2010 is finally here and with it comes new opportunities to wow your audience with an array of cool technologies. While many of the technologies we think you should be looking out for have been around for a while, we feel that 2010 is going to be the breakout year for some of them and will raise the standard for getting your message out to your audience.

In this episode, Kelly Shores, President of Sparksight talks about 10 cool technologies to watch for at events this year. Happy New Year and enjoy!

The holidays are fast approaching, which means you need to start coming up with a list of all of the fancy event-related tools and gadgets that you're going to need for the coming year.

In this very special holiday episode of SparkPlug, the Sparksight staff points out what they think should be on every event manager and conference planner's 2009 Holiday Wish List.

Event planners and producers tend to be detail oriented people. However, there are a number of things that can happen that turn your otherwise successful event into a nightmare. This is especially true when you are working in a venue (such as hotel or convention center) that you don't have total control over and you must please your client (and attendees) while being a good “guest” in someone else's facility. In this episode of Sparkplug, Kelly Shores, President of Sparksight, talks about thirteen often-overlooked pitfalls that can add unnecessary stress to an event, and, of course, how to avoid them.

If you have the chance to shoot video outside of your home country, embrace the opportunity to explore a new place, but watch out for the pitfalls that come with working in unfamiliar territory.

In this episode, Andrew King and Kelly Shores from Sparksight deliver real-world tips, tricks and examples of things to do to make your video shoot “across the pond” simpler, smoother and more enjoyable. Shot in front of Windsor Castle, outside of London, England, this episode draws upon experiences in producing a customer interview video for a UK-based client (hence the location) as well as past experiences shooting in Canada, Asia, the Caribbean, and Australia. Andrew and Kelly cover ten things you may not have considered in shooting abroad as well as suggestions for successfully addressing each item.

As we discussed in Episode 101, the days of paper registration are long gone. Everything is online now, and events are no different. If you're managing an event or conference, we think it is vital that you create some kind of event website. Some events can be handled with single landing pages, but others are far better served with an entire site that can help sell your event and increase attendance. Either way, if you are creating an event website, you'll want to optimize it for search engines.

In this episode, Chris Justice, Sparksight's Search Engine Expert (and CEO) goes through ten tips on search engine optimization for event websites. These are quick and easy (well, mostly) ways you can give your site a traffic boost, and combined with a creative marketing strategy and a targeted social media campaign, will help you fill the seats and sell out your event.

So you've done the hard part. You wrote the script (or asked the questions), shot the footage, and edited everything into a concise, interesting, helpful video. ...Now what? Where do you post your video online? Who's going to watch it? How will you know how it's doing? Will a YouTuber think that your video is “totally lame?”

So many questions, and in this episode of SparkPlug, we have ten answers. Andrew King, the Director of Video Production at Sparksight, shares ten tips in five minutes on how to distribute your video content online. From picking the right platforms to avoiding watermarks and ads, these tips will help you get started in the increasingly popular world of online video.

When you consider becoming a customer of any company, chances are you want to know what others are saying about them first. Companies get this, and are responding in increasing numbers to try and capture what their happy customers are saying on video for the web. The problem? Customer testimonial interviews can be very challenging to shoot, and when it comes to what people are saying about your product, the last thing you want is a dog barking during their best quotes.

In this episode, Kelly Shores lays out ten tips in five minutes on how to shoot an effective interview. Short and sweet, these tips will help you avoid some of the pitfalls and come out with a well-produced video that makes a good case for why people should use your company's services.

Are you harnessing the power of online video? When putting together a conference or event, you should strongly consider how you could use this increasingly inexpensive and crowd-drawing medium to its fullest potential.

In this episode, Chris Justice and Lyn Graft of LG Pictures discuss the broad scope of pre and post-event uses of online video. A storyteller through and through, Lyn shares some anecdotes from his years of experience and helps shed light on how video can be used for events and why you should be using it. He also shares his personal "Bag of Tricks" for video production, an invaluable checklist for anyone shooting company blogs, breakout sessions, interviews, and other event-related videos.

Whether planning one event or one hundred, registration is a huge step, and mishandling it could lead to higher abandonment rates and lower customer satisfaction. So what's the ticket to selling tickets?

Chris Justice interviews Terrell Abbott, General Manager at Registration Assistant, about online registration systems and collecting attendee information. The discussion covers a variety of registration issues, including online system options, how much information to collect on the initial form, when to collect fees, and how best to handle refunds.