We recently talked about unusual ways how the Palm Treo cell phone can help you do registrations when onsite. This brought up a larger issue of how to "stay in touch" when you are onsite at a conference. When you are working onsite, your primary responsibility, of course, is to your duties revolving around the meeting. However, many meeting professionals have other people they need to stay in touch with during the course of the event. These include vendors, other clients, co-workers, and so forth. Cell phones like Blackberry are nice solutions because they have e-mail built in. But what happens if you don't have such a tool? How can you continue e-mail communications with other important people when you are onsite, but have a moment to catch up?

I am constantly surprised by the novel solutions I have had to come up with to solve this problem, so here are a few ideas (starting with the easiest cases).

• If there is a "Cyber Café" at the conference, make sure you have a "Web Email" account that you can access from a browser. A lot of people use Yahoo, MSN, AOL and so forth to do this. If your organization's email system has this built into it's functionality that's even better. If you are a meeting professional, this should be a consideration when your organization sets up its email accounts.
• If your laptop is "wi-fi" ready, then you can tap into the conference center or hotel's wireless network with great ease. Before you shell out any money for this, check and see if there is a "conference code" you can use for free.
• An Internet ready handheld device is a great solution. Blackberry's are great for managing email, and other devices like the Palm Treo can also manage email, as well as double as a modem.
• If you lack all of the above, you may want to consider bringing a modem. It's may be else to carry (if it is not built into your laptop), but they are relatively small. Of course, you will need to have easy to access phone jacks.

These are the more manageable solutions, but I've been in situations where I have had none of these available! You may be stationed in an area where there is no Internet, no phone jack, and your cell phone doesn't pick up a signal. This is where you really need some imagination. What I've done in these cases is having my laptop always ready for a quick Internet hookup in my hotel room. Time these trips when things are slow enough that nobody will need you. Enter the hotel room with your laptop powered on and ready to be plugged in. With a high speed hookup and a good email client a remarkable amount of work can be done in just a few minutes. Of course, have your cell phone with you because it will be able to receive in the room, even if it doesn't on the show floor.

K.C. Hopson
President, EventRebels
kchopson@eventrebels.com

First Published in PMPI Potomac Memo, November 2005