Running your own events company and staying on top of the events you run is, putting it mildly, a challenge. Being based in Barcelona and running events in London and Amsterdam hardly makes things easier. But of course running events has never been an easy way to make a living. However reading an event technology case study or two can help.
Almost every event is now an event technology case study!
I’ve been in the industry for sixteen years and I’ve seen events become so much more complex and ever more challenging. In my opinion the only way we can stay on top of our events is to adopt, understand and use more event technology.
Gallus Events use four bits of software to keep on top of our events. The first four help us manage our events with minimum time and resource and the remaining three will be used in the leadup to Tech Fest by our speakers and our attendees. Here is a little event technology case study on the technology we used to support Tech Fest:
1. Conferize
Conferize are one of the companies “Powering” Tech Fest. Conferize is a system designed to help organisers gain attendance at their events by leveraging social networks and by using the skills of Conferize staff to place advertisements and list your event. It is available for free to all of our attendees. We will be using the premium one for Tech Fest and taking advantage of the many ways they offer to amplify your event.
2. Eventsforce
Eventsforce sits behind our event and “powers” Tech Fest. Linking the payments to the other aspects on the platform allows us to have more visibility and control of our finances. The Event Management System collects payments as well as all the other attendee details. It has a questionnaire model (which plays a very important role at Tech Fest) and a 1.2.1 meeting scheduler. It does a whole host of things for us including providing a website as the front end to the software (although this isn’t an option we’ve taken for Tech Fest). I would say that Eventsforce is ideal for an event company that run more than a dozen events and have more than a 1000 attendees at one event.
3. EventMobi
We have a great multi functional mobile app for Tech Fest. This app will be powering Tech Fest on the day. With over 70% of last years attendees having used mobile event apps we had to use one for Tech Fest this year. We really want to show attendees what fantastic value a great mobile app can add to the event. With out app we will be listing speakers, attendees, info on the supporters, allowing attendees to vote on sessions and everything you would expect from a top of the range mobile app.
4. Dotmailer
This is a fantastic emarketing tool. Incredibly flexible and really easy to use. The reporting functions, the spam testing, the triggered campaigns and the automation are all great features and make this a great all round email marketing tool. It is a real shame we couldn’t get them involved in Tech Fest.
5. MeetHub
We are using MeetHub to arrange 1.2.1 meetings. This is the important formal networking aspect at Tech Fest. We first saw MeetHub in action at EventTechCircus in Amsterdam and we were very impressed with the ease of use and how incredibly effective it was – it’s based on rocket science you see! We also loved the fact you only paid a few dollars per attendee that used the system ensuring that as an organiser you got great value for money from the platform.
6. Speakerscore
As a speaker I’d be looking for something like this for a long time. It’s sometimes a shot in the dark assuming that the organsier will give you the feedback that you want from your session. So with Speakerscore you can set up your own profile and be rated by the attendees. With support from the organsier (it works much better this way) every speaker can be on the platform. Every one of our sessions can be rated and what’s more every attendee will be able to see live who are the top scoring speakers on the day: we love a bit of friendly competition!
We believe that one of the most important aspects of any event is helping your attendees achieve their objectives of attending your event. If they consider objectives and achieve them they are likely to return to your event. Their objectives can be wide ranging and very detailed and MeetingsMindset has been designed to ensure that every option is covered. For a few dollars per attendee who signs up they have a wonderful platform which takes them step by step through this crucial aspect of your event.
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