We're really excited to announce the release of Zerista's Mobile Social Networking Appication for Events at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. What's more, not only are we releasing the application at MWC, but MWC is also using the application as the mobile version of myMWC, the event social networking portal.
The mobile application enables event managers to protect and extend their core event business by transforming attendees and sponsors into interactive mobile communities. Zerista’s mobile application provides clear benefits to the entire event ecosystem – attendees, sponsors, exhibitors, speakers and event organizers.
We’ve designed our application to be unique in its ease-of-use, the intelligence of its content-sharing and collaboration features, and the aggregation of public media in one integrated feed.
Zerista’s application provides an event feed that uniquely captures and communicates the buzz off what’s happening at the event -- in real-time. The immediate value of Zerista’s mobile application can be recognized in real-time on the show floor as attendees can read and post updates that can be shared with the event community and immediately to the broader social net.
Zerista’s event networking platform integrates web-based and mobile content, providing value through multiple touchpoints with attendees, from their desktops to their mobile handsets.
FEATURE SUMMARY
Zerista’s mobile application provides access to the My MWC portal and its features, including:
• Smart real-time mobile feed that combines filtered public social media channel with private event follower channel, with dual-publishing options
• Personalized feed that provides real-time event updates and check ins from personal contacts at the event
• Event organizer feed to provide real-time updates on schedule changes and other event-wide announcements
• Personalized messaging and networking tools
• Advanced attendee and exhibitor search
• Personalized schedule builder with public events and personal meetings
• Integration with and aggregation of popular social tools like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube
"The Cleantech Group Forum is really excited to be using Zerista this year. The event networking solution looks great. Hundreds of Forum attendees have been using the solution extensively for weeks allowing them to network more effectively. The feedback from attendees has been overwhelmingly positive. It definitely surpassed our expectations."
-Jeff Pinegar, Cleantech Director of Events
We recently completed an exciting matchmaking event site for the Cleantech Forum in Boston, MA. The Cleantech Forum is the world's premier clean technology industry event. The company's events bring together a network of investors, entrepreneurs, and services providers. A key focus of the event is matching up cleantech invetors and entrepreneurs.
Zerista provided a custom solution for the event that included a host of innovative profiling, matchmaking, and advanced search capabilities. Specifically, the solution included custom in-depth profile questions that enabled attendees to provide highly specific information about their background, focus areas, and industry interests. This information, in turn, was used to enable highly targeted matchmaking recommendations as well as advanced search capabilities. As a result, entrepreneurs and investors could connect before the event.
We're excited to announce that we've formed a stragic relationship with Sonic Foundry to provide a turnkey solution for blended events that combine in-person and virtual audiences. The solution provides benefits for both audience segments. Joint clients are taking advantage of this solution to extend the reach of their in-person events - before, during and after the event. For event organizers, it extends the reach of their event, leading to increased attendance and revenue.
The strategic relationship combines customized event networking spaces with online presentations, delivering an end-to-end solution to add a virtual event to a live conference or trade show. With the Zerista event networking platform, both live and virtual attendees can interact online in a custom event networking solution that includes all attendees, speakers and exhibitors. Using the Sonic Foundry Mediasite platform, technicians record speakers and their materials on-site and instantly stream the presentation to the Web, where virtual attendees can watch in real-time.
"With travel restrictions, budget cuts and increasing pressures to produce positive ROI from their conference, today's meeting professionals are looking for innovative ways to extend conferences online - before, during and after the live event. The solution that Zerista and Sonic Foundry are working on provides a highly unique way of doing this. Blended capabilities enable companies to maximize event potential by complementing and extending live conferences." -Justin Jaeck, Vice President of Services for Sonic Foundry
The turnkey solution includes Zerista's integrated registration and ecommerce capabilities to monetize the blended event. Profitability increases by introducing new revenue streams from virtual attendance, virtual booth sales and sponsorship opportunities. Events are using the solution to extend their reach to untapped global audiences, thus increasing their market and customer base. The blended atmosphere also makes the event more compelling to in-person attendees, since they can access content and network online before, during and after the event.
In this economic enviornment, many are questioning the value of business conferences and tradeshows. In times like these, it is worthwhile to keep in mind that in-person meetings provide unique networking, informational and educational value. Bob Phibbs does a great job of summarizing some of the most important - and often-overlooked - reasons in 10 Reasons to Have That Conference and Use a Professional Speaker.
Bob's #1 reason - community - really resonates with us. By extending the conference community online before, during and after an event, we help the community form stronger and longer lasting ties.
We recently completed a project for a leading clean alternative conference. The event organizer's key goals were increasing attendee loyalty and repeat attendance. We helped the organizer achieve these goals by enabling each attendee to get more value - both networking and informational value - from attending the conference. The Zerista software tools extended the event online, enabling each attendee to be more productive onsite.
The results were highly positive:
“Zerista was an excellent resource for our conference attendees. They could find out where things were happening, connect with each other before they'd even met, and start discussions about the conference proceedings in real time. It was an online destination that boosted the value of our conference far more than our static website ever did before.” -Event Organizer
“I really liked being able to see who else is attending the conference. I set up 3 meetings via the system – these were meetings that I otherwise probably wouldn’t have happened.” -Attendee
One of the more entertaining projects that we've worked on recently is the Great American Beer Festival. The Beer Festival is an annual classic each fall in Denver and is rated as one of the 1,000 places to see before you die. Each year upwards of 40,000 attendees and 400 exhibiting brewers get together to sample the best beers in the country. We worked with the event orgnizer to provide online tools to make it easier for attendees to find brewers before and during the event.
One of the more challenging aspects of the project was to provide a user-friendly venue map interface that enabled attendees to quickly search and find exhibitors from within one browser window. 10,000s of attendees used the site and the project was viewed as highly successful. In the words of the event organizer:
"With Zerista, we were able to offer our 40,000+ attendees an easier way to plan and map out their event experience at the Great American Beer Festival. Our requirements included an interactive convention hall map that showed the location of more than 400 exhibitors and 50 events. Zerista rapidly delivered an intuitive, easy-to-use solution to a rather challenging mapping project. The Zerista team was great to work ith, and we're looking forward to working together again in the future.
Anybody in Denver this week has noticed that the DNC has arrived. Delegates are running from one event to the next. Friends have reported celebrity sightings. Security of all types - Secret Service, SWAT teams, mounted police, National Guard, FBI - seem to be on every street corner. Apparently, there are more than 50,000 visitors in town attending more than 1,000 events a day all over the city. It's chaotic ... and Obama isn't even here yet.
We're doing our part to help make life easier for attendees. We've partnered with the DenverPost and Zvents to create an interactive map of all the events.
Users can pick the event type and date they are interested in, and the map refreshes with icons for relevant events. By clicking on a given event, the user can see exactly where and when the event is taking place. It's easy to find similar nearby events on a given day. Directions are a mouse click away.
With the event map, we're hoping we've done our part to make life at little less chaotic for anybody attending any of the DNC events.
Users can access the map by going to DNC Event Map. Take a look at the map and let us know what you think.
Many of you have asked for the ability to download maps to either GPS devices or Google Earth. We're happy to say we now support both formats.
To download a map you first need to login (this is a temporary solution to stop bots from constantly downloading maps). Then go to your map, and click the "Edit" button under the map title. That will take you to the map page, where you'll see a "Download" button, also under the title. From there you can pick which ever format you prefer.
KML
KML is used by Google Earth, which is a freely available 3D map browser. Thus, you can see how you map looks in a 3D environment. That is particularly helpful for hiking and biking rides where you can preview the route, see what the scenery looks like and get a better feel for elevation gains and losses. This has all of the data from the map, so for any general usage, this is the best format to choose.
GPX
Most GPS receivers can hold tracks and waypoints, and GPX is a popular file format for transferring this data to and from different GPS devices. We already support uploading GPX files, and now we support downloading GPX files which allows you to load a map onto a GPS device.
This is useful for hikes and bike rides, or anytime you are going off road and want to make sure that you stay on the trail. Since all features from the map are put into the GPX file, any notes or special locations that people have added to the map are converted into either tracks or waypoints.
ESRI Shapefile
ESRI Shapefiles are the classic format for transferring data between Geographic Information Systems (GIS). A shape file is actually three files-in one, so to simplify things we zip the files together so you only have to download one file. Unless you're a GIS professional, you probably won't be interested in this format.
We've had icons for a while, allowing you to upload images to decorate maps, features, and your account. Due to popular demand, we've now added the ability to add photos images to features and maps.
The maximum pictures size is now 640x640. Unlike the smaller image sizes, this large size isn't cropped to be a square. Thus, nothing will be cut out of the image.
Here is what the "Feature Photos" looks like in the feature viewer:
Next up is a photo browser, that lets you see browse through photos using their larger size.
