Ask the Techxperts: @DoubleDutch Brings on Infrastructure Expert from Apple to Future-Proof Their Product

Thanks for the warm welcome, and I’m glad to hear you are a fan of DoubleDutch apps. I’m really excited about how Lawrence and the team are using mobile technology to unlock data at events and improve the social experience for attendees, organizers and exhibitors alike! We have an opportunity to be a disruptive force for good, and I am convinced we have the right vision and team to make this a reality.

I came to DoubleDutch by way of a few great organizations like Yesmail, an email marketing platform, and SmartTAB, a payments and ticketing platform for restaurants, bars and clubs. At Apple I led the Core Engineering team for the Online Store working with challenging distributed and scaling problems. My focus in each role has been building out the underlying infrastructure to future-proof products for massive scale, as well as creating a rewarding and challenging environment for top engineering talent.

First, by providing the best possible experience for our customers and users. We continuously attend events looking for feedback and ideas to improve our product. Events are a big part of our marketing strategy. We love to go to events where event organizers come together to learn about the latest and greatest technology. We find that the combination of powering event apps – like for PlannerTech – and exhibiting and/or speaking helps us drive awareness and find great leads. We can show our app in action by pointing to the conversation happening in real time, and also check out a list of folks that tapped on our name and booth in the app to find additional interested organizers.

Events are our passion. We continuously strive to learn, challenge assumptions, and anticipate the needs of our clients and users. One day, people will wonder how they ever existed without DoubleDutch at their event.

We use data in a number of ways at DoubleDutch. First, we believe in measuring everything. Through data we use it to optimize our product, find anomalies but also discover opportunity. We use it to distinguish decision makers, influencers, or even early adopters. We also have built our app to capture data that is useful to event organizers and exhibitors – from who tapped on what sponsor, to which speakers and sessions drew the most attention, to what where attendees were spending their time through iBeacon opt-in location data. All of these streams of information help organizers optimize their events, and therefore give us a competitive edge in the industry.

Going forward, we will be using machine learning, recommendation engines, and heterogeneous streams of data to drive new insights and further launch our product ecosystem to new heights.

Coolest is a bit of a subjective term, but at DoubleDutch we strive to push the boundaries in all directions on this front, which we consider to be innovation. We cannot reveal exactly what we’re working on yet, but the team is very excited about some upcoming product initiatives that will further reshape the Events Management space in user experience, exhibitor value, and organizer effectiveness. On the marketing side, we incorporate high-performance technologies into our booth design to bolster our innovative brand, such as using the Makerbot 3D printer. In sales we use technology, data, and insights to work smarter and harder. All in all, we are driven by the opportunity to create an experience that redefines the events industry. It is our mission to continuously invent the next coolest thing.

I cannot choose just one favorite, but I do admire Uber quite a bit. I love the disruptive force of Uber and am very impressed with the vision and execution. Uber has created a beautiful mobile app with a seamless user experience. Couple that with a solid platform of technology to execute across a highly fragmented and regulated industry, and it makes for an impressive product. I look forward to watching this business evolve and keeping an eye on how they use and consume data.