For conference organizers: last-minute text alerts

The folks at Mailchimp have made a wonderful app for event organizers. The iPhone app lets you text atten­dees urgent news, whether it’s a Wi-Fi pass­word changed at the last minute or a speaker being swapped.

It occurred to me that you can text atten­dees with­out an app like that. There are plenty of SMS marketing plat­forms around now, and it’s easy to set up the mail­ings in advance.

Why does it matter? At OWOX 2012, held in November, the orga­niz­ers made a spe­cial mobile app with the schedule. The prob­lem was that to get changes into it, you had to update the app itself (the day’s plan didn’t load from the con­fer­ence server auto­mat­i­cally), and of course hardly anyone did. I don’t think a single con­fer­ence I’ve been to got by with­out changes like that to the program.

In short, a great idea. I sug­gest the orga­niz­ers of Business Camp Odessa, which I’m also plan­ning to attend, take it on board ;)