By Corbin Ball

Web 2.0 is changing meetings marketing and management with numerous benefits for meeting planners, exhibitors and attendees. It is an imprecise term, however, covering a wide range of technologies that are part of a sweeping societal and business change.

This article will cover many of the key components of Web 2.0 with an emphasis on their impact to meetings and events. The heart of Web 2.0 revolves around “you” – user generated content is transforming the web from static web pages to the participatory web. Here are some of the ways that this is happening:

Tradeshows and exhibits are great ways to increase company visibility and, ultimately increase sales. However, the cost of travel, shipping, time away from the office, booth rental space/supplies can be significant. It is imperative that you maximize your limited time in the booth to get the best return on investment.

What is Google Wave?

Google Wave is a free, realtime, online collaboration platform, now in beta distribution (by invitation only), to be released to the general public sometime this year. It combines elements of e-mail, chat, text messaging, Wiki documents, blogs, tweets and photo-sharing sites to create an online "hosted conversation," or a "wave."

Meetings and tradeshow technology continues to advance with technology products becoming better, cheaper and easier to use. Innovation is bubbling with new options. Here are some of the major technology trends to watch for this coming year.