Kerry Smith is president of the Event Marketing Institute, a think tank that follows trends in event marketing through research, analysis and education. BtoB asked Smith to talk about expected developments in the events industry.

BtoB: What do you see as the biggest trends this year?

Smith: There's going to be a focus on a couple of things: First, experience mapping—recognition that when you're doing an event [you] understand who you are trying to engage. Often times, it's multiple people. How are you creating an experience around your event that will allow those people to find the appropriate channels to engage with you? You're going to talk differently to a CTO than to a CFO.

Another area is portfolio analysis. At company after company, they are looking across their entire spectrum of events, and cleaning out the closet [and asking] `Which ones are working for us, which ones are not, which ones are we not sure of?' They're going to start adjusting the dials accordingly.

And then there's this whole area of measuring everything—improving performance. There are no standards for measuring events, [and there are] different objectives for every company. As one marketer told us... Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

Research Outlines Marketing Best Practices Based on Consumption Patterns of Blogs, Video, RSS and Online Networks

The study, The Rise of B2B Applications-Based Media, reveals that the usage of emerging media among IT decision-makers has increased considerably over the past year, with video and blogs experiencing the most increased usage for work-related information. This latest study is part of TechWeb's ongoing Business Technology Media Engagement Research series.

Key study highlights include:

-- Increased Usage of Emerging Media Applications: business technology decision makers are utilizing emerging media applications more frequently to obtain work-related information, as compared to last year.

-- More Growth Expected: business technology decision makers currently using emerging media intend to consume even more in the coming year - even those who are not currently using emerging media applications.

-- Engagement with Emerging Media Leads to Action: when business technology decision makers interact with emerging media, they continue to look for related information.

For more information on this research, email Scott Vaughan.

The Mobile Marketing Association, a trade group that represents more than 600 companies involved in mobile marketing, has released its global Mobile Advertising Guidelines.

The guidelines build on region-specific mobile ad guidelines published last year for North America, Asia-Pacific, and Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The regional guidelines have been integrated into the global version, which includes new guidelines for text messaging. Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

This year's "EE Times Salary Survey," answered by almost 1,600 respondents, reveals that the median salary for EEs in the United States has increased slightly, to $108,800, from last year's $104,300. That compares with European respondents' median of just over $61,000, and that of Japanese engineers, coming in at $65,400. American engineers, with annual compensation nearly 40 percent higher than their closest competitors, have reason to be satisfied with their current lot monetarily, but they have reservations about foreign competition. In the first installment of "The State of the Engineer," back in August, we explored these very immigration issues affecting foreign engineers in the United States.

Here, Part II discusses how salary disparities, competition and globalization weigh on the engineer's mind. It also includes an "online exclusive" that explores further, more intricate aspects of the immigration issue. Read the complete article on EE Times online.

Google has hit an all-time high in market share, commanding 67.25% of all U.S. searches in March, according to Hitwise, an online competitive intelligence company. That was up from 64.13% in March 2007.

Yahoo Search, MSN Search and Ask.com last month had shares Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.