that your talk reaches far beyond the confines of your stage.

Twitter can also be filtered by hashtags. Hashtags are a pound sign (#) followed by a term (e.g. #swiftdemo). A hash- tag will be assigned for your event. You may want to assign a hashtag for your session as well. You can follow this hashtag in your Twitter client. Or you can use the Twitter search to find everything tagged with a specific term.

Olivia Mitchell has written an excellent article on this topic. She summarizes the benefits for the audience as:

• Focus
• Greater content
• Greater participation
• Virtual access
• Better connectivity

Speakers also benefit from Twitter integration:

• Greater interactivity
• More conversation
• Greater audience interest and participation
• Virtual audiences
• Colleagues involved

What kind of bird are you?  Knowing your speaking style can help you use real-time communications more effectively.

How to Twitter Your Talk

Our tips have been culled from a number of best practices written up on the web and tailored to different presentation styles.

• Use Twitter early to start seeding interest and collecting ideas. Post questions to your followers and ask them to re-tweet (RT) your questions to others.
• Start your talk with a slide that points people to your session tag and session page.
• Establish ground rules for your style.
• Owls may want to ask people to Tweet during Q&A only.
• Hummingbirds may want to create your talk in the form of a series of tweets. With the help of an assistant, you can publish these in sync with your presentation and encourage people to RT and comment on them.
• Penguins may want to act as an ombudsman for the audience. Structure your talk as a series of questions that can be answered in tweets. Work with a partner who can capture and highlight these tweets for further discussion and conversation.
• After your talk is finished, publish the highlights in the form of a series of tweets with the session or event tag embedded.
• Be sure to write tweets that can be re-tweeted by leaving room for extra characters.
• Be sure to follow your new followers. Twittering your presentation is a great way to build an audience for future talks.

For speakers on SWIFT Mobile

If your event producer has implemented the SWIFT Mobile platform, you can use features built into SWIFT to improve your talk:

EMBEDDED HASHTAGS

SWIFT mobile has a Twitter client that allows users to go to your session page and tweet directly from your page. The SWIFT Twitter client will automatically embed the hashtag for your session in the window so that people can just write and publish.

AGGREGATION OF YOUR SESSION TWEETS

Your Tweets will be aggregated on your session page.

POLLING

SWIFT Mobile also has a polling feature that can be used before, during and after your talk. If you want to build a poll into your presentation, just email it to your administrator and we’ll construct it and add it to your session page. You can then direct people to the link from their phones and laptops to complete the poll in real time. Then you can publish the results to the audience.

About SWIFT Mobile

SWIFT Mobile is a platform for smartphones that improves real-time communications, connections, and commerce at live events.

On SWIFT Mobile you can:

• Leave your laptop computer at the hotel
• Connect with colleagues, sales prospects, partners, vendors and others through the event mobile directory
• Access attendee and speaker profile pages
• Carry the conference schedule in the palm of your hand
• Participate in the customized, aggregated Twitter feed for the event
• Obtain your personalized, automatically generated trip report.

We are giving demo’s for the new release of our mobile web platform for live events.  We have a new UI that is clearer and simpler than our last version.  The biggest change is how we integrate Twitter into the live event experience.  Event administrators can now assign hashtags to the event and subtags to sessions and other things inside the event. When you are on a session page (see the example below for Guy Kawasaki’s keynote at SES New York) and you click on the twitter bird, SwiftMobile automatically adds that session tag to your tweet and then publishes tweets with that tag into an aggregated activity feed.  We think this makes Twitter much more valuable for live events.

We are building a set of Twitter analytics that will measure:

• What is important to this community?
• How connected is this community?
• Who is influential in this community?
• How are these things changing over time?

Other new features include:

People

• Access to a full text search directory of attendees and speakers.
• Mobile Email, DM, and SMS access (depending on user preferences) to attendees.
• Attendee and speaker profile pages.
• People favorites.

Agenda

• Mobile access to agenda.
• Session pages that incorporate notes, ratings, and a filtered Twitter stream.
• Session favorites.

Mobile messaging

• Access anyone in real time through the mobile directory; send emails, direct messages (via Twitter) and text messages to people who have opted in.

We have built channels for exhibitor and sponsor marketing into the platform and work on a revenue sharing basis with event producers who monetize these channels for new sources of revenue.

If you would like to see a demo, please email me at kathleen@imswift.com.