iMacworld and your next event

Photo by marcopako via Flickr

You should hate technology. If you work with events you should really despise it as the worst of your competitor.

The problem with technology is that it evolves rapidly. With rapid evolution, users' demands and expectations grow accordingly.

Technology is your fiercest enemy. Or is it?

Not in my opinion. I only see room for better experiences, up-selling opportunities and cross-selling chances. Technology is tangible, your event is not.

Macworld is already a success. Rumours have spread weeks in advance. They set up a community, they are well integrated with major social networking sites.

What really captured my attention was the dedicated free iPhone app that came from organizers, iMacworld (link to iTunes).

I already talked few times about how iPhones are very helpful to be more organized and productive.

IDG did a great job and released an update of the app with interesting features:

As Zdnet explains:

The Exhibitor tab gives you an alphabetical list of exhibitors which you can scroll through or you can jump right to the first letter in the company name via the letters down the right hand side. You can also search by booth number and by hall. One thing that’s missing is an open text search.

The Products tab allows you to scroll through lists by name, exhibitor and by category and the Sessions tab allows you to locate conference sessions by day, track, room and speaker.

The Messaging feature rounds out tabs across the bottom of the UI and provides updates from IDG about the show and the iPhone.

Now this is something I'd like to see at every event I will attend in the future.

I'd like to be informed as a participant, I'd like to get my name out there as an exhibitor.

As time goes by, I would stop appreciating the chance of it and start requiring it. This is what you have to deal with today.

I love technology.