As I'm planning the 2015 live bit of BAFA's November conference in Lichfield I came across this article about some of the thinking behind the TEDx App created for TEDxLaceMarket and thought I'd share it with you, the PCM in Action blog readers. I'm really looking forward to the 2015 Conference for Festivals - MIND THE GAP on 11, 12, 13 November 2015 in Lichfield UK.
Its going to be a very small european wide live-stream going out to nine satellite venues. Its a micro cosmic Digital Audience Experience bloggers lounge and mini continuity studio all wrapped up in a neat Google+ Hangout package. So excited.
This was writing in Jan 2014 for a newsletter to BAFA members.
This article has been produced for BAFA by freelance digital projects manager and collaboration coordinator at PCMprojects & Cellar54, Caron Lyon. Caron has created professional social networks for Arts Council England, the Federation of Entertainment Unions and Audiences Europe. http://www.pcmcreative.com/social-media-consultation.html
Making media, capturing content and engaging with it’s intended audience is the primary objective for the team at Cellar54 where Caron works closely with video blogger and brand advocate Phil Campbell. Together they work ‘on the ground’ to make the media you want for starting conversations and maintaining audience attention before, during and between/after a festival or event. They work closely with the in-house team to document planning and produce media for social networking distribution. Alternatively they can empower you through support and training to manage your own media and supplement it with Cellar54 media output created on your behalf. This is how Phil created the app created for our own event delivered under license from TED.com - TEDxLaceMarket.
Ever considered an app? Make it part of your social media. We can help you do this.
'Why we put an app together'
In 2012 Phil worked with Caron on an event in the heart of the Lace Market region of Nottingham.
Phil was assigned with putting together both an event guide and legacy application for the event that could give a listing of all the speakers before people arrived but then also gave them links to the videos for each speaker after the event.
We came across a fantastic company appbaker that provides a lot of the layout especially for tedx style events all we needed to do was add our event content and branding to produce an application easily.
We bought an apple developer account package and working together with the company we were easily able to get our application into the app store. We had limited time and zero budget to put together something across all platforms so we used this platform to have a go with minimum risk. It worked out ok!
Your crowd can be social
One of the things that really attracted us to the appbaker solution is they have a great add-on set of modules you can put inside the application that enables your audience to network with each other so if they met someone on the day you can find that person from a picture (or name) and contact them via their shared social digital channels. A really nice touch to empower your audience outside of your event.
Releasing it to the wild
It was hard work to get everything ready in time. It’s quite a lot of intensive work for a one person and can be made easier if you share the load with someone who is up to speed on the requirements of the graphics needed. You do have to have a number of different sizes for different devices so make sure you read the documentation and also remember that getting approval for the app store takes a bit of time as well. Once it’s up however making changes is online so the application will incorporate changes so you do not have to submit the app again unless you change something which runs via an add-on module.
Your app is a digital download gift
Always wondering what you can put in that newsletter or what your audience is expecting regarding information? Make your app a free digital download which can contain updates, news and exclusive content they cannot see anywhere else. Being able to track the amount of downloads your application has had and how long they keep it installed is a lot more metrics that leaving a stack of leaflets on a side hoping that people are picking them up and reading them.
App as a legacy
The wonderful thing about having an application installed on a mobile phone from a previous audience member is that if we had paid for the added extras we would have been able to send push notifications to the audience member that had downloaded it to tell them about future events and updates. They receive this message directly on their mobile phone’s home screen. It’s a great way of reminding people especially if events are quarterly or yearly.
Working together
From working together organising the event, delivering the event and producing the social media we did realise that our collective offering was much more useful to sell on to clients. We looked at the bigger picture and we often call on each others services anyway for elements of projects with out own clients. This propelled us to pull together our talents under the Cellar54 umbrella.
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While I am focusing on DAEx Phil is focusing on his apiary.haus start-up
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