mobile apps Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Fork In The Road Blog

Remember the days when you attended a trade show with a hard copy of the show program and a highlighter? Drawing a pink line over the exhibitors you wanted to visit or the sessions you wanted to attend was almost a ritual—a cathartic process to help you feel productive. Then, everything went online and so much more information became available. The only problem was that you had to lug your computer around in order to use the tools until the iPhone came along and EVERYTHING changed.

Now, Smartphones including the iPhone, Blackberry, Android and others are the device du jour on the trade show floor. Mobile application developers have made great strides in developing applications that speak to the needs of event organizers, exhibitors, attendees, sponsors and even the surrounding business community. Event organizers have done their part by introducing these tools to the trade show and conference community and helping their stakeholders adopt them.

In recent months I have written about or learned of several of the breakthrough mobile apps for events. Here is a small sampling (I know there are others):

A2Z’s ChirpE allows users to access online show content and synchronizes event details and personal itineraries with Facebook.

Bartizan’s iLeads offers exhibitors such features such as voice and written notes, surveys and qualifiers, and the ability to integrate with Salesforce.com to track the number of leads gathered throughout the show.

Core-App’s Follow Me and Event Host is a native Smartphone app that offers networking, information sharing and marketing features for attendees, exhibitors (and now event planners and venues) including personalized schedules, interactive show floor maps, access to social media tools such as Twitter, coupons from local merchants, exhibitor advertising, and digital brochure storage.

The Social Collective is a social networking and community platform that has partnered with mobile application developer DubMeNow to offer customized branding, sponsorship revenue opportunities, scheduling, mapping, functionality across multiple Smartphone platforms (including iPhone, Blackberry, Symbian and Android), one touch mobile-to-mobile exchange of e-business card information, social web contact info sharing, links to marketing material, video and notes, and messaging synched with the customized event social networking platform and Twitter.

Zerista is a full-featured white label social networking platform that is also Smartphone-enabled to offer personalized feed for real-time event updates and check-ins from personal contacts at the event, event organizer feed for real-time updates on schedule changes and other event-wide announcements, personalized messaging and networking tools, advanced attendee and exhibitor search functions, personalized schedule builder with public events and personal meetings, integration with an aggregation of popular social tools like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube.

These apps offer event organizers more of everything:

More productivity
More money
More attendees
More savings
More “green”

HOWEVER, in order to really take advantage of the interest in and demand for more of the same, event organizers must step forward to enter the discussion and let us know who is using these platforms, how they have benefitted, what new revenue they have earned and how much money they have saved, and whether these new apps are everything they have dreamed of or just cool tools to feel happy about (and get more press coverage for).

Hence, my mission for the MTO Summit in Chicago–to get to the bottom of this issue. As the moderator of the panel titled “Are Mobile Applications of Value to Events?” Chris Brown (NAB), Megan Tanel (AEM) and Rick Calvert (Blog World and New Media Expo) will be prepared to answer these burning questions and I will “help” them do it.

Hey, inquiring minds (like mine) want to know.

Reviewing event technology options can be both invigorating and exhausting. The good news is that there are many different online and mobile productivity tools available for social networking, bookmarking, scheduling, mapping, messaging, lead retrieval and polling. The bad news is there are so many different tools available. If social networking is hot, mobile apps are hotter. What could be better than a marriage that brings many of the stand-alone apps and a social networking platform together under one roof with mobile access?

Conference and tradeshow organizers are challenged with having to choose among separate platforms and technology that offer consistent branding, user utility, added value and a potential revenue stream. Training users on separate platforms can be arduous. Budgeting for separate applications can be cost prohibitive. Keeping the applications online only can reduce participation and usage.

One way that technology providers are addressing these challenges is by bundling applications into one end-to-end solution and going mobile with it. The Social Collective is one example of a social networking and community platform that has partnered with mobile application developer DubMeNow to offer community access, networking, messaging, mapping, geo-synching, scheduling and lead retrieval from a Smartphone. Their latest version will be rolled out at SXSW this month in Austin, TX.

The Social Collective’s Clinton Bonner is a blogger, tweeter and observer of event industry technology. “2010 is the year to nudge and become more hyper-focused about social media infusion. We are going well beyond ‘you need to be doing this’ [social media] and evolving to ‘here is a platform solution that allows you to do the following, all under one roof, all branded in your imagery, all metrics and data owned by you, on less spend than building a singular custom iPhone app,’” he says.

The Social Collective’s new bundled mobile app offers the following:

Customized branding that “wears” the look and feel of the event and offers options for sponsorship revenue
Scheduling and mapping capabilities allow users to build schedules from the conference agenda, share schedules with other users and map the tradeshow floor
Functionality across multiple Smartphone platforms including iPhone, Blackberry, Symbian and Android
One touch mobile-to-mobile exchange of e-business card information, social web contact info, links to marketing material, video and notes
Messaging synched with the customized event social networking platform and Twitter

Allowing access to event-centric social networking platforms from mobile devices helps event organizers grow their communities. With the appropriate community management, most networks function well before and after the event, but unless users are willing to carry their laptops around, the interaction during the event is diminished. With more opportunities to interact, community members will “feed” off of the experience and become more loyal to the community and the event.

The Takeaway: The new bundled mobile solutions are user-driven—users get what they want when they want it. The synchronization of the event social networking platform with mobile helps event organizers grow their communities (more opportunities to engage others using mobile). Apps that function on a broader range of Smartphone platforms will drive adoption. All event apps MUST be easy to learn and use. And, now that bundled apps and event-centric social networking platforms have married mobile, event organizers may be able to reduce the number of technology offerings while increasing the value and usability for participants. Where’s the Kleenex?

Mobile Apps: Cool Tools or Money Makers? My MTO Summit Mission

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