Live Streaming via YouTube

YouTube has announced a new feature (not available to everyone yet) that allows events to stream proceedings live:

http://sites.google.com/site/ytpartnercommunications/Announcements/youtubelive

It looks like YouTube is planning on rolling out the new feature throughout 2011. We're not exactly sure how it works, but it's definitely worth keeping an eye on!

Why your conference needs an official Twitter #hashtag

Attendees are going to tweet about your conference. You can either let them self-organize (bad idea) or you can help them in their efforts simply by creating and promoting an official hashtag (great idea).

Creating a conference hashtag is super simple. (So simple, in fact, you might want to take it a step further and create hashtags for individual sessions.) The best part? Hashtags are free and can be created without ever having to log in to—or even have—a Twitter account.

Attendees will benefit from an official hashtag by:

• Having an easy way to collect and organize notes. (See our post about TweetNotes for a tool that makes organizing conference tweets even easier.)
• Having access to everyone's tweets in one convenient location.
• Continuing discussions after the conference (or session).
• Being able to report problems in real time.
• Receiving conference announcements in real time.
• Receiving promotions or other announcements from exhibitors in real time.

Creating an official hashtag is a big help for your attendees, but to get the most out of it, you also need to promote it. So be sure to place it on the conference website, on signage at the venue, and on slides before presentations. Your attendees will thank you.

Tweet Archive

For anyone who wants to capture and archive tweets from a conference, you might want to check out TweetNotes.

What makes the app so special? For one thing, it's free. It also lets you:

• Add context by incorporating content, like slides and handouts.
• Organize multiple sessions under one meeting space.
• Visualize participants.
• Embed in blogs, Web sites, etc.
• Archive activity for future reference.

The developers say they're planning a lot more features, including additional collaboration tools. We're not sure how they plan to monetize it, so it might not be the best option for mission-critical applications, but definitely worth looking into.