Five Innovative Startups in the Event Industry

The event industry is booming, and everyone seems to want a piece of the pie. While this means there’s no shortage of chaff where event planning services are concerned, it also means that there’s a camp of incredibly creative, particularly talented, and thoroughly innovative individuals looking to break into the industry – and they aim to do that by helping you run your events more efficiently and effectively.

Today, we’ll be taking a look at a five innovative event management startups that are bound to help you be a better event planner.

Scenesquid

First up on our list is SceneSquid, a nifty little tool designed to streamline the event marketing process, particularly press relations. How it works is deceptively simple. First, you put together the details of your event and post it to SceneSquid. Once that’s done, your next step is to put together a little collage of your target audience – a list of every demographic that you estimate would be interested in attending your event.

At that point, SceneSquid gets to work, seeking out relevant publishers and media outlets and sending them the details of your event. It completely streamlines one of the most tedious aspects of event marketing, making it as simple as a few mouse-clicks.

LiveCube

Next on our list of note-worthies is LiveCube. Originally starting as little more than a scheduling app, it has since evolved into a full-featured attendee engagement tool. Using LiveCube, guests at an event or conference will be able to zero in on the most interesting ideas, people, and keynotes. On top of that, it allows them to comment and participate through their phone or tablet in order to earn any of a wide range of sweet rewards – basically, it engages the audience by turning participation in an event into a sort of game.

TableCrowd

TableCrowd was developed to help people network through dinner. At first glance, that doesn’t really sound like an application strictly designed for event planning, does it? Truth be told, it’s not, but that doesn’t make it any less valuable both for event planners and…well…for everyone else, too.

After a user joins a Crowd – basically, a group of people who share interests or circumstances with them – they can then either join a Table at one of their city’s many restaurants or create their own Table, with a time and place that work for their schedule. Basically, this app has the potential to be one of the most powerful offline networking tools; one that is particularly well suited for entry-level event planners looking to get their foot in the door.

GetMeConnected

You wouldn’t think a startup with plans to provide stable WiFi at events an innovative one, but apparently it’s filling a niche no one else has yet thought to fill. Truth be told, it’s more than a little distressing that so many events apparently still don’t have proper WiFi connections, particularly given the increasing prevalence of mobile devices and tablets.

GetMeConnected basically uses a large van with a satellite dish and a sixteen-foot mast. So long as the vehicle is capable of getting near your event, it’ll provide stable, powerful WiFi through satellite broadband in a radius of 300m. Not a bad idea, all things considered.

ScheduleHead

Last, but certainly not least, we’ve got ScheduleHead, an application which aims to solve one of the most prevalent, pervasive issues in event management: staff scheduling. Billing itself as “the app that schedules your staff so you don’t have to,” ScheduleHead intelligently assigns your staff to where they’re needed most; automatically reaching out to workers in order to get them set up with their respective tasks.

Of course, you’re not out of the loop throughout this process – ScheduleHead also provides periodic updates related to what it’s doing and how it’s helping you manage your event. On the one hand, it’ll be a welcome boon for most event planners. On the other…it might well be the first step towards an AI advanced enough to take their jobs…well, maybe not any time soon.

Hey, enjoy it while it lasts, right?