Eventing the Future partners with ShowGizmo for 6th consecutive year
MEDIA RELEASE
22nd June 2017
For Immediate Release
Wellington based event app developer, ShowGizmo, has confirmed a partnership with annual conference, Eventing The Future (ETF) for the 6th consecutive year. The two day conference is New Zealand’s premier conference for the event industry and the official conference for the New Zealand Event Association (NZEA).
ETF first partnered with ShowGizmo in 2012 to digitise the event experience for their attendees. Since then they have continued to partner for the conference, ensuring the kiwi event professional community is exposed to the ever evolving landscape of event technology. “ETF have pioneered all of our innovations over the years, they do an excellent job at showcasing the latest and greatest in event tech to kiwi event professionals,” said Josh Dry of ShowGizmo.
“We’ve had the privilege of seeing the ShowGizmo platform evolve over the years. It’s transformed from a simple digital show guide that was perfect for the time in 2012, to a sophisticated interactive platform that allows our attendees to come away with better connections,” said event co-organiser Jeannie Dyer. “As well as providing exceptional technology, the ShowGizmo team are great to work with as a partner and a supplier too. Their mission of creating awesome event experiences is apparent in everything they do and is something we can definitely get behind,” continued Jeannie.
The partnership with Eventing the Future is one of ShowGizmo’s longest standing. “It’s always been a pleasure working with the ETF team. They are fantastic champions for our industry here in New Zealand. The partnership is so successful because it’s based on a mutual commitment to exploring new ways of enhancing the event experience for attendees.,” said ShowGizmo chair and co-founder, Frances Manwaring.
https://showgizmo.com/blog/eventing-the-future-partners-with-showgizmo-for-6th-consecutive-year
ENDS
For further information
Lara Simmons
lara@showgizmo.com
www.showgizmo.com
- Published in News
CadmiumCD — Launches New Tagline ‘Bring Your Event Together™’
Empowering Meeting Planners with One Unified, Easy-To-Use Dashboard.
FOREST HILL, Md., May 16, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — CadmiumCD, a leading event software company, announced today that with its expanded platform offering and new international markets it serves the company has launched a new tagline to better represent the true power its platform brings to meeting planners worldwide. The new tagline, “Bring Your Event Together,” embraces the essence of CadmiumCD, its platform, its products, and its unified, easy-to-use dashboard.
“Our mission has always been to make meeting education easy for meeting planners, however our product offering has expanded beyond just meeting education. We now provide 12 distinct products that allow meeting planners to easily collect, manage and share content throughout the event lifecycle,” commented Michelle Wyatt, President and co-founder of CadmiumCD. “Our new tagline embodies our full capabilities and the value it brings to our clients.”
Along with the release of its new tagline, CadmiumCD has revamped its corporate website and added more product-specific content, client testimonials and a deep dive on its latest product release, an enhanced version of its eventScribe™ Conference App – eventScribe Boost™.
About CadmiumCD
CadmiumCD is an event software company with more than 15 years of experience providing on-demand content management solutions that streamline the workflow for Meeting Planners, Exhibition Organizers, Education Directors, and Attendees. The company’s award winning software is trusted by more than 3,500 meeting professionals worldwide. Its software platform makes it easy to collect, manage and share content to all event stakeholders through its modules: Call for Abstracts, Speaker & Exhibitor Data Management, Digital Content Publication, Audio Recordings, Digital Poster Galleries, Online Itinerary Planners, Interactive Floor Plans, Native Event Apps, and Post-Conference Evaluations.
For more information, visit www.CadmiumCD.com, subscribe to our blog, or email info@cadmiumcd.com.
- Published in News
ShowGizmo gears up to offer Associations a year-round solution in 2017
MEDIA RELEASE
14th December 2016
For Immediate Release
One of Australasia’s longest standing event app companies, ShowGizmo is announcing a new focus on Associations for 2017.
Since launching one of the world’s first event apps in 2010, ShowGizmo has now powered thousands of events throughout the world with their suite of native whitelabel and owned event apps. “We’ve served clients from all industries and sectors over the years, as event people as well as mobile specialists. Helping to create awesome events has always been a huge driving force for us,” said CEO and Co- Founder, Marie-Claire Andrews. The company was recently named one of Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500 in the APAC region.
“Our experience with Associations in Australasia and the USA have consistently been positive, we really love the collaborations that Associations foster, and we want to continue to help make that a possibility for these vital organisations by ensuring their requirements are front and centre for our product development,” said Marie-Claire.
In a nod of more to come, ShowGizmo has confirmed 2017 partnerships with two of Australasia’s leading Association industry bodies: The Australasian Society for Association Executives and Associations Forum. Both will be utilising ShowGizmo’s technology as a year-round platform to digitise the way they communicate with their members.
“Face to face events are still our core business, and we’re going to continue supporting them as always, but we want to help Associations and other organisations leverage the possibilities that year-round mobile interactions offer. Our partnerships with AuSAE and Associations Forum is a sign of great things to come!” explained ShowGizmo’s COO, Ryan O’Connor.
David Browne, Executive Officer of the Professional Teachers’ Council (PTC) NSW is looking forward to showcasing his 45 member associations a digital platform throughout 2017, “I’m excited to offer the platform and I’m confident of great adoption, not only because of the opportunities to cross promote events, but because our app will also be an attractive tool for our associations to attract sponsorship.”
Lara Simmons
Marketing Executive at ShowGizmo
lara@showgizmo.com
For more information:
ShowGizmo
AusAe
Associations Forum
PTC NSW
- Published in Business, Event Technology
Event Tech of the Week: @Ticketscript
Today, we’re talking about: ticketscript
Company/Tool Name: ticketscript
Website: www.ticketscript.com
Twitter: @ticketscript
Facebook: /ticketscript
What is the “problem” that your tool seeks to solve?
When we launched in 2006 the ticketing industry was dominated by large third party ticketing agents. We wanted to show event organisers and promoters that they didn’t need these third parties to be successful. Since then the industry has changed, but this principle still rings true. We are a big believer in giving independence, freedom and total control to event organisers over their ticketing and every product we develop and all that we set out to do reinforces this message. Our ticketing solution integrates seamlessly into the event organisers very own website, mobile site or Facebook fan page so their customers can purchase tickets directly from them without the need to register with a third party.
What is the best audience for this tool? Corporate events? Social? Other? Large? Small?
Anyone who sells tickets! We work with a very wide range of clients from huge music festivals and clubs, air and car shows, to cinema and halloween events. Our product offering is completely scalable so whatever the size of the event, we can provide the required solution. We’ve so far helped over 1250,000 events sell more than 2 million tickets.
What does your tool help event planners do better?
The idea behind ticketscript is to reduce the stress of event organisers by providing an easy to use, reliable and highly informative ticketing solution that makes their lives easier. We don’t want the event organiser to worry about things like whether their ticketing solution can handle high demand on-sales, or if the customer insights and reports will be delivered in easy-to-read reports. It’s all taken care of with our offering. We also have a dedicated account management team who are always on to assist with our clients.
How is your tool different from/better than the competition?
From a holistic perspective, we set out to provide the organiser with independence over their event so they’re not reliant on third parties and can make there own decisions when it comes to ticketing. We provide all the tools to make this a reality and are a truly ‘direct to consumer’ ticketing solution. Some self-service platforms will still transfer the customer to a third party site to purchase tickets which we don’t believe in. Another key element to our model is we allow the event organiser to retain 100% of the customer data and do not share this with competitors like third party agents and discovery platforms do. It’s all about growing your own community and remaining in control over your business.
What is the single coolest feature of your product?
We recently introduced the new ticketshop which is the most responsive and intuitive on the market. It seamlessly adapts to any device and has great sharing capabilities across Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp, so ticket-buyers can celebrate their purchase and help out the event organiser with some extra (free) promotion.
Anything else we need to know?
We offer a complete service from the ticketing software to in-depth reporting, as well as entrance management solutions so you can work with us across your entire event. We’re constantly developing new products/features and looking at the future of event ticketing to see how we can ensure we’re at the forefront. Lot’s of exciting things are on the horizon so keep your eyes peeled 🙂
- Published in Event Tech of the Week
3 Things This Event Planner Wishes Venues Would Change
Check out a recent post I shared on EliteMeetings.com:
Event planners and venues. Venues and event planners. The two go hand-in-hand. Venues are one of the first things that event planners look to secure when we are hosting an event. And, in doing lots of the new research over the years, there are a few things I think venues could do to provide a better experience for the planners looking to book them. You may recognize a few of these observations yourself. (Feel free to pass this on to your friends on the supplier side—especially those who’d like to win more business.)
Updated website
From my experience, a lot of the websites were created with the venue in mind, not the planners who will be booking them. When doing online research, it’s often hard to find information about various rooms available, capacities and good shots of the rooms so I can see how they would be used for an event. It’s also very difficult to get a sense of pricing, and while I understand that pricing can change based on the day and time of the event, having no pricing on your website leads to a lot of excess work. Not only are venues filling RFPs that will not go anywhere, but planners are having to reach out to way more venues that they would typically have to, just to get a sense of budget range. I recommend listing some pricing information on venue websites, even if it’s a price on a menu or a range on a room rental. Give planners something to work with.
Quick follow-up
Because venues are getting so many RFPs, the delay in response time is simply too long. Often, we are working for clients who are looking to make a decision quickly, and the faster a venue gets back to us, the more likely it is to be included in our options for clients.
Comprehensive communication
Have you ever asked for a quote from the venue only to be told that it really depends on a thousand different factors? I know that by the time I understand from the venue what factors are needed, it’s too late. If a venue’s booking process is really complicated, it would be helpful if they’d make it as simple for the planner to understand as possible. Perhaps they could have a document that outlines all the different factors and allows a planner to see what is included and what is not included. If your venue rental is for the space and a hundred chairs and two tables, they should make that very clear from the beginning so we know what other vendors we will need to bring in to make it work. Don’t make us ask a million questions to get to that point.
In short, event planners reach out to venues because they want to do business. The easier suppliers can make it for them, the more likely they are to win the business. By updating websites and creating comprehensive, all-in-one quotes, they’ll be able to paint a very clear picture of how an event can work at their space. If an event planner has to do 10 times more work for one venue over another, guess who’ll win the business? Venues that improve their pipeline and demonstrate personalized service will undoubtedly see their sales rise dramatically.
Photo credits: Shutterstock.com
- Published in Event Planning
Event Tech of the Week: @AttendInc
Today, we’re talking about: Attend, Inc.
Company/Tool Name: Attend, Inc.
Website: www.attend.com
Twitter:@AttendInc
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/attendinc
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/attenddotcom
What is the “problem” that your tool seeks to solve?
There are two big problems with most marketing events today. The first is not taking full advantage of opportunities to connect with key prospects and customers in-person. Attend’s Playbook solves this by allowing sales teams to map out who will connect with who, take notes on conversations, and automatically sync everything your CRM and marketing automation.
The second big problem is a lack of measurement and attribution for events. Attend solves this with our new Revenue Attribution Dashboard that calculates everything from the dollar value of opportunities influenced by your event to your total event ROI.
What is the best audience for this tool? Corporate events? Social? Other? Large? Small?
We have customers running a wide range of events on our platform from a few thousand attendees to smaller customer appreciation dinners. Our product is purpose-built to help businesses drive revenue from events that they host themselves. We see this as an emerging trend in the market, and we aim to be the solution of choice for these types of events.
What does your tool help event planners do better?
Attend’s Revenue Event Marketing platform combines best-in-class event management capabilities with tools that empower sales teams to engage more effectively with attendees to build sales pipeline through events. Attend makes it easy to attract the right attendees, maximize face-to-face interactions, drive timely follow-up, and track ROI.
How is your tool different from/better than the competition?
Our focus on attendee engagement to drive revenue is unique in our industry, and we offer the tools to back it up. Our mobile app lets salespeople create an engagement plan for who they want to connect with at the event based on Salesforce ownership and opportunity value. Users can get notifications when these important attendees arrive at the event and then have the context they need to have a great conversation. The app also lets you create Salesforce notes and follow-up tasks on the fly to ensure the timely continuation of conversations after the event to help maximize ROI.
What is the single coolest feature of your product?
Our customers are really excited about our new Revenue Attribution Dashboard, which helps marketers determine the revenue impact of running their events. We’ve taken a unique approach to simplify the way event attribution is calculated based on feedback from customers and event marketers. With a simple connection to Salesforce, we show you potential revenue of registrants and attendees, along with post-event Opportunity influence and sourced revenue. It’s pretty awesome!
Anything else we need to know?
https://twitter.com/seesebbytweet/status/702961089193979904
This weekly series spotlights a new tech tool that is designed to help make planning events much more seamless. Whether it’s using event software to track every detail from start to finish or mobile apps that deliver content to attendees’ fingertips, these technologies allow planners to divert their stress to more critical issues like deciding which napkin color looks best.
- Published in Event Tech of the Week
Behind the Hustle: Shannon De Souza (@Fancie_D)
Shannon is very passionate about events and technology! With a decade of paralleled experience in both the event and tech industries, she comes with a wealth of sales and marketing experience working with some major technology giants such as Blackberry, SAP, and EventMobi. She was also a social event entrepreneur for 9 years specializing in south asian weddings in Toronto, until 2015 when her company got acquired. In 2010, she graduated with a Masters in Business, Entrepreneurship & Technology from Canada’s #1 Ivy League university (University of Waterloo), which propelled her further into the strategic realm of emerging technology.
Today, Shannon is the Director of Sales & Industry Relations for the event technology provider Attendease in Vancouver, BC. She works with customers around the world like Adobe, SXSW & Pivotal to elevate their event strategy to effectively meet their organization’s global event objectives. This year, it was with great excitement Shannon received PCMA’s meeting industry accolade “20 in their 20’s”.
“hi, my name is…”
The world knows me as: Shannon DeSouza, MBET
I’ve also been known to respond to the names: Fancy D, Desouza, Shan, Shandy, ShanGirl, Dee
I am wicked good at: I’ve honestly become outstanding at planning a supremely stylish wedding, so much so I can whip one up within a month! I would say it’s one of those things I could “do in my sleep”.
Least favorite house chore: Dishes – I’m soooo spoiled, my husband is amazing and never lets me touch the dirty ones; some how I have even gotten away with unloading the clean ones! LOL
My go-to guilty pleasure food is: President’s Choice Ketchup Chips – this is a Canadian specialty. When you come to Canada be sure to buy at least 5 bags, they are insanely addictive!
Favorite App: Since moving across Canada, SnapChat has been my life line to keep in touch with my friends all across the globe! It makes me feel like I still am a big part of their lives, as they share the moments that are too intimate for mainstream social media.
Favorite quote: “The pain you feel today, will be the strength you feel tomorrow”
“The Hustle”
Job Title: Director, Sales & Industry Relations, Attendease
Professional Superpower: Focus – When I make a decision to do something, I am committed and focused on a successful execution – no matter what!
My primary role in the events industry is: Event technology educator & solution sales person
Years in the events industry: 3 years in corporate events, 9 years in social events (parallel)
To me, being an event hustler means: Getting the job DONE! From tear down to closing the deal, having the right attitude and work ethic will ensure the objective is met.
The top 2 most surprising things I’ve learned about the events industry since starting are: 1) How amazingly nice EVERYBODY is! 2) All the ego’s are checked at the door.
How did you get your start in the events industry? I would say my passion for event design, and wanting to be a part of ever lasting love is the real reason I started my wedding planning business 9 years ago. Once I got the process and flow of that down, I continued to stay in the industry as I really enjoyed creating and growing a business. In my transition to the corporate events industry, Bob Vaez gave me my start at EventMobi 3 years ago – after writing (what I could now foresee as a completely insane) cover letter; he created a unplanned role for me as he believed I had a very unique background in events, tech, sales and marketing which he then fostered and harnessed into the #eventprof I am today 🙂
My biggest event industry pet peeve is: Chicken as the only entree option at events – I’m a red meat kind of gal!
“No such thing as TMI”
One thing that would really surprise people to learn about me is: I became an entrepreneur at the age of 20, and my business was able to get acquired 9 years later.
You can only keep 2 albums in your entire music collection -those albums would be: Ne-Yo: Year of the Gentleman & Ginuwine: The Life
10yr old me thought I’d grow up to be: Oh my gosh – best question ever! I don’t think anyone (who has ever met me today) will really believe me – I wanted to be a Catholic Nun! At the time I was very close to my mother’s brother who was a priest. I became quite religious at a young age, and had been putting in a lot of volunteer time at a Catholic nun childcare facility – needless to say I had a great experience and saw them as positive and productive role models in society. My aspirations at the age of 10 even went as far as wanting to complete my Masters in Social Work before heading to the convent. Wow, that was a #WayBackPlayBack
Text or phone call? Phone call
Android or iPhone? Android
Toilet paper roll – Over or under? I’m not that particular, doesn’t matter as long as there is some lol
Connect with Shannon:
Email: shannon@attendease.com
Telephone: 604-332-4475
Twitter: @Fancie_D //@Attendease
Instagram: @Fancie_D
- Published in Behind the Hustle
How to Create a Niche in the Events Industry (and Why You Should!)
I’m a guest blogger on EliteMeetings.com. Here is one of my recent contributions.
I think that creating a niche in our industry is incredibly important. Most people tend to think that offering a wide variety of services will bring them more opportunities, but while that sounds intuitively correct, it’s actually the opposite. By narrowing your market to a very tiny segment, you’re more easily able to market yourself and be branded. It’s important in a very competitive industry to be as niche as possible, so here are a few tips on how you can find and brand a niche that works for you.
Find what you love
One of the great things about the events industry is that every planner is so different. We all have different passions, strengths and skills. Something that might be really interesting to me is probably a drag to someone else. For me, this interest is technology. I have a very unique interest in how technology impacts events and how it can be used throughout the event planning process, but clearly this is not the same passion for everyone in the industry. For some, it’s design. For others, fundraising. Whatever the thing is that you love, you’ve got to find a way to hone in on that.
Market that niche
The reality is that marketing a niche is far more simple than marketing broadly. If you are a technology focused event planner, all of your content, social media and marketing can circle around that. If you’re trying to stretch yourself too thin, you have to market weddings, corporate events, Bar mitzvahs, birthday parties and more. It’s simply stretches you too far. Instead, make sure that all of your marketing collateral and social media/content marketing is about this one thing.
Be consistent
They say that your brand is not what you say it is, but what other people say it is. And how does a user identify your brand? It’s through their experience with your brand through your marketing. The more consistent you are with your marketing, the easier it will be for your target audience to pick up on your niche. You can always decide to take events that are outside of this niche for the money or the experience, but you may choose not to showcase them as prominently on your website or in your social media.
If you have trouble believing me that you will get more business by marketing more narrowly, just trust me for six months. Dive into a single category and see the impact you can make!
Photo credits: Shutterstock.com
- Published in Event Planning
Event Tech of the Week: @EventGeek
Today, we’re talking about: EventGeek
Company/Tool Name: EventGeek
Website: www.eventgeek.com
Twitter: twitter.com/eventgeek
Facebook: facebook.com/eventgeek
What is the “problem” that your tool seeks to solve?
EventGeek solves event planning confusion. Today, event planners often struggle to manage myriad logistics and to know the ROI of their events.
What is the best audience for this tool? Corporate events? Social? Other? Large? Small?
Event marketers and planners that want to get a handle on larger or more complex events and event series. Also those that care about event ROI and want to use events to grow their business. In other words, event geeks!
How is your tool different from/better than the competition?
We’re not aware of any direct competition. EventGeek is different from generic tools like spreadsheets and checklists because it’s created specifically for events. We support features for managing venues, vendors, printing, shipping, travel, budgets and event ROI that you simply can’t get from generic tools.
What is the single coolest feature of your product?
So hard to choose! Personally I love that we can integrate literally any data source to measure event ROI, including but not limited to crm, ecommerce, surveys, social media and web analytics.
This weekly series spotlights a new tech tool that is designed to help make planning events much more seamless. Whether it’s using event software to track every detail from start to finish or mobile apps that deliver content to attendees’ fingertips, these technologies allow planners to divert their stress to more critical issues like deciding which napkin color looks best.
- Published in Event Tech of the Week
We Pinned It: Independence Day
If Memorial Day was the unofficial start of b-b-q season, 4th of July is when things start to get real! Maybe for that party you served some burgers and hot dogs, a few beers and some simple sweet treats. Independence Day, though? We think it’s time to break out the big guns!
Sure, you’ll still want to serve the old stand bys but fancy up those burgers and dogs by creating a gourmet bar with specialty sauces and condiments, in addition to your ketchup and yellow mustard. Think beyond the usual pickles and onions on toppings and give radishes, avocado or baked beans a chance.
Want to skip the burgers altogether? Try some seafood – garlicky shrimp or salmon on a cedar plank? Yum! And, don’t forget about the sides. We think you haven’t lived until you’ve tried grilled watermelon and pineapple.
Now, let’s talk drinks, shall we? Independence day provides a perfect opportunity to combine delicious tastes with spectacular visuals. Variations on red, white and blue cocktails are abundant. Sangria, layered drinks, jello shots… or, skip the beverage altogether and soak your berries in vodka or rum and decorate them with sprinkles and pop them in your mouth for a quick treat that packs a punch.
Be sure to save some space for dessert. Best enjoyed with a side of fireworks.
CHECK OUT OUR PINTEREST BOARD FOR MORE IDEAS!
Featured image from Frosting and a Smile
- Published in Social Media, We Pinned It