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“What an App. I am overwhelmed. I haven’t witnessed such experience in any state, national or international medical conference. Take a bow”

–  Attendee at KOSCON 2015

KOSCON 2015 – SUCCESS STORY

Karnataka Ophthalmic Society is one of the largest State Societies in India affiliated to the All India Ophthalmological Society. The 34th Annual Conference KOSCON was held at Hubli, Dharwad between 20th and 22nd of November 2015.

Objectives

• Make KOSCON 2015 interactive and reducing paper to Go Green.
• Create a digital hub for all event information and engagement.

Go Green – One of a kind, paperless Medical Conferences

Medical conferences print a lot of collateral – paper abstracts, agenda, brochures etc. KOSCON made it their vision this year to elevate the event experience by going paperless, and adopt a digital platform. The KOSCON 2015 mobile app, powered by Carrot, displayed interactive real time content, enabling attendees to engage in two-way interactions.

Digital Engagement – Building Private Social Communities

The KOSCON Mobile app was not just a replacement of paper brochures. The app provided many interactive channels for attendees to post their comments, photos, respond to polls, quizzes and much more. Even conference delegates who were not present at the venue could stay tuned to the buzz of the event.

KOSCON attendees embraced the interactive event activity timeline, with the organizing team constantly communicating latest updates, reminders, and photos from across the conference venue. Attendees even used the app to post their questions to speakers and provided their feedback and rating for the sessions.

Injecting Fun in a Professional Conference

Medical conferences typically include discussions, paper presentations, and lectures on serious topics. As such, it becomes very crucial to hold the attendees’ attention span constantly and throughout the event; and the gamification provided by the app enhanced the attendee’s experience and engagement.

“The app was very effective in staying connected with the attendees. It seamlessly fed live updates and notifications to the attendees. We could even manage attendee travel needs with live bus schedules and updates”

– Dr. Shrinivas, the chair of organising committee for 34th edition of KOSCON

Result

• 80% Attendees used the app for all event needs
• 70% Overall Attendee Engagement increased

Download a PDF version of this success story.

About Us

Do you want to know more about how we can help you in delivering a digital and seamless event experience? Visit us at www.aidaio.com. Another way you can reach out to us is to write to us at [email protected].

Everything in this world boils down to one thing – Love. Love of a person, Love of travel, Love of food. This Valentine’s Day we unfold another genre of love that remains unrealized. The unspoken love between an Event Manager and their attendees.

Because we believe that unless there is a personal, “can feel your pulse” connection no amount of elaborate setup, yummy food, dazzling performances or gripping speeches will leave event attendees dreamy eyed. Success of an event should be judged by how attendees reminisce about it long after it’s over – How many memories were created? How many relationships were forged? How many old bonds were strengthened?

So here is our take on how you can gift your attendees the perfect Valentines year.

Woo them personally: Create a buzz around what you have to offer with your personal touch. Give them a personalized unique experience. How? Gone are the days of pamphlets and static websites that just gave out information. Find your attendees ahead of D-day and stay close. And what is closest to your attendees? No prize for guessing the answer – their mobiles. It’s the personal gateway for individual engagement in today’s world.

Entertain: Now that you have their attention don’t lay back.Events are vibrant, creative and lively with conversations and memorable connections. We believe and have experienced that it takes a lot of creative effort to inspire people’s behavior, So why not evoke your creative genius to entertain and engage your attendees until the D-day with groupie photo-contests? Or fun competitive quizzes to the lead up to your event? Have more ideas? We are listening.

Communicate and Commit: Don’t let lack of two-way communication weaken this budding relationship. When you give your attendees a glimpse of the promise you have made, they will have queries, doubts and inputs. In this kind of digital courtship, trust and comfort is set on the grounds of how much they know you and how much you listen to them. Give them real time updates. Solve their real time problems. Time, Place, Internet no barrier. Know more.

Welcome them to your Community:  Your community is where all your attendees are, where your team is and where your invited guest delegates are. You need to make them talk as one single community. We know that this will not only make everyone excited about the D-day, they will also have more take away in the form of friendships, networks and memories.

D-day/V-day/E-day: The day arrives when you beautifully wrap your event and gift it to your attendees. All your hard work will be worth every penny when your attendees are drawn into the magic that you put together. And you will know what they are experiencing, moment-by-moment. You will know what excited them the most, what made them happy and what made them think.

Valentine’s Day is for anyone you deeply care about. Be it your partner, your friends, or in the dazzling world of Events “your attendees”  – the 💗 of every event!

When we launched Carrot – native white-labeled mobile apps for events, we observed that there was a clear absence of in-venue digital engagement. According to a 2013 report by Frost & Sullivan, 80% of event processes continue to be manual.

Mobile Apps seemed to be a good solution to address this. Although most event managers found event apps to be a great differentiator and a value add to the services they provide, they continue to be hesitant about adopting a digital complement for in-venue engagement with their audience.

This blog is an analysis of why event managers hesitate to adopt apps, and some guidelines on how to choose apps that overcome these barriers to adoption.

Some of the reasons we heard from Events Managers:

“I already have the event’s website”

Most events put up websites with event related information. Event organizers feel that it is redundant to publish the same information in a mobile app too.

Yes, we agree. However, mobile apps go beyond information publishing. It is a tool for engagement, interaction & personalized communication to the attendee. Mobile apps help increase audience engagement by 77%. Below are some snapshots of insights gained from events that were powered by AIDA.

“Would attendees download an app just for my event?”

If an app remains a replica of an event brochure or website, it will have a short-lifetime and there will be resistance to download.

Hence, it is critical to find solutions that go beyond a replacement of printed materials. Solutions from AIDA focus on audience engagement and value creation before, during and post the event. The focus of an event app must be to increase interactivity in the audience, and not just informational. The 5 key facets of an app should be Information, Engagement, Networking, Analytics, and Monetization. Attendees will be more inclined to adopt an app that addresses these facets when compared to an app that serves as a mere replacement of a printed materials.

“I do not know how to promote an app?”

We had put together some tips on how to promote event apps in an earlier blog.  We have observed that when  enough buzz is created around an event, app engagement peaks from a week before the event and continues for up to a week after the event is over. However there is a great potential to capture attendees attention by continuing to engage with them for much longer. AIDA also offers year-long engagement/multi-event apps that allow you to stay tuned to your audience all year long.

“Negative Feedback”

Event organizers also feel wary about attendees posting comments on the app for fear of a negative buzz. However, we have observed that most delegates are quite prudent when posting comments. Also organizer involvement in the app interactions, helps stay tuned to the buzz that’s happening and react to it sooner, rather than letting things go out of control. In addition, when coupled with a ‘moderator’ facility, organizers can choose to keep a healthy engagement alive on the app.

“Isn’t app development & maintenance expensive and who bears the cost?”

Many event organizers feel that costs of event apps are high and are unsure if it justifies the return of investment. For starters, the mobile app can reduce printing costs at an event by 7%. But more importantly, the apps create a new channel for revenue and better returns on investment for the organizers and event partners.

Sponsor visibility, sponsored messages, direct connect/facility to exchange business cards with sponsors and exhibitors can create much better ROI for your partners. Attendee engagement, stats on usage of the app, how often attendees connected to a partner through the app, among others provide great insights for organizers and partners and add value from a lead generation/marketing perspective. Always choose apps that provide you these added benefits.

“There is no Internet in-venue, the app would be useless”

This is definitely an issue with event apps that are just web views.

So it is important to choose mobile apps that can work completely in the offline mode. Event Apps powered by Carrot  need Internet only when first installed. Attendees can continue to use and interact with the app even when offline.

So, if you are an event organizer and are now convinced about why an app is a great idea for events, give us a buzz. But if you are still hesitant about adopting event apps, still give us a buzz. We are curious to learn why and want to see how we can address your concerns.

Drop us an email at [email protected] or leave a comment on our blog.

Today mobile phones are a 24×7 engagement channel. According to a study in 2013 by Frost & Sullivan, mobile apps increase attendee engagement by 33%. So why stop at using mobile as just an information and communication channel. It goes without saying, before an event your goal is to drive attendance, but do not Attendee Engagement forget your attendees once they get there ! Leverage the mobility of your attendees to connect and engage your event’s physical and digital ecosystem.

The critical aspect of engagement is to understand your audience before choosing the type of content and tools. The right combination creates a an active, productive & thrilled audience. In addition makes your event an unforgettable one that will keep attendees coming back for years to come.

A mobile event app is a great tool to trigger engagement. It can make attendees feel involved to start sharing their thoughts, ideas and experiences of your event. Here are our favorite features from our event apps we have used to increase engagement by over 50% across concerts, conferences, workshops, corporate annual meet and exhibitions.

Activity Feed

An activity or news feed is the heart of your mobile app. It should curate and centralize everything that is going on at your event. It should be the launch pad for attendees to engage with other features in the event app. A buzzing activity feed creates an active channel for organizers to promote relevant information to the attendees. And attendees to post their content – comments, photos, opinions and much more. You can create a buzz about your event, long before your event has begun.

Contextual Announcements

Push notifications allow you to send messages that pop up on on an attendee’s mobile device. Sending a notification is only half the job – it is important to have a notification strategy to make these messages specific, relevant and timely. We leverage latest mobile technology to transform text notifications be actionable and include images. Push notifications can further be made impactful by using attendee location (GPS) and proximity (via Bluetooth beacons). For example, you can send out travel information for attendees a day prior to the event and auto-check-in & welcome attendees when they arrive at event venue.

Photos & Videos

Pictures and videos are worth thousands of words – and people love clicking them. While attendees can share their photos within the event app, you can enhance their experience by using digital photo walls like Hashout. You can project LIVE moderated crowdsourced photos and videos, from your event app and your social feeds, on jumbotrons.

Mobile Contests

Gamify your event engagement by rewarding attendees for simple but valuable actions like providing feedback, ratings, re-tweets, profile updates or RSVP. In addition, you can create spontaneous contests like  selfie contests, brand props contests or polls, quizzes and much more. Such engagement ensures attendees connect with your brand message long after the event is over. It can be even more rewarding if you can rope in your sponsors and exhibitors to giveaway goodies for the live contests and polls.

Rich Profiles

In almost all your events, attendees are looking to connect with – brand (speaker, sponsor), vendors (exhibitors) or each other. Use your mobile app to facilitate such connections with rich profiles. Rich profiles should include social handles, business contact details, marketing collateral, videos and much more. In return you show high ROI to your attendees, exhibitors and sponsors by capturing connects within the app. Empower your attendees to tell their own brand story –  Of Course keeping privacy in mind !

Smartphones owned by your attendees continue to get smarter and more personalized. So do not miss out on smart & innovative features in your event mobile app. We would love to hear your take on it and what else can we do to re-invent event engagement. Meanwhile, stay tuned for updates to know how to make your next event smarter, captivating and engaging.

What are you waiting for ? Recreate Magic At your Events with Carrot

Events are vibrant places to be in. The lively energy, dazzling displays, engaging conversations, lasting relationships and effortless networking are fostered by a beautifully woven magic, the result of hours of work and meticulous attention to detail by event managers.

In today’s digital world creating such memorable experiences cannot be limited to the ambience, aura, and performances, but needs to be extended with technology that recreates the very magic that the event epitomises.

Carrot event mobile app was launched to recreate these magical experiences.
According to Mangalam Nandakumar, founder and COO of AIDAIO, the company that created Carrot, “Last year, Carrot mobile apps were used by events that range from conferences, corporate events, exhibitions, concerts to weddings. We believe that the greatness of event technology is not in being a mere replacement of paper. Gorgeous design and smart technology has to blend in to recreate an event’s magical experience. Every event has its own personality and unique brand value. Technology needs to mimic and match the essence of any event.”

Events are highly volatile wherein schedules, speakers, sponsors are subject to change often. Event mobile apps rarely provide event managers the kinds of control or agility that can help them respond and react to these changes. Keeping the agility in mind, AIDAIO recently launched a secure cloud based platform to help event managers take complete control of their event apps with ability to design, theme, publish content and gain real time insights. Carrot’s unique focus on interaction and experience design is helping events create a new level of engagement and personalised experience for attendees – leading to more brand value, actionable intelligence, productivity and revenue.

Mangalam adds – “We want to provide a secure place for event communities to grow and thrive all year round. Today’s social networks provide tools for discovery not for deep engagement. Carrot offers a cost effective solution for event organizers to create brand ambassadors by targeting attendees with real time contextual content without being intrusive”

Besides traditional event app features Carrot provides unique features like
● Activity feed to aggregate buzz around community posts, announcements, and news besides a powerful chat option to talk to event organizers and community real-time.
● Interactive features like polls with images, timed quizzes, photo contests, online & offline gamification with beacons.
● A flexible multi-blog and pdf-document feature to highlight informative relevant content.
● Push and track text and image push notifications with quick actions.
● Best-in-class gorgeous templates to design apps that match theme and branding of the event.
● Easy-to-use control panel for event managers to organize event content, moderate user content besides better real-time insights to track event ROI.
● And for the first-time ability for event organizers to schedule and publish content in a jiffy from the app itself !

“Discovery is constant and desire to engage is instant. Intuitive mobile technology and smart engagement without compromising event experience are the need of today’s event world.” said Mangalam.

Carrot, powered by AIDAIO’s powerful, cloud based platform can now empower Event Managers to Recreate the Magic at their Events.

This article first appeared in CII Innovation & Entrepreneurship

CII Industrial Innovation Awards 2015 CII Industrial Innovation Awards were instituted by CII in 2014 to recognize and celebrate innovative Indian enterprises across industry segments. These premier awards seek to recognize and honor the Indian Industry’s brightest stars and to identify the top Innovative Organizations in the country. They give an opportunity to companies to shine and be known nationally and internationally for their Innovative products and services. The second edition of CII Industrial Innovation Awards this year has been a grand success because of the high quality of applications, the doubling in the number of entries, the robustness and thoroughness of the evaluation process and the presence of an illustrious constellation of experts in technology, business and innovation space as the Jury.

From this year onwards, a special category of Start-ups, in addition to the regular category, has been introduced in the CII Industrial Innovation Awards. Under start-ups category there are two types of awards – for Best Manufacturing Start-up and Best Service Start-up. The overall winner in the start-up category is being given the Grand Award which is the Most Innovative Start-up of the Year. In the regular category, a total of 150 entries were received this year out of which the jury selected top 25 most innovative companies. From these 25, 4 companies are being given special awards under various categories. In the start-up category, the number of entries received was 50. Out of these, the jury selected top 10 most innovative start-ups. Out of these 10, 2 start-ups are being given special category awards.

In the regular category, the evaluation criteria gave 40% weightage to innovation, 40% to impact and 20% to innovation framework. In the start- up category, the weightages were 40% for innovation, 30% for market opportunity and 30% for impact. The jury members included Prof. Devang Khakhar, Director, IIT Bombay; Prof. P. P. Chakrabarti, Director, IIT Kharagpur; Prof. Rishikesha T Krishnan, Director, IIM Indore; Prof. Y S Rajan, Dr Vikram Sarabhai Distinguished Professor, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO); Mr Prabhat Ranjan, Executive Director, Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC); Prof. H P Khincha, Adviser, Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Science (IISC), Bangalore and Prof. S.P. Kothari, Deputy Dean, Gordon Y Billard Professor of Management, Director, MIT India Program.
Award ceremony

A total of 43 awards will be given today. These include 25 awards in regular category; 10 in start-up category, 6 in special category and 2 awards in the grand awards category.

Top 10 Start-up Awards
1. Capital Numbers Infotech Pvt. Ltd.
2. AIDAIO Software Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
3. Right Track Admizzionz Campuz Pvt. Ltd.
4. Finmart Advisory Pvt. Ltd.
5. GT Silicon Pvt. Ltd.
6. Ananya Seeds Pvt. Ltd.
7. Yoma Multinational Solutions
8. Casa Brands India Pvt. Ltd.
9. Cyborg Cyber Forensics & Information Security Pvt. Ltd.
10. Feel Good Design.

Regular category
1. Arteria Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
2. Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd.
3. Carborundum Universal Ltd.
4. CoreEL Technologies (I) Pvt. Ltd.
5. Cotmac Electronics Pvt. Ltd.
6. Efkon India Pvt. Ltd.
7. Elcome Integrated Systems Pvt. Ltd.
8. JK Lakshmi Cement Ltd.
9. Jyoti Cero Rubber.
10. Kirloskar Oil Engines Ltd.
11. L&T Electrical & Automation.
12. Manatec Electronics Pvt. Ltd.
13. Max Life Insurance Company Ltd.
14. Neogi Technologies and Research Pvt. Ltd.
15. Robert Bosch Engineering & Business Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
16. Southern Agro Engine Pvt. Ltd.
17. Sterlite Technologies Ltd.
18. Hotel Suryagarh, Jaisalmer.
19. Tata Chemicals Ltd.
20. Tata Steel.
21. Uflex Ltd.
22. Vedanta Ltd.
23. Wipro Ltd.
24. Zen Technologies Ltd.
25. Zydus Cadila

Special category awards There were 6 awards in this segment, of which there were 4 awards in regular category (the other 3 categories in 2015 did not have any winners and there were 2 winners in the start-up category)

1. Best Start-up in Manufacturing category (Ananya Seeds Pvt. Ltd.)
2. Best Start-up in Service category (Right Track Admizzionz Campuz Pvt. Ltd.)
3. Award for Manufacturing sector – Large enterprises (Zydus Cadila)
4. Award for Manufacturing sector – Large enterprises (Uflex Ltd.)
5. Award for Manufacturing sector –Micro & Small enterprises (CoreEL Technologies (I) Pvt. Ltd.)
6. Award for Service sector Large enterprise (Robert Bosch Engineering & Business Solutions Pvt.

2. Grand Awards (includes both regular and start-up category)

a. Most Innovative Startup of the Year (Right Track Admizzionz Campuz Pvt. Ltd.)
b. Most Innovative company of the Year (Zydus Cadila)

This article first appeared in The Economic Times

August 13, 2015 – BENGALURU: There is an app for everything today: to study, to order groceries and to even call a valet. Two people could build an app, given the vast resources available today. There are even courses that help non-coders build apps. But can they sustain it? Unlikely, say experts. Akshay Kingar, who runs Foofys, an app development firm in Bengaluru, says the first step in developing apps is to spot big problems.

“WhatsApp identified that people needed to talk to one another, without paying. Flipboard improvised on the “flip” action. They might not be the best-looking apps, but they stick, because they solve a very big problem,” said Kingar, whose firm works with Prana Healthcare Enablers, Happily Unmar-ried, among others. His firm was picked as the best startup in the Mobile Applications Conference in 2012.

Compared to creating websites for PCs, developing mobile apps is a different ball game. “Website keeps you in a bubble. Even if a website crashes, it is blamed on the browser or the net connection. Not so for an app,” said CEO Pallav Barah of aida. io, which is developing a platform to turbocharge the app development process.

Android and iOS platforms lay down the frameworks where one can build an app. But even before that, a bit of groundwork always helps. For instance, when Foofys was asked to develop an app for hyperlocal gaming communities, Kingar immediately set up several WhatsApp groups, just to understand what sportspersons talk about before the game. He observed their behaviour for about 20 days, and then started sketching out the specifics of the app. The user experience team conducts research, observe behaviour, while the user interface folks build the first prototype. They create a ‘wireframe’ or a bare-bone structure on a paper or on software, laying out the elements, mapping out what buttons lead to which actions. Once this “prototype” or skeleton is clear, the team of developers and designers enter the Android or iOS environment. If the app is more than just a calculator or a flashlight and needs to fetch data from servers like a Facebook or Flipkart, technologies like Java, PHP, Ruby on Rails, Python come into the picture.

Foofys said it takes at least five people to work on an app full time — the user interface/user experience person, an Android developer, a tester, a coder (who works on Ruby on Rails, Java and related technologies) and a project manager (in case of services firms). There is no step-by-step approach or a hand-over phenomenon.

Everyone works in parallel and rapidly tests the app before they release it to the Play Store. It takes about two months to develop an app. Foofys, which is an established firm, charges `3-4 lakh to develop a basic app for clients, while the maintenance could go up to `7 lakh a month. Starters can make do in much fewer amounts. Once released, it is important to talk about it on social media, blog about it and create awareness.

“It should be a two-way street — app developers should create awareness and desire among users to get the app,” said Manish Maheshwari, founder of txtWeb, which he exited to Intuit. Most startups and developers forget that an app is a means to an end and are often under the impression that a founder needs to know how to make apps.

“Mobile application development, per se by itself, is not a barrier to starting up. What is key, is the business model that the app is built around,” said Piyush Shah, chief product officer at mobile ad network InMobi. But do you ever stop working on an app? “You never stop tweaking it,” said Pallav Barah.