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This year, NTC (NTEN’s nonprofit technology conference) used Zerista’s web & mobile event planning platform to enhance the annual 3 day experience for over 2,000 users  - an impressive adoption rate that includes 362 exhibitors, 280 speakers, 11 moderators, and 1,915 attendees. This complete mobile platform put the entire event completely in the palms of all 2000+ hands, not only simplifying networking and planning, but making it easier to connect and form an effective event community.

It was nice to be able to choose several sessions and have a schedule on my phone, so that if one session was full, or didn’t fit my needs, I could easily look up my alternative session without having to reference my program book…

I also relied on the live [Chatter] feeds to see what everyone else was saying about the conference topics, key takeaways, and to also see where people were heading to dinner or when the cookie cart arrived!

- Lisa, myNTC user and writer for the Balcom Group blog

To learn more about NTEN’s Nonprofit Technology Conference, visit their website at http://www.nten.org/ntc

“The Congress for the New Urbanism is very excited to be using Zerista this year! Attendees have been impressed to find an event networking site that looks great and connects them with the colleagues they’ll see at our conference. They’re also using it to select and find sessions. It definitely surpassed our expectations.” -CNU Communications Director

We recently completed a fun project working with a leading urban design conference in Denver.  The Conference for the New Urbanism (CNU) is the nation’s leading forum dedicated to advancing urbanism and promoting alternatives to sprawl.

We were excited to work on this project – not only because we support the general new urbanist principles, but also because we live and work in the types of communities that new urbanism seeks to encourage.

As background, New Urbanism is an urban design and development movement dedicated to implementing community-oriented principles of traditional town and city planning in contrast to the prevailing system of formless sprawl. New Urbanist developments are walkable, provide a diverse range of housing options, encourage a rich mix of uses, and provide welcoming public spaces as detailed in the Charter of the New Urbanism.

The conference attracts more than 1,000 attendees from around the world who particiapte in several hundred planned activities throughout the week.

Some of the key challgenges faced by the conference organizer:

•    Strengthen relationships between core stakeholders – attendees, speakers and exhibitors
•    Increase networking between attendees, speakers and exhibitors
•    Increase productivity at the conference

The solution included the following key components:

•    Attendee, speaker and exhibitor directories with detailed info on all key stakeholders
•    Online conversations for attendees, speakers and exhibitors
•    Personalized scheduling tools with ability to export MS Outlook, iCal and other calendar aps

The solution generated a significant ROI:

•    27% average increase in event networking due to Zerista (based on survey data)
•    10% average increase in overall event productivity due to Zerista (based on survey data)

If you have any questions  or comments, please feel free comment below.

“The Zerista application is the perfect dashboard for managing conference meetings, messages, while also prospecting……in the past, I would go to a meeting thinking I’m missing something. With your tool I feel like my prep time is well spent and assured I’m not missing a beat. Well done! Thanks again for the tool.” -Exhibitor

“Just a note to say how much I am enjoying using Zerista.  Thanks for providing this great tool! “ -Attendee

“Great tool.  Really enjoying it!” -Attendee

For the 2009 Health Care Conference, the event organizer’s intent was to significantly improve the event ROI for both attendees and exhibitors – Zerista proudly played a key role in helping them achieve this objective.

Customer Needs:
•    Increase meetings between attendees and exhibitors
•    Increase networking between attendees
•    Decrease the planning effort for attendees

Solution:
The Zerista team worked closely with the event producer to deliver a custom Social Event Site that delivered the following key features:

•    Attendee directory and integrated networking tools
•    Exhibitor directory and integrated networking tools
•    1:1 meeting scheduler
•    Real-time event feed with aggregated social media content (youtube, flickr, etc.)

Return-on-Investment (ROI)

The solution generated a significant ROI that substantially exceeded expectations:
•    More than 14,000 messages, meetings and contacts created
•    More than 800 1:1 meetings scheduled
•    Roughly 80% of exhibitors and 50% of attendees used the application
•    Exhibitors scheduled 40% to 80% more meetings due to Zerista

One of the most exciting projects that we’ve worked on recently is Denver’s Great American Beer Festival.   This annual fall classic is rated as one of the 1,000 places to see before you die, drawing upwards of 40,000 attendees and 400 exhibiting brewers a year to sample some of the best beers in the country.  Zerista got involved by working avidly with the event organizers to streamline and enhance this old classic, providing online tools for attendees to find brewers before and during the event itself.

One of the more challenging aspects of this project was to figure out how we could provide a user-friendly venue map interface that would enable attendees to quickly search and find exhibitors from within a single browser window. In the end, and after hours of work, we accomplished our goals to raving reviews; 10,000s of attendees used the site, and the project was viewed as highly successful. In the words of the event organizers themselves:

“With Zerista, we were able to offer our 40,000+ attendees an easier way to plan and map out their event experience at the Great American Beer Festival. Our requirements included an interactive convention hall map that showed the location of more than 400 exhibitors and 50 events. Zerista rapidly delivered an intuitive, easy-to-use solution to a rather challenging mapping project.  The Zerista team was great to work with, and we’re looking forward to working together again in the future.”