Of course, an event producer cannot take the event paperless alone:  most of the paper is actually given out by the exhibitors. The question is:  do attendees really want to collect a bunch of handouts and carry them home?  And when they get home, do they read them?  Or throw the entire conference bag behind the door?

There are various ways to get the exhibitors’ information into attendees’ hands electronically:

  1. Each exhibitor collects leads and sends the pdf collateral via email
  2. The event producer creates an area of the event website for collateral–or links to it from the exhibitor directory. A sign-in screen can continue to collect leads for the exhibitor to follow up.  Now that the show directory online is further enhanced, lets keep it up all year as an ongoing resource.  Maybe even throw some content around it…
  3. Give every attendee a memory stick on a lanyard, to have the desired exhibitors upload their content onto.
  4. Packaged solutions include Prism Technologies–the guys with the touch screen kiosk, and BD Metrics, which continues to expand its social network capability to additional event needs.

Or do all four.

Bottom line, it is possible to include exhibitors in a paperless event.  More and more events are already doing just that.