fully searchable conference agendas, full exhibition information, interactive exhibition/venue
floor plans/maps,
networking, social media integration, group or sub-group alerts, polling, surveys, wayfidning, GPS and local area information. treasure hunts/gaming, CEU tracking, ticketing, event access control, appointment making, personalized agenda making, and business card exchange just to name a few. There are sponsorship advertising opportunities to offset the costs and most come with very valuable event analytics to see what, when, and where attendees are interested. There are a number of models including free/freemium (Guidebook, Leebug), venue- provided (SwiftMobile), HTML5 web apps (EventMobi, Zonear), HTML5 web app inte- grated with regisrtration companies (eTouch- es, Ungerboeck Mobile, Certain Mobile) and high-end branded native apps including AllianceTech, CoreApps, CrowdCompass EventPilot, Grupio, QuickMoble and Sherpa Solutions. More information about things to consider
when building an event app is at Birth of a Tradeshow App. Another way to reduce paper at events has
been the elimination of paper course notes at many events. Unfortunately, the benefit that course notes provide in increasing audience learning and retention has also been elimi- nated. Fortunately, there are apps and services filling this gap. EventPilot provides the abil- ity in its app for attendees to view, take notes, and save presentation slides, posters, and other documents. NiceMeeting, MyThoughts and others set up local Wi-Fi servers to deliver the presentation slides to attendee iPads and other tablets. These presentation manage- ment tools also add polling and Q&A capa- bilities as well. They engage the audience, in- crease audience retention, while eliminating the need for paper as well.
4. Meeting planners will use mobile apps to help with hotel site inspections. On the broad view, destinations, hotels
www.MidwestMeetings.com
and convention centers are building apps to sell and engage meeting planners, attendees and visitors before they ever come. Three outstanding iPad examples are: Tourism Van- couver, the Heathman Hotel, and the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. All three are nicely designed, interactive, GPS-enabled with rich mapping, and provide a much richer and intimate experience than a paper bro- chure or a web site. Expect to see applications similar to these become the norm for all meet- ing venues and destinations. For event planners doing site inspections,
there are numerous free and/or very low priced mobile apps to assist in the process. DropBox provides free iPad, iPhone and Android apps to open view documents stored in the cloud and synched with your office computer. Ever- note is a free mobile note taking app to or- ganize notes (including pictures, voice, and text notes) and sync with a group access file in your office - a perfect tool to use during a site inspection. Evernote integrates with Pentulti- mate, another very low cost mobile app that allows free-hand drawing (with your finger or more accurately with a stylus). DragonDiction is a free tool that converts you voice into text. SpeedTest is a free app to measure Wi-Fi up- load and download speeds. More specifically, Jim Spellos and I, with
the assistance of QuickMobile, have devel- oped TechSpec, a free technology site inspec- tion app designed to help meeting planners and hoteliers assess and compare hotel tech- nology capabilities.
5. Tiered free Wi-Fi will become available in many convention centers and hotels. The explosive use of mobile devices for at-
tendees, meetings planners and exhibitors is making access to Wi-Fi at events a necessity, not an option. Wi-Fi has become the lifeblood of event communications! More than 60% of Twitter and Facebook postings are mobile. Onsite gaming, networking, messaging, poll- ing, survey and lead exchange apps requiring internet access are becoming common place. Fortunately, many facilities are beginning
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