Technology for Tourism

What a difference a year makes.

Last year's Technology for Tourism event was my first, and the contrast was striking. Whereas last year there were people taking photographs with mobile phones, but still using paper and pen to scribble notes, this year the tablet devices were in evidence.

I used mine, logged on to the University of Edinburgh's wi-fi network at John McIntyre Centre and proceeded to stream a whole load of Tweets from my @susanmcnaughton Twitter account about the presentations being made.

Really enjoyed Stephanie Rieger of Yiibu whose presentation on the Power of the Mobile Web for Tourism you can see on Slideshare.

Also enjoyed hearing Hugh Wallace from National Museums of Scotland, who presented about initiatives the Museums are undertaking.

And now I come to think about it... all of the presentations were useful in different ways - Steve Machin from Stormcrowd had huge amounts to say about sourcing audiences, and I think I need to follow up on some of the ideas from his presentation for the festivals I'm helping.

Robbie Parish from VisitScotland had an update for the tourism providers (so that's us at Sandcastle Cottage and Craigwell Cottage), and Alan Gibson of Edinburgh Festival Fringe and Gavin Dutch of Kotikan really brought home the changes to the mobile web over the past three years as they presented the story of Edinburgh Fringe's forays into app development.

Very interesting conference, and congratulations to the team at Scottish Enterprise and Edinburgh Tourism Action Group for putting it together.