Welcome to Tech Extra, the newest e-newsletter in the MeetingsNet family of media brands. In the past six months the drumbeat has reached a crescendo: Meeting professionals must become fluent in the virtual options available to supplement their face-to-face meetings in order to lower costs and improve efficiency.

How fast are things changing? Chris Gaia, vice president of marketing at Maritz Travel, told me that 15 percent to 20 percent of his company’s proposals last month included some virtual element, compared to only about 5 percent in April 2008. Ken Molay, president of Webinar Success (see his blog post below), says attendance rates at webinars about webinars “are higher than they have ever been for basic information and education about getting started with Web conferencing.” Molay points to an interesting statistic reported by Maureen O’Gara in the Cloud Computing Journal last week. Cisco’s financial results for the quarter showed a drop in revenue across the board except in one area: “All Cisco products were down except its anti-travel WebEx, up 18 percent, and its telepresence widgetry, up 138 percent.”

And virtual event tools aren’t the only hot meeting technologies. Every other week, we’ll deliver news and insights from technology experts inside and outside the meetings industry on the full range of technologies of most interest to you, from attendee management and registration to audience-response tools and social media options.

Read it. Pass it on. Tell us what tools you want to know more about.

In my seminar “Webinar Production and Management,” I was asked: “How helpful are Twitter and LinkedIn to your webinar promotions?” I’m almost afraid to answer this, as my view runs counter to the public zeitgeist and is likely to inflame passions among the true believers. But faint heart ne’er won fair maiden, so here goes …

Maritz is developing partnerships on four e-meeting platforms—satellite broadcasting, telepresence videoconferencing, Web collaboration, and what they term totally virtual environments—in an effort to build a suite of technology services called Maritz LIVE (Local Interactive Virtual Events).

The first reseller alliance has been announced, and we’ve got the news as well as some of Maritz’s trend statistics behind its push for e-meeting partners.

Meetings technology provider Cvent has made a flurry of announcements recently that include major partnerships that enhance its supplier network of more than 75,000 hotels and venues, budget-friendly tools for organizations building a strategic meetings management program, and an integration with Cisco’s WebEx webinar technology.

Long known for its expertise in online registration for meetings and events, Cvent has upped the ante with more than 100 feature upgrades. Here’s the story.

I was fortunate to have the chance to speak with Web guru C. David Gammel about what organizations can do to make their event Web sites really get the results they want. He has lots of ideas that you can use to increase the likelihood that potential attendees will register and that exhibitors will sign up for booths—and to heighten the buzz around your meeting.

Here’s a podcast of our conversation.

Keeping up with news—whether it’s about the meetings and conventions industry, your organization’s market segment, or world events—has become both easier and more difficult because of the tremendous number of online sources available. Your job is to manage the onslaught, using RSS feeds, RSS readers, and other tools.

Whether you’re a beginner or just need a refresher, we’ve got the scoop on the tools for online news management.