It sounds like you're putting together a great conference or event: You've lined out the food, sponsors, and you’re looking at strong attendance numbers, but something is missing.

Engagement, real time communication, and schedules (that are always changing) are what takes your event from good to great, but it can be costly. An event app can do more than you think and the price can meet most any budget.

Planning a Great Conference Event

While there is no shortage of resources for planning a good event, the challenge can be to move your event to the next level. We've done the research for you and found these to be the most common keys to making your conference a great event:

Great Event Food

This doesn't have to mean expensive. It means quality, fresh food made available in a timely manner. HubSpot’s annual Boston Inbound conference each year is a great example: Although it has grown exponentially, in 2015 they gave tickets for a meal that could be redeemed at local food trucks parked around the venue. Early on they had a simple food option of a container including fresh fruit, cheeses, meats, crackers, and a cookie.

If you were hungry you could grab two – no food police force here – and it fit the bill. Unending bottles of water as well as tea and coffee stations finished the job at a low cost.

Great Speakers and Content

Finding speakers that are industry experts is not as hard as you may think. What you want to watch out for, though, are dry speakers. A boring speaker makes for a boring conference. Make sure speakers are bringing some laughs into their presentations to keep your attendees awake.

It always seems impossible until it’s done.” – Rachel Mueller-Lust, event planner

Great Event Scheduling

The last thing an attendee wants to do is show up in the wrong room or at the wrong time. Properly scheduling your event's talks, food availability, speakers, and training sessions is imperative to moving your conference from good to great.

If you've ever considered creating a mobile app for your event or conference now might be the time. V-Soft's mobile development team can create an app for your event that matches most any budget with details here. 

How Your Event Goes from Good to Legendary

Your event is good: You've mastered the early bird special and your conference or event will have an abundance of attendees. You've got great speakers who make people laugh while having a clear and concise point that brings value. You're working on sponsors to help fund the event and have a good group so far. Food is covered and its under budget.

Now you can make the move to 'legendary' by incorporating the power of a mobile app with these benefits:

• Event Sponsors: Blow your sponsor's mind  when you share that their sponsorship will extend beyond the event and all the way to your attendee's devices.
• Event Schedules:  Hit a home run and use the mobile event app to communicate in real time to your attendees with push notifications in changes to the event schedule so everyone gets where they need to be, on time.
• Event Speaker Engagement: What an amazing bonus to your speakers and attendees – give them, through the app, easy access to speakers through social media and real time chats on the app.
• Attendee Interaction: What better way to create a buzz before, during, and after your conference than by enabling attendees to connect with one another?

A mobile app can be the centralized location of all materials available at your event, ridding you of costly and cumbersome printed material. During or post-event, push surveys as to your attendee's experience, suggestions, and considerations to attend again.

Event and conference organizers gain big benefits when they leverage a mobile app for their conference including:  Deeper attendee engagement, RealTime communication, and greater event visibility. You will know your audience better and be empowered to make your next event more legendary  – if that's even possible.

Other Event Planning Resources

• Ten Tips on How to Plan a Conference
• How TechFest Went Real Time with a Mobile Event App
• Step-by-Step Conference Planning Guide
• Brown.edu's Conference Planning Checklist (a PDF)
• How to Plan and Run a Great Conference

 About the Author

Manoj Iragavarapu is Practice Head for Mobile Solutions at V-Soft Consulting. He's a mobile enthusiast and founder of sports based mobile startup Chauka. Apart from Cricket, developing process flows to build a mobile app churning “factory” is his passion.

If you'd like to learn more about this events app or how V-Soft can help you create an app for your event send Manoj an email with your thoughts with any questions or connect with Manoj on LinkedIn here  |  miragavarapu@vsoftconsulting.com