Showfloors Go Mobile

Wandering the massive Intl. CES showfloor a few years ago, Jay Tokosch, CEO of Core-apps, said he thought trying to figure out the location was tough.

He and his partner, Jesse Snipper, president of the company, both had iPhones, so they looked to see if the show offered an application that would better help them navigate the showfloor.

“We found one, but it wasn’t adequate,” Tokosch said. “We knew, having done apps in the past, we could do much better.”

Tokosch isn’t the only entrepreneur who decided to launch a company and develop a technology to make the tradeshow experience more mobile. There are a handful of companies in the space, with some offering just text-messaging capabilities and others, such as Core-apps, focusing on applications for smart phones.

The Core-apps tradeshow application launched in April, Tokosch said, and several features are available:

• smart scheduling that allows people to build a schedule on the Web and then import it to their phones
• tradeshow alerts for show management to let attendees know, for example, when a keynote is starting
• links to the shows’ social media, such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn
• a GPS-enabled interactive map of the showfloor

“Right now, we are doing all of the Assn. for Equipment Manufacturers’ shows, The NAMM Show and CES,” Tokosch said. “We also have about seven more contracts in our hands.”

Instead of having attendees use their own phones, Spotme came up with a handheld mobile device that would be loaded with all kinds of tools for attendees at a show.

Sheerin Florio, the company’s director of sales for the eastern U.S. and Canada, said Spotme first was launched in 2001 at an event in Lausanne, Switzerland, offering attendees the ability to look up their agendas, search an attendee list and read news about the event.

The company now is on the third version of the device, she added, with even more capabilities available, such as instant messaging, online polling and surveys, management of prescheduled meetings, maps of the showfloor and the ability to store handouts and brochures.

“The reaction has been phenomenal,” Florio said. “We went from doing a few events in 2001 to 100 events annually all over the world.”

One of the best features of Spotme, she added, is giving attendees the ability to program the device with the profile of a person they would like to connect with. When the person they are looking for is nearby, the device will alert the attendee and let them know where and how far away the person is.

“They also have the ability to exchange business cards,” Florio said. “The entire device is really green. It can reduce paper entirely from an event and make it 100-percent wireless.”

Two other companies focus on text messaging as a way for show managers to communicate with attendees at a show.

Johann Leitner, CEO of Touchwork’s North American operations, said his company was launched three years ago with a focus on using the mobile channel for various business solutions. “We saw cell phones as a tool to communicate with attendees during the event,” he added.

When attendees register for an event, show managers are asked to collect as many of the attendees’ cell phone numbers as possible, Leitner said. The numbers are programmed into a hosted service used by the show managers that allows them to send text messages to attendees, as well as conduct polling and use it as an audience-response tool.

“The response has been very positive,” Leitner said. “From the event organizer point of view, it gives them a new (communication) channel.”

Zuku, launched in 2007, is another company that allows people to connect through text messaging on their cell phones.

“We’re still relatively new,” said Patrick Barber, the company’s president. “We do a half-dozen events a month, mainly tradeshows and conferences.”

Zuku’s technology is a Web-based software application used by show managers to blast messages to attendees, ask poll questions on the spot and capture attendee information with texted keywords.

Barber said adoption of the technology is largely dependent on the age of the participants. “Folks who have young people at an event, it’s great and they love it,” he added. “For folks who don’t know how to text message, it’s a slower adoption.”