For those of us who have been at trade shows, we've seen a variety of ways to promote a booth. One of the most common? Twitter hashtags. Most conferences have a designated hashtag at their event to filter conversation about what's going on where that week. As a result, a lot of booths use these hashtags to drive traffic to their booth, promoting their booth number and what they feature (as I've done numerous times with Helping Hand Rewards). However, the video could take that style of promotion a step further.

The 3GS has included video capabilities for the last year, so this technology isn't new to us. The iPhone 4 does include one new feature: iMovie. Users now have to ability to not only capture HD video (yes...high def) but can also edit and polish that video as well.

How does this affect trade show promotions?

Well you could talk about what is at your booth all you want via Twitter but it gets lost in the noise over time. What if instead of talking or showing pictures you were able to video individual reactions to your booth? Not only video but polish it up with iMovie? This type of brief, quick and relatively easy promotion would make your brand stand head and shoulders above the booth next to you.

What about video chat?

Glad you brought that up. With the front-facing camera, the new iPhone brings live video chat into the picture. One issue with tradeshows is not having the ability to be at more than one place at a time. The video chat could give some individuals the opportunity to sit in on learning sessions without actually having to physically be there...all from the power of your phone. This element - assuming it is easier to integrate with Skype or a like service - could enhance presentations and have presenters there that can't physically make it to the show for one way or another.

Just a few observations I've made. What do you think? Will this new iPhone change up how we do tradeshows or will it inspire more virtual events?