Tag Archives: events2.0

Explaining Eventstreams

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As I have mentioned a couple of times recently Stefan and I have embarked on a pretty ambitious side project based on a number of ideas I have had over the last couple of years about using the web to support events and conferences.

As you would expect the roles have split pretty cleanly down the Maker/Manager line. Stef actually is doing the building (and when the time comes also the design) and I am responsible for coming up with and then testing features, writing copy, working out the business elements like pricing etc, doing some IA work (though it remains to be seen how much notice Stef will take!) and eventually things like sales and customer service.

Stef is seriously pushing ahead and every morning I awake to emails from Pivotal Tracker announcing new features being delivered and needing testing. Stef is building the platform using Ruby on Rails and it does seem to lend itself to truly rapid development. The fact that for some of the key features Stef had essentially prototyped as WordPress plug-ins for an earlier project doesn’t hurt and also he has been able to slightly cannibalise another, prior personal project that didn’t launch. We haven’t given ourselves and deadlines but I think we’ll be calling on the ‘alpha’ testers I have lined up earlier than I expected.

So what is Eventstreams? Well the idea is that it is a platform that will allow event or conference organisers to easily build themselves attractive, usable, function rich websites without needing additional technical support. I’m calling these sites ‘virtual venues’. We will offer functionality that allows the creation of agendas or schedules without the need for clumsy tables (similar to Sched.org I have realised since we started but unique enough to be relevant I think), integrated Twitter streams, support for tools like Eventbrite & Amiando for registration and offering a choice between free or premium themes (the premium themes – hopefully – being designed by some of the various talented local designers we know). I see this as being one of those times when the superficial is key to the success of the product so these ‘themes’ are vital – as is the look and feel of the entire platform. Just as well Stef has some pretty serious design chops then :)

There are a few extra functions I have in mind for further down the line that I’ll keep up my sleeve for now and I’m sure once we start letting people lose on the system we will have to rethink a few things but that is part of the fun.

I’ll be honest it has been alot of fun so far and it is good to have a project that is genuinely interesting to get my teeth into at the moment as the 9-5 is more than a little, well, dull at the moment. It does make me wonder whether I was to quick to leave Jiva last year though as I do miss working closely with developers in an agile way. Then again you never know maybe something will come up that offers that level of interaction again.

End of EventVue

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Over the weekend I read about the end of EventVue first on the CrowdVine blog, then the very honest post-mortem from EventVue themselves and then finally Techcrunch. In fact as is often the case they appear to have gained more publicity by closing down than they ever got when they were in business!

EventVue were initially a white-label, event specific social network system. It was a very similar offering to CrowdVine (which I’ll admit was the system I preferred and evangelised in my little corner of the world) but well thought of and like Tony says on the CrowdVine blog came about too soon after CrowdVine launched for it to be a copycat. I’ve always thought this was an interesting space but have never been sure there was enough demand to build a successful business around it (though CrowdVine seem to have done so!). It appears EventVue became convinced of something similar themselves and starting looking to re-focus their offering into something more profit focused. If I’m honest I’m not sure I understand the purposed of the Discover app they mentioned and the switch to ‘real-time conversations for events’ – basically a Twitter stream around hashtags doesn’t seem that compelling on its own (it appears to essentially be less functional than the open source Guardian Twitterfall and that sort of thing that a decent team could put together in a weekend..let alone the sort of things Mike has planned for Onetag.)

It is always sad to see a startup fail – especially when it is in a niche I think is interesting but I’m sure the team involved will bounce back – they obviously have talent. I still think there is mileage in a business built around the digital elements of events but I increasingly see that as services based around support for open source and third party tools rather than a startup. Maybe someone will come up with something compelling but I can’t see it at the moment (though some kind of next-gen listings engine to replace the creaky Upcoming would be useful!)..

Mobile Roadie: DIY iPhone App for your event

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I wasn’t at LeWeb last week – it has never been one of those events that has appealed to me and the bad press it got last year certainly didn’t do much to change that opinion.  It seems to have been more warmly received this year though and one of the real hits was Mobile Roadie iPhone app for the conference.  Mobile Roadie is a service that allows you to quickly pull together a custom iPhone app – initially it was aimed at musicians etc thus the name but they are beginning to branch out and events seem to be a natural fit.

MoRo offers an iPhone app that pulls together the programme information, backchannel, conference buzz, personalised maps based on your GPS and even integrates the UStream video of the event (plus a fair bit more I think – I’ve only had a quick play).  The cost of all this appears to be reasonable and could spell the end of printed event materials – especially if MobileRoadie follow through with their promise of offering Android and Blackberry solutions as a part of the package.

I could see this sort of thing being a real hit at tech conferences and the fact it also includes push notifications could be a real godsend for event organisers.

I really like the idea of this and think it is potentially a real game changer for large technical conferences – not sure quite how it would fit into the growing green agenda for events as well but anything that prevents things being printed is probably a good thing as well.  The ability for these apps to include some advertising would also help make up for the shortfall that the move away from sponsored inserts and conference bags has left.

I think in .ac.uk land we would need the Android and Blackberry options before we could justify playing with it so fingers crossed and that happens sooner rather than later!

Eventgineering: getting wifi right at events

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/davezilla/448864165/ I AM NEEDS MOAR WIFI by Davezilla

Anyone who has read this blog for a while will know I am fascinated by the way events have been changing in the last few years.  The rise of the unconference, live streaming and the backchannel are all elements I have written about before and I firmly believe we are only at the start of an even bigger change.

There is a massive hurdle to leap over though before we can really embrace the opportunities and that is the fact that so few venues can cope with the technical demands of these new kinds of delegates.  In years gone by complaints about the food and temperature dominated the feedback (not that this has stopped!) but increasingly the feedback is dominated by complaints about sketchy wifi and lack of power.

The power issue is more a logistical one than anything else but it is something that needs much more consideration but the wifi problems are a more complicated problem to solve.  For this I think we need to see the rise of the eventgineer (I saw this ‘word’ online and took a liking to it for this idea though I didn’t originally see it in this context!)

Joel Spolsky, founder of Stack Overflow amongst other things, wrote a useful post identifying the issues that modern tech events bring up for event organisers and venues and Esme Vos put together a hugely useful post that includes an insightful interview with Tim Pozar, a network specialist that Techcrunch brought in to fix wifi problems they had had at previous events, where he highlights many of the common problems and what steps need to be taken to overcome them.  Another useful couple of posts are based around work that Event Engineers (a Dutch company) did for the Next Web Conference.  This is another early adopter event that puts a massive strain on the event network but with some foresight, planning and a little cash they were able to ensure the event went smoothly.

What all these posts demonstrate to me is that event organisers need to identify the need to augment the limited technical support most venues can offer and budget to bring in specialist support for any event where the network is likely to get heavy use.  In recent years it has become increasingly commonplace to see people like Switch brought in to handle things like live-streaming and I think the same kind of attitude needs to be taken with ensuring that delegates get the best out of the wireless network.

A quick search of Google does make it clear that currently there are not many UK companies obviously offering these sort of services – although with a bit of digging you can find information about people who can offer help – Bristol Wireless for instance are able to do most of the kind of things suggested but it comes across as more of an after-thought rather than core business (which it probably is to be honest).  I believe there is a genuine need for a company to step forward into this space (much like Switch did with the streaming) and even if it focused on public sector and education conferences it would still find more than enough to do!

It is increasingly rare for the early stages of a conference Twitter stream NOT to be dominated with complaints about the wireless provision and this does nothing to enhance the reputation of these events!  Last week the eScience All Hands meeting online chat was full of moans about the wifi at an otherwise very successful event.

JISC have some events coming up that will put serious stress on whatever networks are available and I’m hoping to try out some of the suggestions in these posts to see what kind of impact that has and I have already started lobbying internally for more thought to be given to support in these areas beyond that given by the venue.

UPDATE: Oops – forgot to mention that AirAppz are based in Ireland so relatively close by and do offer these services and Evert Bopp wrote one of the posts referenced above is I think the founder.

eventstreams idea

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This is an idea I’ve been playing with for a long time – I shelved it for a while after being so impressed with Mikes’ onetag.org but recently I’ve been thinking about it alot – especially after a conversation with Theo led to him hacking the SweetTweet code to create a pretty functional version of what I was talking about in 30 minutes in Ruby (was bit on the ugly side though – needed Stef to pretty it up!)  It doesn’t really fit into the portfolio that Jiva is trying to build but I’m wondering about giving it a go in my spare time and releasing it as a free service to get around the work IP issues.  Just deciding whether its worth the effort so would value any feedback.

[I'm aware the tone of this post makes it sound like it already exists - not quite sure why I wrote it that way but can't be bothered to go through and edit it again!]

eventstreams.org is a tag aggregator that pulls content from a number of social web sources and then offers two modes of interaction.

Display mode is a visually rich full screen offering inspired by the likes of twistori.com and twitterfall.com that could be projected or used on large screens at meetings or events as well as offering an attractive way to follow the event remotely.  Analytics mode is more akin to Google Analytics and allows analysis of the use of a specific tag across set time periods in a visual manner.  An additional element to the display option is the ability to add a swear filter if the stream is in a public place.

Content tagged on Twitter, Flickr, WordPress, Blogger, Slideshare and YouTube is aggregated for display.  A standard website with a unique URL (www.eventstreams.org/tag/jisc09) is available to all users and also access to an Adobe Air application that better displays fullscreen and includes the ability to loop cached content if connectivity becomes an issue.

Definitions of the tag are automatically added to the Twitter hashtag directory Tagal.us via their API (i.e. jisc09 = JISC Conference 2009).

Creation of an eventstreams dashboard requires no registration but you are offered the opportunity to ‘claim’ a tag (this is displayed as a ‘flash’ the first time the dashboard is created, thereafter it is a link in the footer) – this requires registration via OpenID (this will use a familiar format including Google, Yahoo etc options) but allows access to not only the Adobe Air app but also basic usage stats and the ability to add a custom header to the site.

Twitterfall.com is the current leader in this space, though it only aggregates Twitter.  Twitterfall is only 3 months old and already has 80,000 uniques per month according to  Compete.com (which probably means nearer to 100k).  Slandr offer custom backchannel services and Crowdvine offfers services with some overlap.  Twistori offers a desktop version of its app that allows custom tags but remains Twitter only (which they charge $12 for).