If you have attended the annual ILTA Conference, you know navigating the 'chock-full' schedule can be quite daunting not to speak of keeping track of all the educational and networking opportunities the conference provides. Again this year, ILTA has furnished a free mobile app to help you with this organization & planning challenge. The 2012 edition is available for Apple iPhone, Apple iPad, Android, BlackBerry and a mobile web version. The app provides access to the conference agenda, speaker details, the attendee list, conference Twitter feed, Gaylord Resort info, new product announcements, latest ILTA news and more. Remember: The reliability of the data relies on the user accepting the constant updates from ILTA, so when you open the app, if it asks if you would like to update the data, select OK. It usually takes 5-10 seconds.
As with everything ILTA, it takes a village, but the majority of this project falls on the shoulders of ILTA's IT Director/guru Clay Gibney and he's created an amazing product. The ILTA Conference App serves as a great example for all other events to emulate. Here are some of our favorite features:
- New Product Announcements – There is a link to a section called "New Product Announcements". Vendors can submit their announcements (along with a $300 fee) which will appear in a separate area within the app and stand out from all the other 'noise'. This should be a helpful tool for members to use when trying to figure out what is truly new at the show.
- Twitter Feed – Even if you don't use Twitter or aren't sure how to, the app includes a Twitter feed for the conference that includes all the buzz that is happening. If you do use Twitter, you can setup your account information and tweet directly from the app.
- Session Evals – Your feedback matters and now instead of handing in a sheet of paper with your rating of each session, you can submit it through the app. You can submit it later in the day if you don't have time immediately after the session.
- Now Showing – Find yourself with an unexpected free minute during ILTA? You can visit the "Now Showing" tab on the app and it will give you the details for everything that is happening at a given moment in time so you can decide what to attend.
- Your Agenda – If you are a member, you can login to the My Agenda tab and save sessions you want to attend, and have them added to your schedule. If you are a vendor, there isn't a login to this section, but you can review the agenda online and each session has the option to "Add to your calendar" there. This was the result of a last minute feature the members requested that relied on them having a login so it was too late to add logins for non-members this year. Hopefully this will be addressed for 2013.
Last year, we covered the ILTA Conference App in our post-ILTA article, "A Tech Conference That Utilizes Technology – Brilliant!" and included the stats on the installations from 2011. It will be interesting to see how those numbers will measure up in 2012.
Here are the 2011 installation numbers…
- 1,024 iPad installations
- 984 iPhone installations
- 540 Blackberry installations
- 361 Android installations
- 300+ unique visitors to mobile web version
In addition to the 2,909 installed apps getting the attendees where they need to be, the mobile app also enabled attendees to complete session evaluations (over 3,740 session evaluations submitted via the app) and to participate in session polls with 2,300 submissions.
For more information on the ILTA 2012 Conference App, visit the conference website.
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