The issue of cybersecurity came back to the fore in November 2018 with the revelation of a massive data breach of Marriott’s Starwood-branded hotels. The information of up to 500 million guests was compromised in the data breach. And let's not forget the whole 2018 Facebook data fiasco.

Meetings Today reached out to Brian Friedman, vice president of digital innovation at event management software company Aventri to get his forecast on the top event technology trends.

When I first saw Sugar Cubes by Symmetry Labs, I saw more than a pretty light show. I saw backdrops that turned into art installations, lights that turned into dance and amazed looks. “Woah, that is cool!” was the typical exclamation I overheard from event participants.

The twisting of reality is becoming common practice in the meeting, tradeshow, event and exhibition world. By using an ever-evolving array of technology such as virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality, users can enter worlds created from scratch to entertain, provide demonstrations and eventually sell a concept or product. But how “realistic” is the implementation of this technology? What is each good at doing and what drawbacks are endemic to which specific medium?

The expert of record for all things meetings tech for more than 20 years, Corbin Ball—owner of Corbin Ball & Co.—has ingrained himself in the meetings industry on a global level. An inveterate traveler—he spends about a third of his time on the road every year—Ball recently received the highest honor in the industry after being inducted into the Events Industry Council’s (EIC) Hall of Leaders.

About two-years ago I was introduced to AllSeated. I fell in love with it in 20 minutes after playing with its intuitive operating system. AllSeated is one of the fastest growing networks for the event industry. With designed and scaled floor plans in the system—tens of thousands are currently available—and a reach of over 500,000 users, AllSeated provides cloud-based tools to run an event.

Cvent announced its acquisition of Social Tables—an event diagramming, seating and collaboration platform—on Tuesday, October 16. Cvent said the acquisition will help improve collaboration, create a more interactive sourcing experience and increase group sales at venues.

I’m always excited when I see different ways that content is being shared with audiences. Closed captioning is one of those items that showed up on my radar when I was speaking at WordCamp Los Angeles in 2018. It was a nice turnout for my session on how to blog from your mobile phone.

Markey's Rental & Staging provides five essential questions for meeting planners to ask their audiovisual suppliers.

“The Power of Live” was the theme of Cvent Connect 2018 in Las Vegas, and by the record-breaking attendance of the show, delegates seemed to take that as the importance of meeting face to face for four days of innovative content, several new product unveilings and inspiring keynotes.