These days, chances are a number of attendees at your sessions and keynotes are going to be plugged in — either to a laptop or to a smartphone — while the speaker is giving his or her presentation. And because social media-savvy attendees are likely to be giving a running commentary of their experience on social networks like Twitter, why not give them a branded destination to view chats and Twitter streams surrounding the content?

Jack Powers, Director of IN3.ORG and a keynote speaker at EXPOTECH, EXPO’s first virtual show, highlights the AlwaysOn conference (www.alwayson.goingon.com) as a show that’s doing it right. At the conference, attendees tethered to their laptops can pop open a Web page on the conference site that shows the live presentation in the middle of the page, a hosted chat running down each side of the page, and a “TweetChat” window featuring show-specific tweets. The feeds are monitored by show staff so that inappropriate comments and tweets (using foul language, for example) can be deleted before popping up on the screen.

The approach has two benefits: It gives attendees a centralized location to access all the conversations around the show, and it gives organizers the opportunity to “brand” the Web chatter around the show, instead of missing out on the conversation.