Guidebook

We’re excited to announce that JCCs across the country now have a mobile app! The JCC app is available in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. This means that JCC members all over the continent have a go-to place to find detailed calendars, schedules, and other information to help them engage with their local center, as well as interactive features to help members network and communicate.

Here are some of the features of the JCC guides in the app:

• Cultural calendars
• Fitness schedules
• Program information
• Social sharing features
• Feedback surveys and polls

Learn more about taking your JCC mobile!

Increasingly, schools are turning to mobile apps for their orientations and campus events. There are, however, several important factors to consider when deciding to take your event mobile, including cost, time frame, and features. In our white paper, “What to Consider When Deciding on a School Orientation or Campus Event App,” we give you a concise overview of the major issues that you should consider.

Our white paper covers several important topics including:

• Reasons to take your campus events mobile
• How much you should expect to pay
• How much time you can expect to invest in building an app
• How to turn your app into a revenue generator
• How taking your event mobile saves money and the environment
• What types of campus events benefit from mobile guides
• Sample use cases and examples

We hope that reading our white paper inspires you to take your next campus event mobile and gives you ideas on how to get started! Download our free white paper here.

So you’re planning a big event and it’d be awesome to have an app. You begin to envision its functionality and get excited about potential features: an interactive venue map, a personalized scheduler, exhibitor listings, easy social sharing, increased visibility for sponsors, maybe even a user survey or two. Great! Things are progressing. All you need now is to choose a mobile event app company.

Search “best mobile event app makers” on Google and companies like Guidebook, Quickmobile, Eventmobi, Crowdcompass, Bloodhound, and Grupio appear near the top of the page. But which will produce the best app given your tight budget and goals? The answer is elusive. Unfortunately, most event app companies don’t post their prices nor offer an honest appraisal of their features online. And with so many variables and a ton of companies vying for your business, suddenly picking a provider is looking a lot more daunting than you had originally imagined. To make an informed decision, you’ll of course need to know what functionality each supports and what each solution costs.  In addition, you’ll want to ask:

• Are the apps all equally good-looking and easy to use?

• Can you build a basic app for free?

• What about tweaking content if something comes up last minute — is that easy?

• Will the app work well on all devices including tablets, phones, and laptops?

• Will you be able to tell how many people are downloading and using  your app?

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Last weekend, Guidebook sponsored and exhibited at the 33rd annual Association of Collegiate Conference and Events Directors-International (ACCED-i) Conference in Toronto! Over 1,750 members from 500 colleges and universities attended to discuss themes in the design, marketing, coordination and planning of conferences and special events on campuses around the world.  

The Guidebook app allowed attendees to create personal itineraries for the three-day event, as well as view important conference information and interact with organizations’ social media outlets. Everyone at the conference couldn’t stop talking about how much they loved having everything they needed to know right in the palms of their hands!  

Many of the attendees stopped by the Guidebook booth to preview the app for college events on iPads and tablets, enter to win prizes, or play Bananagrams with Guidebook representative (and Bananagrams world champion), Katie Williams.

Katie also gave a presentation at a special interest program on how universities are leveraging the power of mobile technology to improve how they run campus events. The theme of the session was common mistakes event organizers make when incorporating apps into their events, and the main takeaways are as follows:

1) Keep event apps simple

2) Make sure to promote your app

3) Don’t be afraid to go paperless 

4) Find a content management system that is user-friendly

As a partner of ACCED-I, Guidebook is looking forward to exciting new developments in the world of mobile technology for school events!

At Amazon’s last big developer conference, AWS re:Invent, most of the developers in attendance used Guidebook to find their way around and interact with the conference organizers. More than 6,000 attendees from 62 countries attended the three-day conference for technical bootcamps, guest speakers and educational sessions. As the official conference app, Guidebook made it easy for attendees to navigate more than 150 sessions, create their own personalized schedules, and even participate in a series of “Code Challenges” via the app.

According to Tracy Laxdal, Marketing Manager, Amazon: “Our attendees are very tech savvy, and their most common comment was ‘this app is extremely polished.’ From an implementation standpoint, the app was easy to configure and the Guidebook team was great to work with.”

Read more about the Amazon Web Services re:Invent conference success story. Or you can check out more of Guidebook’s testimonials and customer success stories!

Katherine, our Business Development Manager, shares her experience at the 2013 Meeting Professionals International (MPI) Trade Show, put on by the Northern California Chapter.

A week or so ago, I had the pleasure of representing Guidebook at a trade show put on by the Northern California Chapter of Meeting Professionals International.

Pretty much everyone at Guidebook tries to go to events whenever they can – in addition to meeting people, it’s nice to see the challenges of event organizers, attendees, and exhibitors firsthand. There were over 1,000 attendees there and at least a couple hundred exhibitors. As an attendee, it was clear what the main benefits of a mobile app would be for a show of this size.

First, just trying to find a particular vendor or booth is much easier with a searchable vendor directory and corresponding floor map. There were several long rows of vendors.

Information on transportation, parking, and dining options is also a big plus. The event was at Moscone Center (San Francisco’s convention center) and all of us who went were Bay Area residents. Nonetheless, the center is enormous and finding the right parking structure, and locating the correct building (there are several sections) were tough tasks.

And of course an interactive listing of the sessions and speakers is always useful, so that people can pick the sessions that interest them and create a personalized agenda.

We will be attending the Exhibitor Show in Las Vegas in a couple of weeks, and hopefully many similar shows in the next couple of months. If you know of a show that we should check out (or create an app for) let us know.

Check out the Trade Show News Network blog’s feature on Guidebook’s partnership with the Reno-Sparks Convention and Visitors Authority (RSCVA). The RSCVA is a marketing organization responsible for promoting tourism and attracting visitors to events, such as conventions, trade shows, and business meetings, that are held in Reno, Nevada. 

Now, with the partnership, all events that register through RSCVA will be provided with a free mobile event app, powered by Guidebook. Recently, the Safari Club International (SCI) Convention used Guidebook for its 41st anniversary in Reno, allowing visitors to conveniently navigate the event on their smartphones and tablets. SCI event organizers were pleased with the download rate and reported extremely positive feedback from attendees. 

Feel free to contact us to learn more about our partnership opportunities.

Check out a press release on Guidebook’s partnership with the University of Texas at Austin’s National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development (NISOD). The NISOD — which has almost 500 member colleges — is a membership organization dedicated to the professional development of staff and the improvement of teaching and student learning.

With the introduction of the Guidebook app, NISOD conference attendees will now be able to access up-to-date schedules, maps, and session information. Read the full press release below.

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Katie, one of our account executives, shares her experience at the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) Conference.

Last week, Guidebook was the official app for the annual Association of American Colleges and Universities conference, hosted at the beautiful Hyatt Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia. Over 1,600 deans, presidents, professors, and university staff attended the event, and over 5,200 people downloaded the Guidebook App! 

The conference brought together leaders in higher education to discuss important issues — such as globalization, technology, demographics, and the relationship between politics and education — that colleges in the U.S. are facing today. Guidebook enabled participants to navigate seamlessly through three action-packed days of educational sessions, networking events, receptions, workshops and forums.

Users enjoyed the ability to add schedule sessions to personalized agendas, view venue maps of the Hyatt floor plans, browse local restaurants and points of interest in the Atlanta area, and connect with other attendees through the registrant list. Best of all, the app allowed the conference organizers to save money and the environment by printing fewer paper agendas!

As colleges and universities seek new ways to offer the highest quality education in a rapidly changing technological environment, mobile apps provide an economic and sustainable way for them to effectively communicate with their students and staff. Many attendees were impressed by the functionality of the Guidebook App and were inspired to investigate ways to implement the tool for events on their own campuses.

To learn more about how you can use Guidebook for your own events, register for a demo or visit our events page.

We want to share a series of customer success stories on clients who built standout guides and were happy with their Guidebook experience. Let’s start off with the 2012 Smart Jewelry Show guide, which served over 2,500 independent retail jewelers and 550 exhibitors. To read the full story, click here!

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