Applications and Software for Exhibitions and Events

Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing - Rollo May

When searching for software and applications for exhibitions and events, it seems as though not much is out there: there are a few companies who have developed specific programmes for the exhibition- and eventsector. When extending the search towards aggregators of several social media, more results pop up. In this blogpost, I will discuss some interesting webapplications and software tools for exhibitions and events.

Exhibition- and Eventspecific

Sendsteps is an Amsterdam-based company, established in 2007. Sendsteps aims to increase interactivity in seminars, congresses, etcetera. It accomplishes this goal by allowing the audience to ask or answer questions anonimously through text messages (SMS) or mobile internet. Closely linked to this technology is SMS2Screen, which allows voting by SMS. Results are displayed in realtime on any type of screen desired.

What's On? is a product of Triqle Event Intelligence, another Amsterdam-based company, established in 2010. What's On is set to launch in the first quarter of 2011, after being tested at a number of exhibitions and events in fall 2010. What's On? provides real-time program information to event visitors through screens, mobile phones and the Internet. It shows what is going on now and what happens next, all in one glance.

InTheLoop is a product of Inludus, a New York based company, and is a revenue generating branded mobile application that provides the event organiser with an interactive, social, information exchange tool thats leads to a more enjoyable, efficient and effective event. It does this by facilitating interaction between organiser, exhibitor and visitor. It achieves this interactivity by f.i. social media integration and messaging functionality. You can encourage preferred behaviour through gaming (with incentives), and you can increase revenue by marketing extensive analytics.

Social Media Aggregators

Social Mention is a Canadian social media search platform that aggregates user generated content from across the web into a single stream of information. It does this for 80+ social media platforms. Social Mention also gives scores for your company's Strength, Sentiment, Passion and Reach. The company also provides its users with a handy widget for displaying all realtime buzz in an attractive looking widget on your website.

Moreover Newsdesk 4, the latest product of Moreover, a US-based company, is a cutting-edge SaaS News & Social Media discovery and sharing service that pinpoints the most relevant content on the Web. Faceted search and real-time media analysis combine to give you a powerful business intelligence solution. Moreover promises to empower informed decision-making via complete, consolidated reporting that gives you the competitive edge.

GNIP, based in 2008 in the US, provides social media data to businesses that build realtime social media integrations into their business and consumer applications. Receiving social data from Gnip enables easy integration of massive quantities of realtime social data into your exhibition or event, legally and reliably. Gnip allows their users to specify the formats in which Gnip sends the data, to ensure easy publishing with your tool of choice.

Hootsuite is one of the most popular social media aggregators. It sports a multi-stream view, which allow you to track different keywords separately instead of the totally aggregated stream. It also offers team collaboration, so multiple organisers can use Hootsuite together. There is also the possibility of internationalisation – display Hootsuite in languages other than English. There are desktop applications, but Hootsuite can also be accessed from the web – perfect for displaying social media content at your exhibition or event.

Conclusions

All in all, there aren't many applications developed specifically for the exhibition- and eventsector. The ones that are there, provide some interesting functionality for involving visitors and audiences in the event or exhibition, thus tailoring the event or exhibition the the visitors' and audience's needs, and enabling co-creation.

Social media aggregators are a useful tool for the event- and exhibitionsector, however the visualisation of the search results deserves some attention: displaying a website on a screen might come across as less-than-professional, plus it deprives the organiser of the opportunity of displaying branding and sponsored logo's, banners etc.

Because new applications are launched daily, there are probably applications out there that aren't touched upon in this post. Leave a message in the comments or go to AppAppeal.com to get an overview of webapplications for social media.

24 January 2011 20:54