Embrace technology, go green and keep it easy.

Let’s be honest - most of us are glued to our iphones 24-hours a day and get nervous when we can’t find it. Chances are, if you walk around a convention centre, hotel, café you will see people with their heads down, tapping away furiously on their smartphones.

And this is good, this is technology. You can’t fight it and whether it’s a blessing or a curse, the fact is, event professionals would be lost without them. While on the move from one place to the next, we are able to look up caters, florists, entertainment, respond to emails, review or add postings to facebook, create to-do lists, last-minute details and anything else our hearts desire. I can’t remember what I ever did without it – SERIOUSLY, I can’t think how I ever accomplished my work before the iphone came along– can you?

In the modern world of event planning here are five technologies event planners can't live without.

1. Smartphones

Obviously every event planner and their event planning sidekick have a smartphone, and what they do is endless. Obviously you make telephone calls but has added features that in the past, you would have found only on a computer—you’re able to send and receive e-mails, edit office documents and much much more.

2. SaaS Cloud Apps

Now this is a goody. The advantage of the SaaS app (software as a service) is amazing to event planners as they allow us to access all details and execution aspects of an event from any web enabled device, be it a computer, iphone or iPad. No more printing out or emailing reports.

3. Webinars

People are quickly catching on to the benefits of virtual events…webinars. Live and virtual events are about giving the attendee a choice as to how they spend their time.

4. Social Media and Viral Marketing

Did you know that one out of three consumers is online for three or more hours per day? Or that 90 million tweets are sent out daily? And one of every eight minutes spent online is spent on Facebook. So this should be a no-brainer.

5. iPads and Tablets

The iPad has revolutionised the event-planning industry. Those days of over stuffed diaries with details and spreadsheets are long gone. Today is the day of the iPad, and a more simplified life. When combining iPads with mobile event applications, event planners can communicate in real-time with employees and share or update information in seconds.

Now for the fun part – the apps. These applications can make your life so much easier; planners can engage attendees, customise branding, surface leads, reach all devices, make it social, go green and keep it easy.

The latest free apps that every event planner is using….

• Meetup

• Mindnode

• Superplanner

• Evite

• Eventful

• Punchbowel

• Dingbee

• And the list goes on and on and on…

Get on board – you’ll only be left behind if you don’t.