The SWIFT platform merges the newest tools on the web — social networking, podcasting, tagging, and blogging — with the live conference experience to capture new value for organizers, attendees, speakers and exhibitors. SWIFT integrates Facebook so that users can seamlessly share information about an event and its products and services through their existing social networks. SWIFT is built on a powerful aggregation engine that captures the collective activity and intelligence of the conference and trade show community. SWIFT leverages this community to provide structure to information that can be converted into more satisfied attendees and increased attention for exhibitors. As the community becomes engaged with SWIFT, each SWIFT page becomes a rich repository of information about a subject or product/service.

“My complaint with most conferences is that they turn into a fireworks display of ideas, only to end in darkness for the rest of the year. I therefore regard “intelligence” as being able to capture the learnings of the past, put them into the context of today and mix this with ideas from the future.” Jonathan Marks, Social Media Consultant

 

With SWIFT:

• Conference organizers can improve event promotion through social networking, viral marketing, and natural search.
• Speakers simplify and improve their workflow, and are rewarded for event promotion.
• Attendees get better networking opportunities and can contribute to and share in the collective intelligence of the event.
• Sponsors and exhibitors get new channels for advertising and sponsorship.

 

Using Social Networks to Market Your Event

 

More and more buying decisions are being made based on recommendations from trusted sources. SWIFT transforms how conferences are marketed by tapping into personal networks and activating word-of-mouth marketing.

 

SWIFT currently integrates with Facebook so that speakers and attendees automatically notify friends and colleagues of their participation in your conference, through social networks that millions of people are already using every day.

 

SWIFT is specifically designed to support networking and increase value for your conference participants:

• Attendees can see which of their friends are attending the conference.
• SWIFT enables networking through Facebook: Attendees control their privacy and access through their Facebook account. Organizers are not opening their customer lists to competitors.
• SWIFT combines links to Facebook profiles with status updates so that people can clarify their intentions and goals.

 

 

Your Community: Intelligence and Activity Aggregator

 

SWIFT is built on a powerful aggregation engine that captures the collective activity and intelligence of your community.

 

Each conference is given a unique tag, which attendees, administrators, and users can use to contribute content.

 

Anyone can contribute by simply adding the conference tag to a blog post, shared link or photo. SWIFT automatically pulls this content together and makes it viewable.

 

SWIFT is one of the first truly web 2.0 applications, using data from multiple services and social networks. Images are pulled from Flickr, links from del.icio.us, and blog posts are searched and culled by Technorati.

SWIFT uses the new web by combining this data — mashing it up with Facebook networks and status updates — to give it new utility for the conference community.

 

How do we get started?

• You’ll pay a small set up fee for us to create your SWIFT pages and train your administrators to manage them.
• We will recruit your speakers and exhibitors for participation in SWIFT, and teach them how to use it.
• We’ll also work with you to create digital sponsorship of media and web pages for your event.
• As users join your community and add content to your pages, your natural search results improve.
• As users update their status notifications, their friends learn about your conference, with links back to your event pages.

 

Why Facebook?

 

Rather than building proprietary features into SWIFT, we made a decision to build SWIFT on today’s best web services. That way SWIFT can be easily adapted as new services become popular.

 

Today, Facebook is the only social networking platform that has an open API that functions as we need it to — enabling us to publish status updates from SWIFT to a news or mini-feed, and link those updates back to the event pages within SWIFT.

 

While Facebook started out as a platform for college kids, it has quickly evolved and is emerging as a general purpose social networking platform. In fact, the largest growing audience on Facebook is now professionals over the age of 35.

 

We plan to add new social networks, including LinkedIn and Open Social as they mature and become available and useful for SWIFT.

 

Can we customize the look and feel of SWIFT?

 

The SWIFT pages are built on CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). These style sheets can be modified to match the design and identity of your conference.

 

Interested in a demonstration of SWIFT?

 

We can walk you through the SWIFT platform and show you how it can be used for your next big event.

 

To schedule a demonstration, please call Kathleen Gilroy at 617-491-4535. Or email kathleen@ottergroup.com.