Conference Compass: The Event App to Extend the Life Cycle of Your Event [Review]

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Conference Compass: What Is It?

Conference Compass has created an app designed specifically for scientific and medical events. The app is fully compliant with the guidance for the new MedTech Europe Code of Ethical Business Practice, which comes fully into effect from January 2018.

Knowledge sharing is at the core of conferences, particularly abstract-led, multi-track, multi-day events. Conference Compass offers a fully searchable app to drill right down to the information an attendee is looking for. For complex events with a lot of attendees and content, this is important for everyone to get the most out of the event, based on their specific interests and needs.

If you have an annual program of events and activity, the Society Platform is designed for associations to keep attendees and members fully informed and more closely engaged, throughout the whole year. It connects events, journals, news, conversations and other activities into a central hub. This means that your annual congress and also your conferences, workshops, seminars and training can all be added to the app, bringing greater connection and live interaction capability even to smaller events.

Often, there is a crescendo of activity around a main event, with lots of knowledge sharing, activity and excitement, but this peaks and the long-term impact is limited. The Society Platform aims to change the short-term, disposable attitude some attendees have towards event apps, by providing a valuable resource and platform, with reminders via push messaging, to keep people coming back to it. By creating and hosting this central information point on a mobile device that the member carries with them, it makes it more convenient for professionals to stay up to date and connected. The information notifications alert them and are available in one touch.

The Main Categories of Features Are:

Event App. An event app specifically designed for scientific and medical events with a multi-level event program, fully searchable abstract library and interactive, multi-level floor plan.

Community Building. A platform to stay in touch with attendees and members and build up community engagement throughout the whole year, hosting journal content and resources and promoting all your conferences, symposia and courses.

Industry and Sponsor Showcase. Promote your sponsors and partners within ethical guidelines through profiles, sponsored symposia with interactive sessions and chats and personalized integrations.

Engagement. Make sessions more interactive with live Q&A, voting, rating and private and topical chats taking place concurrently across numerous sessions. Moderation rights can be allocated to facilitators as required and attendees can respond anonymously if they prefer.

Analytics and CMS. The CMS gives full control over the app, including customizable data and layout, which can be updated easily and exactly as required throughout the year. The ROI platform shares live analytics, evaluations and downloadable reports.

Review

Conference Compass has a modern design, with tiles to access the relevant content. Each tile can be made bigger or smaller depending on the importance of the information and color or images can be used behind the title of the tile. The positioning can be changed easily to make important and time sensitive items more prominent. Tiles can be hidden until specific dates and times. Conference organizers can focus on the features their organization or Association values. This could include forthcoming event details, news, social media channels, practice guidelines, sponsor/partner details, call for abstracts, membership options and anything that is important at that time. Push notifications can encourage users to return to the app to check out new content. An excerpt of news can be given with the option to continue reading via a webpage or web pages can be embedded directly within the app so the user doesn’t need to leave the app to view content. The tile layouts work well on any device and resize to be fully responsive, whether the user is viewing from a mobile phone or tablet.

Event Program

Complex event programs can be added, including multi-day, multi-track, event schedules. Color coding can be used for quick identification. Custom symbols that your attendees understand can be used to signify the relevant sessions, for instance, those which will be recorded or live streamed or have sign language interpretation.

Attendees can star the content they are interested in to create their own personal agenda. Share buttons allow any content to be highlighted to colleagues, added directly to the attendee’s calendar, or sent via email, a message service or posted to social media.

Search

The program is fully searchable by topic, speaker, search term, type of session (oral, plenary, workshop) and track. Abstract texts can be searched using any search term or name. Attendee profiles can also be explored by name, title, country or keyword too to enable better connections to be made.

Topical Chat Rooms and Notes

Topical chat rooms can be created to continue the discussion around a session or topic area. This discussion stays within the app and can highlight interesting people to message, simply ‘star’ them to save and favorite their details.

Any notes made at the event and content that you have highlighted is saved within the ‘My Congress’ area of the event app. They remain linked to the right session, person, etc and can be exported from the app via the share buttons, so you can forward on via the method and channel of your choice.

Integrations

Associations and membership organizations can integrate their membership data within the app, so that members can log in using their membership ID and password across all services, without having to set up new credentials. The event planner can specify that interactive features can only be used if logged in and certificates and accreditation can then be accessed via the app.

Conference Compass can be connected with event registration systems and abstract software. If the capability isn’t already available, or if a client has developed their own system a custom integration can be created.

Live Engagement Features

The engagement features can be used at all of the events within your annual events calendar and used concurrently within multiple sessions. Attendees can vote, submit questions, chat, rate the sessions, communicate via topical chat rooms and, via the private social wall, they can like, comment and share text or image updates. This enables event planners to bring more interaction to all of the events that they run and not just focus on the main event.

Attendees can choose whether to give their name or submit anonymously. If an attendee does not have an Android or iOS device available they can still join in and participate from the web.

Moderators can be allocated to relevant sessions, which enables them to control the interactive features from their phone. They can moderate the questions, choose which should be displayed on the big screen, activate the time countdown and generally operate and facilitate the content easily, giving them complete control.

Interactive Floor Plan

The interactive floor plan can show multiple levels if required and is fully connected with the app content, meaning it will click through to the right exhibitor and the right room. It works offline too. If you had to make an announcement about a last minute room change you could send out a push notification linked to the right place on the program within the app and this will be interlinked with the location of the new room.

Set Up Process and Support

The setup process to use Conference Compass includes training and support, as well as gaining an understanding of bespoke requirements from the application. Although once produced you will have full control of your app and updates, the initial timescales to get the structure in place and empower your team to manage it is around eight to ten weeks.

MedTech Europe Legislation

The big changes that are about to take effect are expected to have a big impact on attendance and sponsorship activity within healthcare and medical technology events, and therefore a big effect on the bottom line. This means that it is more important than ever to stay engaged with participants and event stakeholders. Some forms of sponsorship support and grants will no longer be allowed under the new guidance, which means that showcasing event partners intelligently will become even more important to deliver a return on their investment. An effective way to do this, over and above splash screens, profiles, banner ads, information tiles and information, is to use push notifications, sponsored sessions and beacons.

Conference Compass enables video to be incorporated within the app, which will be increasingly important to communicate with those no longer able to attend as many events in person and to enable sponsorship messaging to be able to reach more widely.

Features

Event App

• Event schedule with fully searchable, multi-level program
• Personal agenda with favorites, notes and device sync
• Online database for abstracts which supports all formats
• Info pages
• Video content
• Interactive multi-level floor plan

Community Building

• Host all your conferences, symposia, courses and more within one app
• Build your community before, during and beyond your events
• Send targeted push messages
• Include journal and continuous content, to provide a digital library and resource
• Include in-app sections for society information to promote activities 365 days a year

Industry and Sponsor Showcase

• Company and speaker profiles
• Sponsored splash screens, push messages or highlights
• Sponsored symposia with interactive sessions and chats
• Beacons and personalized integrations
• Promote sponsors within ethical guidelines

Engagement

• Interactive sessions with live Q&A, voting, rating and chats taking place concurrently
• Moderation rights allocated to facilitators as required
• Option for attendees to respond anonymously or share details
• Social media feeds, sharing and logins
• Share news and updates with rich text and multimedia
• Live chats with attendee profiles, private and topical chats

Analytics and CMS

• CMS with program editor
• App can be integrated with membership data and log in details
• Fully customizable content and layout
• Excel data import
• Native app in App and Play Stores for iOS and Android tablets and phones
• Offline access available, other than the live interaction features
• ROI platform with live analytics, evaluations and downloadable reports
• Support by project managers

Who Is It For?

Conference Compass specializes in medical and scientific congress and their clients include the largest medical and scientific societies in Europe. However, any association, membership organization or large conference could benefit from the functionality Conference Compass can offer.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Unlimited events and attendees can be added to the app and the interactive features can be used concurrently in an unlimited number of sessions
• Connection and login via third party member systems is available
• Compliant with the MedTech Europe Code of Ethical Business Practice

Cons

• Not suitable for small events of less than 50 people
• There isn’t yet a search facility to scan all abstract data across multiple events and years, the advanced search facility is specific to each event
• This is a supported bespoke solution, it isn’t a quick fix event app that can be published immediately

Pricing and Plans

The event app is for one specific event. The Society Platform is for a year-round program of events and engagement. There is no limit to the number of events that can be added or the number of attendees that can use the Society app. Pricing is available on request. Contact Conference Compass for a free demo and more information.

In Conclusion

Conference Compass is a comprehensive event app for medical and scientific conferences. It is easy to see the benefits of using an event app to extend the buzz and reach from your annual event programme and to provide a hub of valuable content and activity year round. If you are looking for a simple, fast event app, to publish yourself this is not the solution for you, but if you need a comprehensive, supported solution to increase the interaction and engagement from all of your events this can offer an excellent option for your consideration. With the MedTech Europe guidance event planners need to use every possible option to protect their audience numbers and sponsorship revenue and using the Society Platform could provide the unique selling point for conference organizers to stand out.  

Disclaimer: Reviews are paid for placements. While Event Manager Blog receives a fee to extensively look at the tool and review it in detail, the content of the review is independent and by no means influenced by the company. If you have any questions please use the contact us section.