Ok, so we all get the plethora of great industry based magazines, right? If you are like me you peruse them, look for inspiration, read the articles you are interested in, book mark items you want to go back and look at, oh and check the party pics for your beautiful mug! Of course, these magazines seem to sit on my desk corner with dog eared pages to go back and look through. Well, over the past few months I have noticed a number of really cool, new event ideas that are centered around technology. I decided to compile a few that I think are noteworthy and brought them to you. Take a look:

Tent Projection Wrapping

I am not sure of the official name of this idea, but I saw a little write up on projection wrapping in the January Event Solutions Magazine. It sounded pretty cool, so I went online to look at photos and read more about it. The company that did this for Direct TV’s Christmas event last year was Firefly Tent Design, the sister company of Firefly LA (a media design company). Basically it was like taking the entire 360 degree surface of a tent and projecting rotating images that transform your guests into a different world, literally. You can have trees to the side, stars above, and mountains off in the distance. Take a look at the write up Biz Bash did on the wintery projections that were done for Direct TV.

PPT2DVD

This technology allows you to convert PowerPoint presentations to DVD so they can be shown on a television or big screen. It helps you convert, carry and control large PPT presentations using a DVD player instead of hauling around a laptop and projector. This is a fairly new idea (and there are a couple of types out there), so many professionals who have used this suggest you test it many times before relying on it for a big project or presentation. What looks cool to me about it is that is allows you to go beyond the typical PPT formatting and make presentations stand out. You can also use it for Advertising, Digital Signage and Digital POS. It is like have an A/V professional on-staff!

Robo.to Maker

This is the 21st century photo booth! Move over, photo stations…Robo.to allows guests to create a 4 second  video that they can immediately post to their social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. It is a great way for attendees to interact with the outside world during your event and bring even more exposure, thus increasing your brand knowledge. It seems like people would have a lot of fun with this idea, as a way to get their “4 seconds of stardom” so to speak at your event.

SmartTouch

I did a post about the digital menus a while back, but this idea has to do with panels that give guests control at their hotel or resort. The SmartTouch is a very cool, sleek design that with a few touches allows guests to book a spa appointment, make dinner reservations, have extra towels brought up all with out human interaction. Think iPhone but for the guests to speak directly to the concierge or hotel service staff. Many hotels are having to operate on fewer personal, but expected to give the same stellar service. The SmartTouch is a way that many guests can put in their request and not deal with a busy signal or being put on hold. It also gives guests a real-time status update of their request so they don’t have to wonder if it is being taken care of. Find out more on incentient.com.