EXPO: The use of social networking technology is growing and the technology is evolving. What elements do you think must be in place to have an effective social networking tool for an event?

Pierce: We have two major technology initiatives under way this year and CONNECT, our social networking tool developed with a2z, is one of them. We think social networking, done correctly, can give an event a huge advantage. It allows us to give our exhibitors yet another reason to participate in one of our events. A good social networking tool gives exhibitors access to attendees before the event, so they can communicate in a meaningful way - not just in a mass promotion. It helps them target who they really need to talk to at the show. It also helps the attendees. They can pre-screen the exhibitors they want to see, talk to exactly the right person before the show, get their specific needs met and make an appointment at the show. We're also doing reverse lead retrieval with attendees. We'll send them a list of all the exhibitors they visited with links back to their Web sites, giving those exhibitors more exposure.

EXPO: What do you think is on the horizon for this technology?

Pierce: I think that social networking tools will become an increasingly integral part of the show experience. It gives both exhibitors and attendees a 360-degree view of the event. With our system, we're now able to integrate the social networking tool with lead retrieval. That allows exhibitors to run the list of who they wanted to make contact with at the show against who they actually talked to. Say, for example, they identified 1,000 people they wanted to reach specifically. Using our system, they'll know that 200 of those people came to the booth and made contact. The other 800 still need to be reached. In fact, that can be a reason for them to come back the next year - they've still got to reach those 800 attendees. It also helps exhibitors justify their return on investment.

EXPO: Last year EXPO wrote about Hanley Wood's integration of its CRM database with the exhibit sales database. What steps have you taken to help make this process more efficient?

Pierce: SalesLogix is the exhibitor sales CRM, and we use EMS as our internal exhibit sales database. The databases are integrated so that when someone is ready to buy a booth, the salesperson can bring up a complete history of that customer which events they've participated in, what sponsorships they've bought and what their payment history has been. This is something we've improved this year by making it possible for our sales team to generate very specific lists. For example, they can create a list of companies that have exhibited in other Hanley Wood shows or companies that bought sponsorships last year but haven't bought one this year. It's also integrated with the Web so that when an exhibitor goes online and fills out their description for the directory, for example, the salespeople know and can access that information. This helps to create a much more targeted sales process rather than just working your way through a list of names and phone numbers.

EXPO: How vulnerable do you think we are as an industry to security breaches with data, and what should the average show organizer know about protecting it?

Pierce: I'm shocked on a regular basis by what can be acquired from most show Web sites with very little digging. There are certain companies that just don't secure their data very well. It isn't the show management companies. The problem is usually with the third-party partner they're using for their Web sites that leaves the data exposed through back doors. If you know enough about how that system works, you can type something in and get it to spit back all kinds of things for you such as exhibitor buying information. In this industry the security issues generally aren't so much one show organizer trying to steal data from another. It's more often a third party trying to get data, such as attendee or exhibitor contact information, they can sell to other people.

EXPO: What do you think is the biggest barrier to shows adopting newer technology solutions?

Pierce: I think it's that people have so often felt burned by technology. They feel like they've lost their investment. So, invariably, organizers try to build their technology systems based on fixing one-off problems rather than looking at everything in its entirety. They decide they need a better exhibit sales database, so they buy that. Then they decide they need a better way to track sponsorships and buy that. But there's no baseline, no way to merge all of these systems, and valuable information ends up not being shared. It's hard work to lay the right groundwork first.