Want your meeting to stand out from the ordinary? How about giving every attendee an iPad preloaded with one app that has tools for the meeting (agenda, attendee communications, session handouts, exhibitor list…) and another app that demonstrates how a tablet computer can improve attendees’ businesses?

That’s just what Hilton Worldwide pulled off for its Worldwide Global Partnership Conference last fall. A complicated undertaking, but organizers got it right.

Sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter provide meeting planners with powerful tools to connect with attendees, hotels, and other planners, allowing them to communicate to a large audience almost instantaneously and with virtually no cost.

But while these sites can be effective marketing tools, there are legal risks to be considered.

If 2010 was the year hybrid became part of the meetings industry lexicon, 2011 may be the year meeting pros finally get comfortable with the concept.

Hybrid meetings—events with both physical and virtual components—are complicated undertakings, challenging event organizers’ technological, logistical, and marketing expertise. At the Virtual Edge Summit in January—held in Las Vegas and online—three association executives looked back at their organizations’ inaugural 2010 hybrid events and shared the lessons learned.

Important lessons on webcasting came from an unlikely source last month: the outspoken Tea Party favorite, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who decided to present a “rebuttal” to President Obama’s State of the Union address via webcam. All was going well, until somebody in TV news decided late in the game to set up a “pool camera” to capture her remarks. That’s when the trouble hit.