The 2016 ITS Heartland Annual Meeting was a success. The 2 ½ day event featured 34 exhibitors, over 200 attendees, many well-received presentations, a pizza party networking event and the debut of the conference app. I have lots to share.
You may remember, from my previous blog, the Heartland Annual Meeting Planning Committee fully embraced the idea of going paperless, but needed to take some small steps before making the giant leap. We felt the 2016 Annual Meeting was an opportunity to include all of the paper of the past (agendas, newsletters, advertisements), but also to introduce an app that could take the place of all that paper in the future.
Enter the Yapp App.
We selected Yapp on the recommendation of committee members and for the price…$399 per event. Yapp’s customer service was outstanding. As the Yapp administrator, I had a conference call training with one of Yapp’s founders and she walked me through the process and features. The app is so easy to use; I didn’t need the training, but it was a nice jump start to get me going. The app has separate “tabs” for the agenda, sponsors, exhibitors, news feed, crowd pictures, documents, polls, and really anything you want to create. As the event planner, I loved that we just needed to create a Yapp ID for the conference and attendees could simply download Yapp from their App store, enter the Yapp ID and that was it. No lists of attendees for me to upload, no passwords to email, no hassles. We publicized Yapp by adding the 2-step directions to the cover and inside pages of the printed agenda, as well as in other publications, and we encouraged attendees to download the app when they checked-in for the conference. We also used social media (Twitter and Facebook) to announce the app.
Now What? Based on the results, will the Heartland Annual Meeting go paperless in 2017?
- My best answer: I don’t know. We will spend the summer months discussing our best strategy moving forward and we will certainly incorporate the Yapp App into future conferences.
- If I had to make a bet: I think we will eliminate a lot of our print publications, but not all.
- What I do know: I look forward to the 2017 ITS Heartland Annual Meeting!
About the author:
Amy Lucke decided long ago, she would never stray far from the mountains and rivers of Montana. She loves sharing the outdoors with her two kids and spends most summer weekends in a 3-person tent with her four person family. She feels fortunate that she gets to write, create and collaborate with the smart and talented women of Meetings Northwest. Little known fact: She once traveled for 4 months on an around-the-world plane ticket.
