Event Manager Blog

Mobile Event Apps: DoubleDutch Flock Takes Events to New Heights

Julius Solaris — Tue, 15 May 2012 10:00:02 +0000

This is a sponsored post by DoubleDutch Flock. For information about sponsored posts click here.

There’s a lot of talk in the event industry about mobile apps. DoubleDutch Flock is an award-winning interactive mobile app that is a truly innovative addition to any event, conference, or tradeshow. Flock engages attendees with event content through social features and game mechanics, unlike any other event app on the market.

DoubleDutch Flock: Mobile Event App from DoubleDutch on Vimeo.

Liberate Content from Pamphlets

Paper guides are just thrown away. A mobile app allows you to elevate the content you have already created for the event – session info, speaker bios, surveys, educational materials – and make it accessible at all times. Last minute content changes are easy, and Flock allows, video integration, external linking, social media integrations, and custom branding.

Engage Attendees Like Never Before

All Flock content is interactive — so attendees can not only read the list of sessions, but can also check-in to a session, publish comments and ratings, participate in conversations… even take photos of the scene. Deeply integrated social features set Flock apart from other event apps, and puts printed guides to shame.

See What Attendees Like, Read, and Do

Flock makes it possible to get real-time behavioral data about the interests and activities of attendees. Their web-based analytics dashboard aggregates all app activity, taps, and check-ins to unlock never-before-seen data. It can indicate what event content was consumed and created (photos, comments, etc), which sessions were attended and liked, and much more. This data is captured seamlessly, without relying on post-event surveys.

Attendees Own Mobile Devices… Leverage That.

In the past, to use advanced event technology required investing in hardware — kiosks, scanners, lead retrieval devices, and other electronics. Now, most attendees walk into the event already equipped with powerful smartphones or tablets. With a Flock app on those devices, event organizers can save money and speak to attendees in their language.

Dazzle Attendees, Build Your Brand

Having a mobile event app for your conference or trade show positions you as a tech-forward event that does what’s necessary to enhance the attendee experience. Things are quickly changing, however, and attendees are growing to expect a mobile app — it’s a need-to-have, not a nice-to-have.

Flock also provides:
- event registration integration (eTouches, Cvent, UBM, and more)
- sponsorship opportunities
- social media integration (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn)
- offline mode
- interactive mapping
- native and web-based apps (iPhone, iPad, Android, & HTML5)
- enterprise-grade security
- networking features

Companies like UBM, IDG, Cisco, HP, Lowe’s, RightNow Technologies, and others are flocking to DoubleDutch for their mobile event apps.

You can learn more about their product and get a demo here

DoubleDutch is running a free app giveaway promotion this month. You can enter to win a free Flock event app here (winner announced May 22nd, 2012).

All The Best Practices of NFC in One Event [Case Study]

Julius Solaris — Mon, 14 May 2012 15:13:45 +0000

No secret I am a big fan of NFC. I first mentioned it on the blog more than a year ago. Here is how one event has made the best use of this technology to date.

The event in question is The Manhattan Cocktail Classic, hat tip to Techcrunch.

The protagonist is Tagstand. A company I already covered and that is making waves in the event industry.

Tagstand together with Tasting Tables and the agency ClearHart Digital set up a system of readers and bracelets to interact offline with bits and pieces of the event. You sync your bracelet with your Twitter or Facebook profile and voila, you’re set.

Let’s have a look at what they did…

Use NFC to Like Stuff

During the event guests could sample a number of cocktails. By swiping the bracelet on the reader at the bar they could keep track of the drinks they liked and get personalised recipes.

Guests could also like dresses displayed at the event by swiping the bracelet above the waist of some male models walking around the venue.

Best Practice: Make it easy for guest to like stuff. Place a lot of readers around the room. Make it fun (swiping on someone’s dress is fun!). Personalize the goody.

Use NFC to Enter Competitions

Virgin Atlantic sponsored the event. Guests could tap to like them on Facebook automatically entering a competition to win a round-trip to London, accommodation and a 250$ to spend on clothes, provided by another sponsor.

Best Practice: Quick and dirty competitions are a great use of NFC. Make it easy to enter. Come up with a cool prize.

Use NFC to Check in

Guests could use their bracelet to check into Facebook Places. Tagstand did it with Foursquare with no bracelet but with NFC enabled mobiles.

Best Practice: NFC is perfect for check-ins, check-ins are important to your event. Maximise the placement of readers and invite guests to check in.

Use NFC to Send Pics from Photo Boots

Photo Boots are living a new life since Facebook came along. At Manhattan Cocktail Classic you could promptly upload your pics to your Facebook account.

All the weight lifting is done on the backend. Bracelet syncing is the only requirement.

Best Practice: Your guests love pics and Facebook. Use NFC and photo boots to allow them to upload instantly.

Use NFC to Make Your Sponsors Happy

All of the above examples involved making guests interact but mostly made sponsors extremely happy. Tagstand and ClearHart Digital excelled in finding ways to make the sponsorship experience rich and interactive.

This is a giant leap from placing a logo on a brochure. This is taking event sponsorship and marketing to the next level.

Best Practice: Use NFC to make the sponsorship experience fun, engaging and interactive pleasing your guests and sponsors.

In Conclusion

I was amazed reading what Manhattan Cocktail Classic put together. To date this is the best case study for the use of NFC for event production and marketing.

More planners should look into using NFC to make their event more interactive. On the same page, more brands should ask event professionals to use this technology for more engaging sponsorships.

Have you seen any other cool use of NFC? Share it in the comments.

Event Fun #4: Geeky Conferences

Julius Solaris — Sat, 12 May 2012 09:59:30 +0000

Thanks to Chris Shipton for his Visual Thinking, you can find him on Twitter @chrisshipton.

Geeky Conferences

See You at #IMEX12

Julius Solaris — Fri, 11 May 2012 14:30:24 +0000

I have made plans for IMEX 2012. I will be happy to see you there.

I don’t often visit industry trade shows. If you read this blog since its early days, you know how I feel about them.

This year I decided to make it to IMEX (22/24 May 2012, Frankfurt, Germany) for a number of reasons:

- I wanted to meet a lot of friends I never met in person
- I am a fan of Miguel’s work
- I wanted to meet you, readers

My Plans

On Monday 21st, I will be running a blogging workshop for the guys at ShareToday. This will be an in-depth session on the effectiveness of blogging. You can learn more about the event here. If you want to attend there are 5 spots left. Send an email to info@sharetoday.com to register.

On Tuesday 22nd, I will be around at IMEX. If you have a startup or a product you want to show our readers, this is the best time to pitch it. Send an email to tojulius@shortmail.com to schedule a meeting.

UPDATE: I am attending this marvellous Tweetup

I will also be at Fresh Dinner.

On Wednesday 23rd, I will run a Campfire Session about blogging. This is more a Q&A opportunity. There will be no presentations but rather discussions about what makes a successful event blog. Here are more info.

Come and Say Hi

I’d love to meet you in person dear reader, so make sure to connect. If you have questions, want to talk about anything, this is the best chance to do that IRL.

Connect with me over twitter or by sending an email to tojulius@shortmail.com and we’ll arrange something.

Sync Slides and Talks with Presentme

Julius Solaris — Wed, 09 May 2012 17:04:50 +0000

Presentme is a new tool to sync and show video with slides. It looks awesome and it is easy to use.

Not sure if you experienced that, but finding a tool to integrate video with slides is a pain in the neck.

Either you are a master of Final Cut or you are, well, cut out.

While tweeting I spotted Presentme, a nifty little tool that has the only mission to make this painful integration work.

What Is It?

Import your presentation to Presentme, record with your Webcam or upload a video then share it to the world. As simple as that.

Whenever I started to think about creating a video/slides mash up, the difficult technology available just made me pass.

Presentme is an easy solution to a problem lots of us experienced.

If you run a conference you may have videos and slides. Sure you can upload the video to Youtube or slides to Slideshare, but making the most of the two worlds is amazing.

They also offer interactive editing tools to trim your video.

Embedding on Steroids

The reason why I signed up within minutes I landed on the site is the powerful embedding options.

I loved how you can skip slides on the player, which looks amazingly clean.

They have a whole list of widgets to embed the video you produced on your site. If you use Event Manager Theme, you can download here their WordPress plugin.

On top of that, you can share the video on their platform and gain further audience.

Mobile Compatibility

While I write this, Presentme videos can be viewed on iPads.

They are soon releasing iPhone and Android apps. With Pro and Plus accounts you’ll be able to allow users to download videos for offline playback.

Pricing

The service is free for maximum 3 presentations a month. You have a time limit of 15 minutes for each preso.

The paid plans start at a very accessible $9 a month for 30, 60 minute long, presentations. Learn more here.

In Conclusions

I have very high expectations for Presentme. Now that Slideshare has been acquired by LinkedIn, they can be a true outsider in the most adopted tool in events and B2B marketing, presentations.

Give it a go, now!