Glasgow has played a trailblazing role when it comes to introducing new technology to the conference industry – and Scotland’s biggest city is promising more to come in the next 12 months.

In June, Glasgow City Marketing Bureau (GCMB) became the first convention bureau in the world to broadcast the proceedings of a conference – the IEEE International Conference on Communications - live on its website.

More than 400 high tech enthusiasts were able to follow the opening proceedings of the conference through the GCMB website.

Six years ago, Glasgow chalked up another high-tech milestone when its convention bureau became the first to submit a conference bid online when the city won the International Crustacean Congress.

Alexandra Redmond, head of ICT at GCMB, said the company was looking at producing vodcasts – videocasts of conference proceedings that delegates can download onto their iPods and listen to at their leisure. And GCMB is hoping to provide more live webcasts of conferences if professional conference organisers are enthusiastic about the service.

She said: “We have always been at the leading edge of technology to add value to our marketing activities. We did the world’s first online bid and now these are commonplace, and we will be looking at how we can make these bids more interactive. Watch this space for more developments.”

The Convention Bureau section of GCMB’s website has been comprehensively updated to make it much easier to navigate, with bespoke sections for convention and congress organisers, corporate and incentive planners, delegates, Ambassador programme members, and members and partners.

The number of monthly page views on www.seeglasgow.com has grown from 800,000 last June to 1.8 million today, while page views for the Convention Bureau section of the website have more than trebled in the same period to 25,000 per month.

This year, GCMB won the inaugural chairman’s award in the prestigious Drum Awards for Digital Industries (DADI).

Phil Jones, chair of the judging panel at the DADI awards, said: “The chairman’s award was given to Glasgow City Marketing Bureau’s website because it promotes Glasgow to visitors so well, but it is also used by residents. It is easy to navigate, it shows the best parts of Glasgow, and its effectiveness, in terms of the number of users and page impressions, is astonishing.”