Organizing a conference trip – does it feel like herding cats?

The Challenge

A particular challenge within the world of events is organizing conferences and incentive trips. Solidifying travel, housing, food, activities, and the conference itself is no small feat whether you have 50 or 500 participants.

During the conference, each participant needs to know where they should be at all times, what to bring, and what to expect. Our customers often find that their colleagues or customer personnel, who are typically well-organized and structured in everyday life, release their inhibitions and responsibilities when on a trip; guiding them is “like herding cats” as one of our customers stated.'

The Solution

By providing each participant with all of the required information within their phones, your workload as an event-organizer dramatically simplifies. Any information that you might need to share with the participants (such as times, locations, group assignments, Wi-Fi codes, and the number of the local cab company) is just a click away.

Ski trip with 600 gaming developers

One of our clients brought a four-day ski trip with 600 employees to fruition. With travelers spread out amongst 6 different hotels and a plethora of activities to choose from, it was imperative to be able to keep the group updated. In this situation, push messages were critical in notifying everyone about details, such as equipment left behind, slippery walkways warnings, and ski sessions. Additionally, the group also appreciated being able to see the hotel, room, and roommate they had been assigned to within the app, as well as the ability see their pre-selected activities before the actual trip.

Conference trip to the Mediterranean with 400 accountants

A great way to combine work and pleasure is to hold a conference in a beautiful location. In this instance, our customer fused trekking through the breath-taking Mediterranean nature with strategy meetings between the various divisions of the organization. All information regarding maps, hotels, treks, and times and places for meetings were gathered within the app. As the participants had to do much traveling from location to location, the app provided them a personal itinerary that listed times, transfers, and ticket codes to make the constant traveling easy and seamless.

Bus trip to nature resort for 120 retail managers

The yearly conference for local store managers was significantly improved by using the app; the app made it much more efficient because it allowed the participants to begin conferencing on the bus as they were en route to the destination. Participants, on 5 different busses, received reading material and group assignments through the app. A series of questions was also posed through the app while the store managers were traveling and the results were presented at the conference upon arrival. To create a sense of connection between the participants on different busses, the activity feed was utilized to post photos and comments of where they were and what they were doing throughout the journey.

How can you do this?

Inform

Decide what information is public and what information is individual. Common information, for example, are details regarding the hotel, agenda, speakers, destination, and workshop material. Individual information is often chosen activities/sessions, room assignments, travel details, and group assignments. Common information is easily entered into the admin system of the app and is obtainable to all participants. Individual information is uploaded through an Excel template where we use email addresses to send particular information to select people.

Push it

Push notifications are ideal for communication to a lot of people who are spread out over a large area. Plan and prepare what you would like to communicate and you can send it either at a pre-scheduled time or in the moment. If anything changes, you can create and send a new message in a minute.

Traveling workshop

You can schedule the workshop part of the conference during the transport to the conference so participants can prepare and come up with ideas beforehand. During this time, it’s helpful to distribute assignments, reading material, and divide participants into groups. By using the app, all participants know what is expected of them—you can allow them to report their results in the Dialogue section of the app.

Create a sense of unity within the whole team even though they are divided between different vehicles by using the activity feed to post photos of what is presently happening, allowing them to create conversation by “liking” and commenting on each other’s posts.