At the moment, one of the hottest topics in the online world is education.  People want to learn, but don’t want to pay university prices. Well you’re in luck because we’ve compiled the best online edu resources.  Most are free and all seem more entertaining than your run of the mill algebra lecture.  Learn skills like programming and foreign languages or keep up with the latest trends in business and entrepreneurship. Here we go:

1. Codecademy- This brilliant new social web application teaches you how to write code! Programming used to be a fairly inaccessible skill to learn. Codeacademy aims to change that.  Over 1 million users have joined in on their trendy “Code Year” program where users are sent a lesson every week of 2012.  The free lessons are interactive and students can engage with their friends.

2. Itunes U- Apple has recently redone their iTunes U program.  It now carries the slogan, “Learn anything, anywhere, anytime”.  Sounds great to us! Courses from top universities have a mix of audio, video, and slides, but no homework!  This new educational platform was created for teachers and students, but even if you’re done with school, you might want to take a look at some of the courses available.  Learn how to make an iPhone app or brush up on your Chinese.

3. Tedtalks App- With the Ted talks app, you can gain a little knowledge on the go! Their free app allows you to download talks to watch offline.  TED speakers share their knowledge on a huge variety of topics, from medicine to social networks.  Learn about the latest advancements in technology and business from the couch or on your commute!

4. RSAnimate- These videos come from the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts.  Ya, Royal.  These videos are a personal favorite.  Similar to TED Talks in content, these videos take short lectures from brilliant minds and animate them as they progress.  Great for visual learners, these can cover topics like how the mind works or historical events.  Also in app form so you can watch when you’re on the move.

5. Khan Academy- This non-profit org was started by one guy who made more than 2000 free videos on a variety of subjects. Salman Khannow is now backed by Gates Foundation in his endeavor to bring education to the masses.  Videos cover topics like physics, finance, history, and everything in between, and there are practice exercises to go along with some of them.  You can create a free account so that you can track your progress in your profile.

6. Visual.ly- This resource is a little different than the rest.  Visual.ly shares info graphics and data visualizations. Designers create the infographics and showcase their work to the world.  Visitors can browse the 10,000+ results that share stories and information.  We were able to learn everything from “The History of Twitter”, to “The Purchasing Power of Women”.  Learn something new, or share your info with the rest of us!

7. Vimeo film school- If the Oscar buzz has you inspired, you might want to check out this resource from Vimeo.  They’ve compiled over 1,500 videos with various tips and tricks from filmmakers.  Learn everything, from the basics to special effects, the steadycan, lighting, and cranes.  Check it out to better channel your inner Spielberg for your next project.

8. Udemy- This platform allows anyone to create online courses with on-demand and live classes.  Videos are a mix of free and paid, and they cover a huge range of topics.  Our favorite free ones are called “Foundations of Business Strategy, and “Ideas Come from Everywhere”.  Each class contains multiple lectures, so you’ll have to tune in multiple times, but students really do learn a lot.

9. Floating University- The Floating University has the slogan “Per ampliora ad altiora”.  We’ll admit it; we had to look that up.  It means something like “Through breadth to depth”.  This new educational media venture produces video lectures and material from leading scholars.  The inaugural course is called “Great Big Ideas”.  An assortment of top professors each teach one of 12 lessons.  This class isn’t quite free ($199), but every lesson looks fascinating.

10. Openculture.com- This site is a guide to free educational media.  There are thousands of online courses, audio books, textbooks, and films.  The collection of classic movies is what makes this site unique.  There are hundreds of links to older noir, westerns, indies, and award winners.  This is definitely something to check out if you need to boost your cultural literacy.

Ready to learn yet? At ABCey, we’re pretty excited about getting a little smarter this weekend.  Which resource will you use? Are there any that we missed? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter!

Welcome to Startup Monday.  Our new weekly post will feature the hottest ideas from the tech and events industry.  If you have a startup that we should look into, let us know on Twitter!

Looking to travel this spring? Hunting through different travel sites for convenient hotels and cheap flights can give you a headache. Event planners are on the move, whether it’s for conventions, galas, or fun. This is why we tried Wanderfly, a travel recommendation engine that goes beyond flights and hotels.  Users tailor the settings to fit their budgets and interests, and the site uses your social networks and other travel search engines to give suggestions.

ABCey is planning an event in Washington, D.C. this spring for a company attending the International Trademark Association’s Annual Meeting, so we decided to let Wanderfly help with our travel itinerary.

We set the specifications for San Francisco to Washington DC, $600 per person, early May, and for 4 days. The coolest part of this site is that you can add your interests.  For this trip we decided that our interests were: landmarks (can’t miss those in DC), food (event planners have to eat), and outdoors (May is lovely).  When we hit the “Get Going” button, we were transported to the front steps of the White House…well, not really, but it gave us everything that we needed to get there.

The first thing we did is check out the flight and hotel options.  Wanderfly uses content from travel sites such as Orbitz, Hotels.com, Facebook, Foursquare, Yelp, and Mashable.  We found flight options and hotels with reviews and tips right on the page. The activities suggestions are really what makes the service unique.  For us, it recommended highly reviewed restuarants, hiking trails, and all of the important monuments. If you log into Facebook through the site, it accesses your network’s knowledge and allows you to post a question asking for advice.  

Interested yet? Even if you don’t know where you want to go on vacation, Wanderfly will make recomendations for you based on your interests and budget.  We suggest that you try them out! It is free and easy to plan vacations, even if they’re imaginary. Have you ever used Wanderfly? What travel services do you generally use? Let us know in the comments or find us on Twitter!

What do long lines and slow check-ins have in common? Angry clients! Never fear; help is here. No more standing at the door, flipping through ten pages of names. New iPad and iPhone apps offer efficiency and professionalism for guest check-in. We’ve taken a good look at the latest options and reviewed them for you. From basic spreadsheet uploads to full-on social media integration, these apps are at the front of the line. Each of these applications caters to slightly different needs and they vary in cost, but they all look like they’re worth a try!

  1. My Guest List is the world’s first app allowing event managers to sync guestlists and function enquires from your website, Facebook, or spreadsheets to an ipad ready for hosts or door staff to use at the beginning of your event. This clever app is great for guest management- tap guests off as they arrive and track arrival times, VIPs, and walk-ins. All of the night’s data is translated to reporting and statistics- logging the total number of people who attended your event and the performance of your promoter. Finally, the most important feature, social media integration- allowing your database to have both Facebook and the iPad working in sync. This enables complete guest profiling, including how often they frequent a venue, what they like to drink and how much social influence they have.  The service starts at $25 dollars a month.

2. CheckInEasy is a great iPad/iPhone app which was recently used for the Google holiday party to check in over 2500 guests! This app is great because guests can either be looked up by name or using boarding pass style barcodes.  Also, if you want to be notified when a special guest arrives, you can choose to receive a text message or email. CheckInEasy has really emphasized their attention to data security so that customers can feel confident about protecting their guests’ information. The app is only $1.99 and the starter package, up to 500 check-ins, is $99.00.

3. Eventbrite is a leading ticketing service that has created an app called Entry Manager. This app allows you to log into your Eventbrite account and pull up guestlists from all of the events that you are planning. Attendees can be checked in by name, or by scanning invitation barcodes that guests can print out or pull up right on their iPhones.  The list automatically syncs with other devices being used to check people in.   All of your attendance data will be stored on the server and accessible in your Eventbrite account for further analysis. An Eventbrite account is necessary, and the app is free!

 4. Event Farm has a mobile guest check-in app for the iPad and iPhone. It is sleek, stylish and full of features. It allows you to customize the background of the app to promote your brand and to keep up with the real time analytics for the event.  Also, guests can leave tickets behind for the rest of their party if they happen to arrive separately.  Use it in conjunction with the fully-featured web-based Event Farm Ticketing System, or create your own list by downloading their Excel guest list template.  The cost starts at $0.50 per guest that you upload, with no extra fee for the app.

5. Venue Driver Mobile Check-In is a web based venue management system. This software is ideal for nightclubs and bars that hold events regularly which require guest check-in, VIP table reservations, or ticket distribution. The software can be used on an iPad/iPhone, and the data can be viewed online. It is a great solution for both the venue and the guests, since guests can sign up for events on their mobile devices, and managers can easily keep track of the consumer database, making it easier to plan for future events. The management system requires a subscription, but the app comes at no extra cost.

6. MyBanquet is a great iPad app for events that require seating assignments.  It was created for weddings, awards banquets, and gala dinners.  Guests can be uploaded from facebook, a text document, or manually.  Then, you can design the layout of your event, organize table assignments, and easily email reports to important people every step of the way. You can add notes to people’s table assignments if special arrangements need to be made for their dinner or accessibility.  RSVP’s can be handled manually or by connecting to facebook.   It is only $3.99 in the App Store and doesn’t require a subscription.

 7. Guest List Manager is an app developed by Hilton Worldwide, ensuring event managers have the ability to coordinate guest lists with room bookings. This app is great for managing the small details of your event through key features like viewing the current guest list and reservation status regardless of how the guest’s reservation was booked, viewing the group’s room count, and searching for attendee cancellations. This application is extremely effective and makes booking the Hilton as your next event venue so worthwhile! Guest List Manager is convienently available on iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.     

We completely snoozed over here and just noticed that the Crunchies and after party are sold-out. Whaaaaa??! The tables have turned as it’s usually people wanting to come to my super parties.

TechCrunch will kick off 2012 with The Crunchies along with partners GigaOm and VentureBeat on Tuesday, January 31, 2012. The tech party to start the year will move to Davies Symphony Hall this year for both the awards ceremony and the famous after party. After calculating more than 300,000 nominations across 20 categories, they have announced the finalists for this year’s awards. Award categories recognize the top accomplishments in a variety of fields and roles, including Best Tech Achievement, Best Mobile, Best Location, Best Cloud Services and Biggest Social Impact.

Google+ is up against Facebook Timeline, Instagram, Path 2.0 and New New Twitter for Best Social Application of 2011. Foursquare is going up against Airbnb, RunKeeper, Grindr and Uber for Best Location Application. Big players such as Dropbox, Instagram, Square, Gilt Groupe, Spotify and Tumblr are all finalists. Kickstarter and Charity Water vie for biggest social impact Who will take the win for Best Overall Startup of 2011?

Voting begins today and winners will be announced on January 31, live at the Crunchies at Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall (201 Van Ness Ave.) in San Francisco, beginning at 7:30 p.m. PST. More information, including how to buy tickets, is available at http://crunchies2011.techcrunch.com/. Except for the fact, as already mentioned- they are sold out! Time to Crunchie Crash!

The full list of finalists includes:

About TechCrunch

TechCrunch ( www.techcrunch.com ) is a leading technology media network dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies. Founded by Michael Arrington in 2005, TechCrunch and its network of websites reach millions of unique visitors each month. TechCrunch was acquired by AOL in 2011 and operates a global network of websites including dedicated properties in Europe and Japan. TechCrunch’s CrunchBase is an open database about startup companies, people, and investors. In addition to TechCrunch Disrupt, TechCrunch hosts a number of other recognized conferences and events, including the Crunchies Awards ( http://crunchies2010.techcrunch.com ) and various meet-ups worldwide, serving as community platforms for industry conversation and collaboration.

Social media has clearly become a main medium for many businesses. Therefore, it is highly important to stay on track and avoid mistakes.  At ABCey Events, we are always using social media to connect with our clients and community, and to share our local knowledge. Brian Solis, tech guru and social media connoisseur, offers some great tips that we think are very helpful.  Here is a quick recap of what he shares with us.

1. Showing Up Isn’t Enough: While it is important you have a social medium and make a name for yourself, it is most important to learn how to engage with your followers.  Whether it be through Twitter, LinkedIn, or any other social medium, make sure you really engage in conversation to attract potential consumers.
2. You Can’t be Everywhere, Nor Should You: With the extensive new up and comings of technology and new social mediums, you may be really excited to try everything. Don’t.  Be where your followers are and excel within that medium.
3. Authenticity and Transparency are Nothing Without a Connection: Authenticity and transparency are the two very important aspects to social media.  They act as a “guiding light” more so than an effective form of engagement.   Therefore, it is most important to make sure you add value and content to your social media, and in return, authenticity and transparency will support your content.
4. Talking to People Isn’t a Business Strategy: Make sure you have a purpose before you engage in conversation! It is important you engage in conversation and make people who don’t know about you, find out about you.  You want the people to start talking about your brand, so engage, engage, engage!
5. Keep Your Customers Tuned in: Adding one video is not going to make you go viral.  According to Solis, “Companies believe that uploading a video to Youtube is the key to anything going viral. What they don’t know is, 48 Hours of video is uploaded every minute to Youtube. The chance of your video going viral naturally is basically nil”.  So if you want to go viral and you are sure that going viral will help your company, seek out people that will help you share and make yourself known.  ”If it creates lift, leaves an imprint or if it drives action or outcomes, that’s when you’re going viral. “

What other common mistakes have you made as part of your social media strategy?

We recently saw the launch of a new lifestyle brand, HelloBrit.com which aims to find helpful, yet creative new ways for busy people to live more simply, beautifully and imaginatively. Brit Morin (wife to Dave Morin, the founder of Path) has been working in the tech world for several years now and was a former Apple and Google employee. She is already being touted as the Martha Stewart of Silicon Valley and has recently been featured in The LA Times, Huffington Post, and TechCrunch. Brit gives new ideas and tips to live a more simple and creative life whether it be through technology, food, style, health that she either created or curated from scouring the web, something that is becoming very popular! Brit says “The ideas should come to you, and they should come through a channel whose expertise and taste you trust.”

Her site is looking like a cross between Real Simple and Wired Magazines with videos showing you how to make Christmas tree cheese appetizers, how to use electrical tape to make candy cane cups, DIY Holiday welcome mats, wearable dinner party napkins, and more. She recently featured a great gift guide for the holidays and showcases 20 of her favorite products and apps. Thanks Brit!

The brand’s first offering is a wedding app called Weduary, which was inspired by the process that Morin and her husband used in planning their own ”Pixel Cowboy”- themed wedding this summer. This will be a new service for brides and grooms, and will hopefully make for a more interesting experience for guests online and off. Make sure to sign up on the website to be notified when the new site arrives! There will be some other apps launched in the future which will likely be centered around ways to be creative around the home and novel ways to perform everyday activities like cooking, decorating and shopping.

We hope you enjoy and use Hello Brit for a little inspiration into your own creativity! We know that at ABCey, we will be keeping up Brit’s innovative ideas and using them for inspiration of our own, especially this holiday season.

Who would have thought that you could “collect people, places, and things with a touch”? Poken, is a small device that stores all of your personal information, such as, your name, business, and contact information. This information can be traded with other individuals at the touch of another Poken. This would be great for an event! Rather than trading business cards, you can simply exchange your information through the Poken, and in return, Poken creates a timeline of the people you met with all of their information. This is a great way to generate business leads and gather brochure information at your next event! Here are some of the benefits:

For You:

• Generate high quality business leads
• Simple and easy to deploy infrastructure
• Reduce paper waste and send a message of social consciousness
• Minimize printing and logistics costs of leaflets
• Track networking success with post-event analytics

4000 people were hosted in Orland, Florida and participants were allowed to collect information via Poken, click here to see the results. ABCey Events hopes to use Poken at our upcoming events!

We stumbled across this fabulous invention, created by Lumacoustics, that allows you to create a graffitied masterpiece without making a terrible mess! The YR Wall is an interactive drawing art tool where users create virtual digital graffiti on a large wall using a modified spray paint can. It is basically graffiti with a can that contains no paint, only a button and IR light source which is tracked using a computer vision system. The digital paint appears when the can is sprayed and looks exactly like graffiti.  Now it is possible to graffiti a wall, the way you have envisioned it since a little kid, and not get in trouble! No paint, therefore no drips and no damage! And no arrests;)

The paint includes a wide array of colors, symbols, stencils, animated stars, swirls and drip effects.  You can even custom make a user’s name, picture, or logo.  After decorating the wall, YrWall can then turn your art into a t-shirt, sticker, or photo for a keepsake.

This way the user can work with digital paint to create their own digital graffiti art. No more swapping paint cans to change color or having to wear a face mask and gloves. This is entirely environmentally friendly and accessible by anyone without any prior computer or graffiti skills. Oh, the excitement of working in a virtual envirornment.

YrWall, which can be hired short- or long-term or installed bespoke, has already been quite a hit at events like the UK’s Secret Garden Party. They have also recently worked with Daydream Network and Royal Albert Hall on an exciting new exhibition. Adding to the concept’s appeal and branding opportunities, people can receive a free digital copy of their art to share with friends, or can have their design printed on t-shirts and stickers right after they’ve finished their piece. Virtual postcards can be sent as well.

This is great idea for events as a way to keep people entertained and having fun! We love this creation and hope that we will be able to use it at ABCey Events very soon!

Check out the demo and tell us what you think!

YrWall Digital Surface Demo (preview video) from Lumacoustics on Vimeo.

We were fortunate to attend Mendocino County’s famous annual 10-day Mushroom & Wine Festival which was held this year from Friday, November 4th through Sunday, November 13th. Even if you’re not a mushroom fan, there seemed to be something for everyone. This event features mushroom dinners, wine- and beer-pairing workshops, mushroom exhibits, cooking classes, guided mushroom foraging walks, and much more. We especially loved the drive up; stopping along the way at wineries such as Meyer, Yorkville Cellars, and Husch Vineyards which offered mushroom pairings and tastings. Sadly, we missed the Wine and Mushroom Train Mushroom Cook off, but heard it was a blast and will be sure to put it on our list for next year. This benefit at Camp Mendocino for the Frank R. Howard Foundation featured wine and mushroom pairings, a mushroom hike, and silent auction.

Mendocino County is home to over 3,000 types of mushrooms, 500 of which are edible. Every fall, beginning in October, the mushrooms begin to flourish. It’s the perfect place to sample, and even pick your own chanterelles, porcini, morels and hedgehogs, and even the very rare candy cap mushroom. These only grow along the northern coast of California and have an intense maple-syrup flavor.

One of the biggest highlights was seeing Ryane Snow speak about Medicinal Mushrooms at the Stanford Inn, an eco friendly, vegan and dog friendly resort located on the Mendo Coast hillside. Ryane is a member of the Mycological Society and a well-known local leader of mushroom identification. After the talk, he guided us on a mushroom foraging adventure in the redwoods along with notable writers from O Magazine, Popular Plates, Sunset Magazine and Vegetarian Times. Ryane stated, “We have so many incredible varieties of mushrooms that are grown in Mendocino County, and everyone in the community gets involved in showcasing this great local bounty. As more people discover the health benefits of mushrooms, as well as how versatile and delicious they are to cook with, the interest in our festival is growing.” Many thanks to Heather Thompson Noll of HypeHouse, a San Francisco based Marketing Communications and PR firm for inviting us along.

I have only amazing things to say about this festival and it inspired me not only to cook more with different kinds of mushrooms, but also to continue studying mushrooms for their medicinal benefits. They are incredible for the immune system, and are being used to treat many cancers, and even one called Lion’s Mane that they believe slows the neuro-degeneration in patients with Parkinson’s Disease.

Since this was not an ABCey Event production, we didn’t have a professional photographer in tow, but we did snap some personal shots of our adventure. To view, please click here.

What’s your favorite mushroom?