Belgian beer brewer Stella Artois in November held an invitation-only, private event to launch La Societe, its online community. One hundred guests, who each got to bring three friends, were invited to the party, which took place in a Toronto subway station and celebrated the brand’s take on 1960s French-European style.

In the ramp up to Election Day, there’s nothing more American than stepping on a soapbox, saying what’s on your mind—and eating apple pie.

When social media first came on the scene, many event marketers jumped in with both feet to leverage its ability to make connections and keep in touch with consumers and clients they only saw a few times a year at events. Since then, social media websites like Facebook and Twitter have evolved from basic community-building platforms into powerful measurement tools that not only generate customer data, but track more qualitative variables like consumer sentiment and interest.

IT professionals and decision-makers go to a lot of developer conferences and the offerings are often the same from show to show. They spend a few days on the show floor enduring demos that are very heavy on specs and frequently far too light on interactivity or engagement, and go home with a lot more information than inspiration. Important for their businesses? For sure. Thrilling and cool? Not so much.

To get the word out about its nonprofit organization, the Get Schooled Foundation (co-founded by Viacom and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) took its 2010 Get Schooled National Challenge & Tour to 11 at-risk high schools from Sept. 15 to Nov. 21 with additional support from partners like AT&T, Comcast and Time Warner Cable. The tour teamed up with schools in Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Memphis, New York, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Seattle and Washington D.C., to inspire students to do better in high school and prepare for college.