To answer this question, I started by looking at just one company: Google. Google leads the world in search; therefore, you’d think they would do a good job producing an event app. What is a conference app if not a search appliance used to connect attendees with the sessions, exhibitors and people who matter most to them?

1) Start small

It takes discipline to produce a mobile event app (think 3-4” sized screen max), and you need to prioritize and think of what’s really most important. Mobile is a tiny medium, and the hardest part of making this platform central to your event’s experience is keeping it to the nuts and bolts; otherwise, your attendees get quickly lost in the weeds, or worse, will not even bother using the app at all.

In everything Google does, there is an insistence on it being simple, offering the one (maybe two or three) right answers.

2) Keep it small

These days, where you are, who you’re with, live sharing of things, comments and questions - all this is easy to make happen on a smartphone. That doesn’t mean you have to choose to add every feature. In fact, it’s important to usability to choose only a few of the options.

Google's conference app consists of just three folders inside one app: My Agenda (all blanks which the attendee fills in), Explore (Session information and Google map) and Stream (Social media). That’s it.

{I personally like the use of Google Maps in an App, it makes it easy for you to create a customized Map around the convention center, hotel and other venues and quests can get their directions whether it’s by driving, walking, biking or taking public transit.}

3) Engage them in a variety of ways

An app can build excitement for an event with a preview of the schedule, speakers, venue and area attractions. Tell your guests how easy it is to download the app for their particular device and get talking.

This is one area where Google falls down slightly in that they don’t bother producing their developer's conference app for iphones, ipod or ipads made by Apple - only Android. This probably leads to a few complaints, but for their purposes, they’re not losing much of their audience at their own developers’ conference. They also make up for it by making everything available not only in the the event app, but via a dedicated event portal. Google's conference app’s session content appears across the web, live stream, social media, YouTube, etc.

OK, I’ve talked a lot about Google...now for the rest of us.

It's interesting to look at what Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and many other major tech companies have done for their conferences. Most mightly tech companies rely on third party app developers, as even they must not have enough developers sitting around who specialize in mobile.

Guidebook is one of the least expensive (free-$5000) with all the features you would expect. It's been used by thousands (including the companies mentioned above) mainly because it makes a difficult task so easy. (Disclosure: MeetingSource.com once had an affiliate relationship with Guidebook.)

A note of caution

These days, all smart phones that have data plans are able to access the internet and most have built in wifi as well. However, venues themselves are no way close to delivering a consistent amount of bandwidth for each event, although most offer some free hotspots in limited areas.

As a work-around, at least the schedule portion of your app must work both offline and online. Google did this with their conference app and most third party app providers allow for this. That is they build their apps to continue to work in the device's native (stored) environment so that moving to areas of the center without coverage is largely a non-issue.

 

Top Pick: Guidebook

A new content management system, integration with popular scheduling and event registration providers, a strong track record of producing apps and a most friendly, helpful staff make Guidebook our top choice among conference apps.

Three other popular app providers are:

1. Core-apps
2. Cvent Mobile
3. QuickMobile

There's many more and many more to come!