How the Technoport event upped the game in the Norwegian startup community #technoport15
On the 18th and 19th of March, Technoport welcomed a variety of challengers, creators and capital providers to Trondheim, Norway. Their aim? To maximize innovation and to awaken the entrepreneurial spirit in the Norwegian startup community.
Here are a few key learnings to be inspired by:
Pioneering change
As the host of the second-ever live crowdfunding experiment in the Nordic region, Technoport provided Scandinavian startups with the opportunity to gain maximum exposure, speaking directly to businesses and people who may fund them. Overall, the Technoport crowd invested €67,000 (USD 72,000) into four Norwegian startups
Featuring talks like ‘Blood, SWOT & Tears’, and ‘The Kick Inside’, from renowned entrepreneurs and public speakers, such as Nolan Bushnell and Leo Johnson, Technoport provided a program packed full of the latest innovations in startup culture.
Entrepreneurs were provided with the opportunity to pitch before each of the judges, as part of Technoport’s pitch competition. The top 8 then presented on the main stage at Technoport, with the winners receiving awards up to NOK 100,000 (USD 12,000).
Facilitating innovation with Conferize
By using Conferize, Technoport brought their event to life online and engaged with their event community in new ways.
By livestreaming the whole event, Technoport were not only able to WOW their attendees, but broadcasted their event, from start to finish, for their online followers around the world.
With automatic content aggregation on Conferize and from the hashtag #technoport15, Technoport’s event page came to life with all the excitement from social media and provided their attendees, speakers and online followers to network and share information before and during the event.
The best bit? Their community is still growing and will continue to do, so and with all the action at Technoport it’s no surprise that the event community is still buzzing with ideas and feedback. What’s more, their event community will be ready to get involved for their next event to keep building on their success, and Conferize is proud to be there to capture the action.
It’s not too late, check out the action from #Technoport15 here.
Here are the highlights from the event, shown with the Conferize Highligt Player.
Free social event websites for conferences and meetups: Introducing Conferize Organizer
We’re very excited to present a major new addition to the Conferize Organizer product suite: Truly social event websites!
It means that everything you’ve come to expect from Conferize–a dynamic event community with social networking and content sharing–now can operate under your very own website domain, e.g. 'www.myevent.com'. It can effectively save you the time, headaches, and costs of building your own website, while offering your attendees, followers, speakers, sponsors a much more engaging event experience.
The website features has already been included at no extra cost in all plans, also our free Basic plan and for existing events. If you’re running meetups that are free to attend, we’ll support you with a free forever website. Read on below.
We’ve also added a bunch of new features to be able to provide you with the most engaging social and user-friendly event website in the world!
Read all about it on our new Organizer product website or check out the embedded video here. There’s also a FAQ below.
Are you ready to retire your old non-social and static website?
So, tell me everything about the website features?
The full list of website-related features is below. It only takes a minute to add your event on Conferize, so why not get started now?
Custom URL, e.g. www.myevent.com (NEW).
Custom welcome message/media area on your front page (NEW).
Custom pages: Add up to five custom subpages (NEW).
New editor with support for rich text, images and rich media editor for all pages (NEW).
Support for any registration service.
Content sharing and aggregation, including video livestream.
Social networking and matchmaking for attendees, speakers and followers.
Custom graphics and logo to match your brand.
Your event is seamlessly connected to our platform with a community of millions of event lovers.
Choose from over 50,000+ readymade speaker profiles.
Easily invite your speakers, sponsors, attendees to help grow your community.
Create a series of events where the community grows from event to event.
Reliable website hosting with market leading performance included.
Fully responsive website to adjust for smaller devices.
Show me an example
One of our first customers are www.ndc15.com, check it out. You’ll notice that the Conferize branding has been minimized to its bare minimum, yet keeping all the lovely community and content features. The event website is all about you!
What does it cost?
It’s free! Meaning that we’ve added the website features at no extra cost for all existing plans, also the free Basic plan (free up to 100 people). It makes it by far the most cost effective event website, not to mention the only truly social event website, available anywhere today.
View plans
Is it really completely free for meetups, workshops, and seminars?
Yes! We love anyone who works to gather cool people in a room without charging for it. So you can use Conferize free of charge, even if your community grows over 100 people.
Add your meetup now
How and when can I use it?
The website feature is already live for all existing and upcoming events. It means that you can Manage or add an event and tell it to operate under your own domain, e.g. www . myevent . com instead of www.conferize.com/conferences/myevent.
Go to My events to select an event to use with your own domain. Then go to Event info / Custom domain and follow instructions. Simple!
That’s cool, but what makes it really cool?
We’ve long been puzzled with the status quo in the events industry where 99 % of event websites are static and non-social, adding no real value to attendees, regardless of how gorgeous they may look. It's an incredibly overlooked opportunity to create real value for delegates and build a community to help promote the event. A key feature of a Conferize website is that visitors can Follow the event free of charge. It gives event organizers the chance to convert a “maybe” visitor to a “definitely” attendee. Without this feature, most visitors will leave the website and may never come back.
We’ve seen that event communities often grow 5-10 times bigger than the physical attendance. We’ve also seen a host of cases where followers were converted to attendees through our platform. Without Conferize all that potential value is not captured and utilized. Making it an integral part of the event website is a huge benefit, leaving the organizer with only one platform to work with. And that platform is currently the only open social platform for events.
We've also seen how event organizer struggle to turn generic website platforms into something that works for events. It's often a painful and/or expensive process, ending up with a result that may be useful, informative and elegant, but in no way captures or reflects the essence of the event itself. An event is a social and dynamic context that produces engaging content, strong social ties and unparalleled excitement from speakers, sponsors and attendees–when it works well, of course.
The most obvious reason that a suitable solution hasn't been brought forward before, is that from a technology and design perspective it's virtually impossible for most event organizers to engineer a true online experience that reflect the nature of the events–without spending a ridiculous amount of money and yet being unsure if it'll work. It's also a challenge that many technology companies in the past have taken on and failed it.
Conferize has for the past three years specialized in creating a true event experience online. It's been used by thousands of events and millions of people. It's now available for any event organizer to make it their own–with a simple, user friendly interface that was made specifically for events people, and nothing else. And yet pricing starts at free. That's what makes us so excited.
The open platform for events: Announcing the Conferize registration API with Eventora
At Conferize we've always believed in keeping our platform as open as possible. Today we're announcing a new registration API to underpin just how serious we are about our open position and the endeavor of reducing fragmentation in the global events industry.
Why is this important?
We estimate that roughly 5,000 registration services exist today, powering the world's 2+ million annual professional events. It's a jungle with virtually no overview possible. With the new API it's much easier for event organizers and registration providers to list their events on Conferize, the leading open platform for professional events worldwide. It also makes it easier for attendees to benefit from Conferize's social networking and content sharing features.
What is it?
A while back we announced our partnership with Eventbrite, one of the largest and fastest growing registration platforms in the world. From this we learned a lot about how to structure an integration and we eventually developed our own API for any registration service to integrate.
For event organizers using registration services that's integrated with Conferize, it's now much easier to ...
import events to be listed on Conferize for millions to discover.
buy a ticket for an event on Conferize.
invite existing and new attendees to network and share content.
reap the benefits of the Conferize platform.
Announcing the first integration with pioneering partner Eventora
We're launching the new API together with the great team at Eventora, who–just like Conferize–are official TEDx partners.
Nick Tsamis, CEO of Eventora, comments:
"We are thrilled to announce our partnership with Conferize. Eventora's easy event registration and smart event management is now combined with Conferize's powerful community building. For attendees, this means a better, seamless registration experience. For organizers, it means more registrations and engagement."
"Both our companies are TEDx partners, and Eventora serves TEDx events in 25 countries. For TEDx communities worldwide, there are many benefits coming from our partnership. Joining forces with Conferize helps us in our mission to make smart events simple."
Jon Schäffer, Co-Founder & CCO of Conferize says:
"Eventora is a great and cost effective registration solution. Partnering with Eventora means that event organizers can now easily plug in registration, build a living event community and sell more tickets on Conferize. This is a perfect match for both companies and for our customers."
How the Eventora integration works in practice:
With this integration event organizers can publish their event on Conferize with just a click on the Eventora control panel. Event attendees can now register seamlessly via the Conferize event page. Whenever someone buys a ticket, also outside of Conferize, they can easily be invited to join the community with social networking and content sharing.
API specs and key
For registration providers and developers, please refer to the API documentation and get in touch regarding integration.
TOP 50 Tech Events of 2014: Here's to the brave, the bold, and the social ones
2014 is almost over. What a year it’s been! We saw a dramatic increase in the number of tech events added to Conferize. From local meetups to huge conferences and global exhibitions, they’re all here. Now comes the time to recap and select the best of the best! Our jury of distinguished experts have selected 50 events from all over the world that we believe are the best of 2014! (Last updated: December 18th, 2014)
“With the Top 50 Tech list we want to reward event organizers who are proactive about community building and digital strategy. We believe big is not always better. In fact, we want to reward the most social and innovative events on their efforts to share, engage and involve with their communities online – regardless of their size.” Martin Ferro-Thomsen, CEO & Founder of Conferize.
Each day, from Dec 1st, we will release a couple of events, so stay tuned until the 18th of December, where we will announce the final list!
Don't forget to share with others too! #Top50events!
We thank you for all of your support during this campaign. We wish you all a very happy holiday with your family and friends!
As some of you may have noticed we've just introduced a brand new way to manage your events on Conferize. We call it (drum roll) Manage Event!
You can access this page either from My Events (click Manage) or from your event page (there's a direct link in the black top menu).
Here's a closeup:
As you see above, a prominent feature is that Conferize will constantly monitor your progress and guide you to a more successful event by suggesting things to do. Simply click the Next step and fill in the missing information to keep growing your event score to 100 %
You can quickly get a sense of how well you events is doing in terms of community size, activity, latest members of your community etc.
There is also a quick way to Engage community by posting updates, media and any other important information to your community. What you post here will of course go into your Activity page on Conferize. Any media links you share (Youtube, Slideshare, Flickr etc.) will be included in the Media section. There is usually a short delay, and remember the default sorting of media is by popularity so new media is added to the bottom of the list).
The rest is pretty straightforward, you can access anything via the left-hand menu and edit anything you like. We hope you like the new Manage Event page!
Tip: The Sponsor section is a premium add-on feature, you'll need to get in touch to enable it (learn more about it here).
Create more value with Conferize’s new Sponsor product
Today Conferize has released a brand new Sponsor product that rethinks event sponsorship. It's designed to let your sponsors play a part and stand out on your event page and community on Conferize. It offers real customer interaction and ROI for sponsors, as they become an integral of the community with their own profile.
Your full usually community grows 5-10 times bigger than your attending audience. Resell the added value to your sponsors who can connect with buyers before, during and after–more time and opportunities to close deals!
Oh, it can also be integrated directly on your website or blog too, like this:
Once you’ve enabled the Sponsor package you quickly add any number of sponsors. You can also define types of sponsors: Gold, Platinum, Bronze, Media etc.
Upload a logo for each sponsor, add a description, and add a contact person. You select the personal contact by searching Conferize users, so make sure they have a free Conferize account.
You can reorder your sponsors and edit everything until you’re happy with the result.
The Sponsor section is automatically added on your event page on Conferize. It exists as a 'slider' right on your Overview page and has a full Sponsor page in the menu.
Grab the Embed code to integrate your Sponsors directly on your website or blog.
Get in touch to get the Sponsor package or learn more.
The new Conferize is here: Events online, done right
Earlier this year we embarked on a long journey to make Conferize simpler, savvier and, well, sexier. Finally, Conferize V1 is here!
The new Conferize is an engaging and visually striking platform, created to increase the lifespan and impact of professional events online. We've redesigned and rebuilt every single page and created new ways to experience events. And don't worry, everything you've come to expect of Conferize is still there.
Try it now or read on.
Below are some of the highlights, we’ll be elaborating in upcoming posts.
And please join the launch party tomorrow (28 August @ 5pm) in Copenhagen: Conferize V1 Launch: Meet the Future of Events
New customizable event pages with rich media & community built in
A member of the press once said that Conferize was more valuable than 99 % of all conference websites. Well, we also wanted to also make it prettier and more useful. And we wanted event organizers to feel even more at home by tailoring the page to match their brand. Of course it also sports both rich media and community networking built right in (more info below).
Check out STHLM Tech Fest for a live version.
Event media done right: Everything in one place
We believe professional events are a unique source of knowledge that until now has been very hard to access in a structured way. This is why rich media is now a prominent part of Conferize. Just click a media item and a new media overlay pops up. No need to scour the web anymore, it's all here in the same place!
Here’s all the media from STHLM Tech Fest.
Here are the best presentations from around the world in the past month.
Community and networking to make your event last
One of the reasons we feel so strongly about professional events it that they enable people to create deeper social ties than with any online connection. We’ve created our social features with the purpose of helping to facilitate more meetings in real life. In a Conferize community you can sift through the crowd and find people you want to connect with or meet at any given event.
Check out the Community at STHLM Tech Fest.
Ask Burning Questions to explore topics with your community
Most events exist to explore certain topics. We thought: Why not start this journey before the event and have a place to capture the collective thoughts of your community? Introducing Burning Questions: A completely new thing in the world that will help you engage your audience and accumulate knowledge.
Check out an example here.
But wait! There are more ways to discover events on Conferize
In addition to the highlights above, here are cool new things we've built:
A brand new Discovery page to inspire you with the world of events
A new personalized Home page for you to keep up with your world of events (must be logged in to see it)
New user profiles for speakers and delegates to shine and build their portfolio of events, content and followers. Example.
A new page for exploring Speakers. Event organizers always struggle to find new and upcoming speakers. Problem solved: Almost 40,000 to choose from.
A new page for exploring the Conferize community. It's probably the biggest ‘Who’s who’ for professional events: 4,428,485 people so far
Conferize honored as a top Event Innovator 2014 by Bizbash
“Conferize was willing to take risks and find opportunities to create authentic engagement and value, which is why we decided to highlight them and their work,” says BizBash editor in chief Anna Sekula.
BizBash has announced its 2014 list of the most innovative people and brands in events and has named Conferize among the top innovators right now. Here' why:
Conferize has stood out as an event innovator and groundbreaker—joining an elite group that proves the value of face-to-face events, empowers peers to consider the unconventional, and reveals a redefined image of what the industry is today.
CEO Martin Ferro-Thomsen and CCO Jon Schäffer. The two remaining co-founders, Martin Wullfeld and Jesper Vestergaard, we're too busy to leave their laptops at the time of the photo.
Professional events has a new face online. Today Conferize is introducing the brand new event pages across all events on our platform.
The new event pages is designed to be easy on the eye and more user friendly, putting everything events related in its proper place: Speakers, media, the community, and realtime activity to constantly capture the beating heart of your event.
It's also much more visual and customizable, giving event organizers more options to present their events with logo and a large photo showing the atmosphere at their event.
Gorgeous media feeds to wow your audience
Conferize has probably the world's smartest and most innovative approach to event media. We call it 'collective media' and it's everything that you, your speakers and the community care to share. We track all conversations on your event page and Twitter, and from that we identify the most popular rich media content items.
It's a lot of heavy data processing behind the scenes, but the result is as beautiful as it is captivating: Your own tailored media feed, powered and curated by the web and your community. Any content type (video, photos, presentations, papers) from any platform (Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, Slideshare etc.) available in one user friendly place. We of course also support video livestreaming from any platform. It just works!
Burning Questions captures the knowledge of your crowd
A prominent new innovation of the event page is a component we call 'Burning questions'. It's designed to engage your audience and capture the knowledge of your crowd. With this component you are at the forefront of the event revolution, where your capable speakers and delegates get a chance to shine and create a body of knowledge specific to your conference theme. You can of course customize your Burning Questions for each event (Go to My Events).
World's best event networking
Conferize has one of the best networking and matchmaking features. Forbes believes it's even better than LinkedIn and Twitter. It's the perfect way to get the most out of your event attendance, and to keep up with though leaders of any industry. We offer these networking features with every event and for Conferize in general.
One community to rule them all
It's important to remember that all the activity and media being shared at individual event pages are streamed into the Conferize network itself, potentially reaching millions of events professionals. The larger you build your community and the more active they are, the more it will resonate throughout Conferize's network, the social web and frequent automated newsletters. On Conferize you can also create a 'Series' of events, gradually building your audience from event to event, instead of starting from scratch. It's one community to rule them all.
We hope you enjoy the new event page. Any feedback or questions are welcome!
How to get started using the new features
How do I add or edit a Burning question for my event?
How do I upload a photo to my event page?
How do I get media on to my event page?
Conferize and Eventbrite partners to boost event attendance like never before
Good news for event organizers using Conferize or Eventbrite.
Eventbrite is one of the world's leading registration solutions, making it really easy to sell tickets and manage registrations for events. It's already being used by many Conferize organizers, so we're really excited to make life easier for hundreds of event planners with this partnership.
With a tight integration of Eventbrite into Conferize, and vice-versa, you’ll get the perfect event page with built-in social networking, content aggregation and, of course, seamless registration with Eventbrite.
Did you ever struggle with reaching capacity for your event? Learn from William Thomson, one of the first event organizers on Conferize to take advantage of the Eventbrite partnership.
Williams's conference 'Who Stole My Audience' was held in London in last month and used Conferize to build an event community and engage people in content and social networking as a way to increase attendance:
“Conferize allows me to publish all the event media in a very easy and accessible way. The new integration with Eventbrite allows me to very quickly and easily invite all my attendees to network and access all the event’s rich media. The marriage is an event planners dream”.
William Thomson, event planner.
And the cool thing is that Conferize keeps building your community from year to year, so next time you host an event you already have direct access to people ready to buy your tickets.
How to connect your Eventbrite event with Conferize
Just go to our Add event page and click the Eventbrite logo.
By connecting Conferize and Eventbrite new attendees are automatically invited to join your community.
How Conferize works:
Automatically aggregate all collective media around your event (videos, pictures, slides, tweets).
Automatically build a living community of attendees and online followers (leads) and let Conferize help convert your leads to attendees.
Engage people in content sharing, social networking, meeting-bookings, messaging, likes, and comments.
All speakers, attendees and online followers have a personal profile which makes networking exciting and easy.
And one more thing… After all, you want to improve the event experience before, during and after the event and get the right people to attend your events.
Try Conferize today. Pricing starts at free.
Lean more about the partnership over at Eventbrite.
Location, location, location! Conferize is now putting the Event Industry thoroughly on the Map
Some say location is everything. In a world of international events, it really is!
It works for events, people, and people at events!
1. Search for events by location
If you head on over to our Search page, you can enter any given location, e.g. USA, Europe or Austin, Tx. in addition to our other filters (such as category, time, ranking etc.).
This example will show you the most active tech conferences in the USA on Conferize all tim (since 2012). Looks like Apple won over both Dreamforce, Google I/O and TED!
2. Search for people by location
We've applied the same structured location data for our users as well. Want to know who are the most connected people on Conferize in the US? Here you go. You should recognize a few faces here.
3. Search for people at events by location
Let's say you're headed for IMEX in Frankfurt and want to know if someone from your home town will be going. Head on over to IMEX and go to the Network tab. Type in your home town and see if people from your hood are going. Voila!
Or maybe you met a friendly German at SXSWi and forgot his name? No worries, here's a link to the relevant search.
We hope you agree there are many uses for a structured approach to location in the event industry. As always, let us know what you think!
Conferize teams up with TEDx, offering a complimentary community platform for all TEDx organizers
The collaboration is a strong strategic fit leveraging the respective strengths across these three areas:
First, the essence of every TEDx-like experience is the community of passionate people. Conferize is a dedicated event and conference platform for everyone to get involved and engaged: attendees, speakers and fans. It’s a tool to grow, cultivate and manage a TEDx community online.
Second, every TEDx event provides high quality content in a variety of different formats: photos, videos, discussions and presentations. Conferize captures all the publicly available content and buzz around events through the community interaction and unique #hashtag, and presents it in a simple and crowdsourced way.
Last but not least, TEDx events has proved to be sustainable and will hopefully exist for many generations to come. A TEDx event encompassed the passionate community, the special moments and great ideas. Conferize hopes to play a small role in the preservation of these special events, so they can be re-lived and built on time and again.
“We are thrilled about Conferize, because it creates a one-point entry for all the people and content around our events” – Lærke Ullerup, Licensee of TEDxCopenhagen.
For more information about TEDx partners, you can visit the official TEDx page.
If you are organizing a TEDx event, you will receive a complimentary use of the Conferize Pro package, valued at $ 499. Simply add your event today or learn more here.
Time after time again we’ve seen conferences and events not reach their potential because of bad hashtagging. The sad truth is that even if highly embraced, Twitter is often misused and not fully optimized. The good news is, we have 4 simple tips to help you create your prefect hashtag and successfully engage better with your audience.
Forbes thinks we're the best event networking app. Now we made it better.
But we can do even more. What Forbes didn't know at the time is that we've secretly been working on a significant upgrade to your networking options.
Say hi to better networking and matchmaking at events
So, as of today, you'll now find a lot more networking and filtering options on the Network page where the community lives. It also works for individual event communities, try it with SXSW Interactive.
You can easily use Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook to follow everyone you know there – on Conferize! Just click any of those buttons.
Use the advanced filters to explore the community in more detail by Job Interests, Organization, Job Title or keyword (search).
You can filter even more according to the role a person has at the event (Organizer, Speaker, Attendee, Follower). You can of course also order the listings according to popularity, importance (only in relation to a specific event) or alphabetically.
We believe the quality of an event is to be measured by it's community. Part of that is having good user data, so make sure you update your information under Settings so people better can find you.
The new features are free for all types of events. If you want to do more as an event organizer, learn more here.
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