Your Event Companion
Events
An Event Apart Seattle 2010
Mar 28th
I’ve spent most of my free time in the past few weeks developing an administration console for ConferenceGuide that would make it easier for us to add new events to our calendar. Now that it’s done, we’re going to try to add a few upcoming events that we had already saved in our calendar.
The first one of these is An Event Apart Seattle 2010, from April 5th to April 7th. So if you plan to attend this event, feel free to download ConferenceGuide to your iPhone or Android phone in order to have the whole schedule in your pocket.
Concerning our future plans, we’re still working on a web portal that will make it possible for events organizers to manage their own schedule information, and of course, an iPad client is on its way. So stay tuned.
ConferenceGuide 2.0 for iPhone is Out!
Jan 13th
ConferenceGuide 2.0 for iPhone has been released on the App Store this morning, after just 3 days of Apple validation. I couldn’t be happier because we’re on time for Jfokus 2010.
So if you plan to attend Jfokus 2010 in Stockholm, Sweden, get your copy of ConferenceGuide now!
We have improved the application with bits and pieces here and there, fixed a few bugs, and added multilingual support, which is particularly interesting for Jfokus since it has sessions in both English and Swedish. By the way, the application interface has also been translated in French and Swedish. More languages to come as we need them for future events.
But certainly the most important evolution, and the reason why this version is 2.0, is that we have added premium packages. The principle is very simple: for some conferences, you will be able to purchase a premium package from within the application in order to unlock certain features. For example, Jfokus premium package includes two of our most requested features:
- Offline Mode, that downloads all of a conference data to your phone so that you can use it offline, which can be very practical if you don’t have a data connection on site
- Push Notifications, because if you are offline, it also means that something can change without you knowing it, but with this feature, you are notified in real time whenever a session is cancelled or a speaker is replaced for example. Then all you have to do is read the notification message and conference data will be updated on your iPhone.
We really hope you will like it, all the more so as it is very affordable: you get both of these very useful features for just $0.99 (or 0,79€).
Now remember that if you have any feedback or input concerning our iPhone application, you can simply leave a comment below. And if there are some missing features that you would like us to add, see the User Feedback widget in the right column.
Enjoy!
ConferenceGuide 1.1 for iPhone and Future Events
Dec 13th
First off, let’s talk about ConferenceGuide 1.1. The iPhone version has been published on the AppStore 2 days ago. Note that it still requires iPhone OS 3.1. New features in this version include:
- Search in all screens including conferences, speakers and sessions
- Session “starring”: add sessions to your bookmarks and filter starred sessions
- When a conference is ongoing and you open the schedule view, it automatically jumps to the next slot
- You can now view details about the venue for each event
- Visual feedback has been improved when data is loaded from the server
And of course, a few bugs have been fixed, and some optimization was made. Claes is currently working on implementing the same features on the Android version. He will let you know when it’s ready.
Concerning events now, as you probably know by now, we have fully covered Devoxx a few weeks ago and it was a great success. That’s why we have started to add new events to our coverage calendar. The next 2 ones are Swedish events occurring in parallel on January 26th and 27th:
- JFokus 2010: another java community conference that gathered 650 people in Stockholm in 2008
- DagsVara 2010, a publishing and media event in Stockholm as well
Schedule and speaker information are now available in ConferenceGuide and you can start to learn more about these events and maybe prepare your favourite sessions right away.
Last but not least, you may have noticed that MacWorld also appears in the list of upcoming conferences, but does not present any schedule or speaker information. Actually that’s another thing that we have added to ConferenceGuide 1.1: we will add as many events as we can to our database, for free, even if it’s just with a logo, dates and venue information. The idea is to use ConferenceGuide as a big global event calendar for everyone. Now this means a couple of things:
- If you know about an event that is not in our list, please let us know so that we can add it
- If a lot of you suggest the same event, we will try to add schedule and speaker information to it (we will definitely do it if we are interested in it as well)
- If you participate in the organization of a conference and you would like it to be covered by ConferenceGuide to offer this service to your attendees, feel free to contact us. Schedule and speaker information is free, and you won’t even have to do anything. All we would like is that you talk about ConferenceGuide in your official communication about your event.
We have a lot of cool features and events to come in the next few weeks, so stay tuned. Oh, and by the way, if you have feedback, if you notice bugs, or if you have ideas about features or improvements that you miss in ConferenceGuide 1.1 for the iPhone, please leave a comment below.
