Useful Websites for Meeting Planners

New resources for meeting planners are always cropping up. Here are useful websites for planners that Jim Spellos, technology expert and founder of Meeting U., shared during Collaborate Marketplace.

meetingapps.com: This comprehensive website lists apps available to meeting planners on iPhone, iPad, Android and BlackBerry. The site categorizes the apps by topic, such as meeting management, careers, conferences, food and wine, and cool tools.

uniquevenues.com: If a planner wants to go beyond the standard hotel or convention center, this website lists a number of sites and conference center off the beaten path, including camps and retreat centers, colleges and universities, and culture venues.

gethuman.com: Tired of going through 10 voicemail prompts before talking to a human being about a problem with your cell phone bill? This user-generated site has a searchable directory where users can put in the name of a business he or she is calling and get a direct-to-person phone number.

ipl.org: If Google isn’t returning the search results you want, go to Internet Public Library, where users can enter a topic, such as “Chicago,” and get results from official sites and other trustworthy resources like newspaper and professional associations.

prezi.com: Take presentations to a new level with Prezi, which allows users to create presentations in a mind-map format, where all the content is on one page, and users can zoom in and out to address specific aspects of a topic.

famtriptv.com: Instead of going to YouTube and searching general videos about cities, go to this site, which has HD webisodes featuring Jennifer Wood, CMP, in cities across the country and Canada. She explores cities with meetings in mind, highlighting hotels and meeting venues, local attractions and transportation.
ted.com: TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, is a nonprofit organization that hosts an annual conference where influential people give 20-minute presentations on important topics. Videos of the presentations are uploaded to TED’s website and are searchable by topic.

meetingjobs.com: Go to one site with industry-specific jobs instead of searching general job sites.

seatguru.com: Don’t get stuck in the airplane seat that doesn’t recline and has no legroom. On this site by TripAdvisor, put in your airline and flight number to see a detailed seat map of the plane you’ll be flying on, with information about seats with limited leg room, poor views from the windows and no reclining.

rockmelt.com: There’s Safari, Firefox and Google Chrome, but there’s also RockMelt, a new search engine that incorporates social media and online sharing into the Internet browser database.

By Libby Hoppe