Ten pieces of tech for your next event

1. MiThoughts - is an application which enhances the relationship that a presenter can have with his/her audience. This means that the application facilitates interaction between the two parties as it allows the users to view slides, submit questions, answer straw polls and see audience responses in real time on the iPad.

2. AtEvent - the AtEvent app helps you to capture higher quality leads that can be nurtured or routed to sales for immediate follow up. The app can scan attendee's business cards or badges to accurately capture prospect contact info, add topics and follow-ups and check-in attendees. It also enables you to review and manage any information collected and it can integrate seamlessly with most Marketing Automation and CRM systems.

3. iBeacon - a protocol originally developed by Apple, many event organisers are now experimenting with beacons to speed up the check-in process. They can deploy these tiny pieces of hardware at the entrance of exhibition or conference venues to send QR codes to the attendees' smart phones for easy check-in. To get things moving even faster, they can even use beacons to potentially check-in the attendees immediately as they arrive or get the badges automatically printed at a self-service terminal nearby.

4. Periscope and Merkaat - these are relatively new (around 18 months old) live streaming platforms for iphones and android devices. The app enables users to produce a live stream of events and for others to view it in real time. Twitter were excited enough by Periscope to acquire it in January 2015 and both apps present the opportunity to open up your events to a wider audience.

5. crowdcomms.com - crowdcomms offers event organisers the impact of a customised app, without the cost. You are able to select the features you require and include a high degree of customisation - you can even tailor the content and schedule according to your guests interests.

6. Doubledutch - a US based company offers an event app designed to enhance engagement before and (in particular) during the event. In part the aim is to bring an element of fun to event networking - providing leaderboards for the most popular delegate led content for example, however this is backed up by a substantial amount of analytics on the data collected via the app. The main aim of this data is to enable event organisers to improve future events based on delegate feedback.

7. MantaroBot - mobile telepresence provides the opportunity to those people who can't physically attend an event to call into Skype, for example, and have a robot roll around an event so that they can hear and see what's going on.

8. Connect & Go - is a wearable device (a bracelet) which allows the event's organising team to control access to the event. Moreover, users can engage with social media by scan-sharing their experience live with their social networks and include their friends/colleagues within the event's extended community. In addition, they can also make cashless payments by buying credits on their wearables or linking the wearables to their credit cards. Finally Connect&Go's Event Analytics Reports provide time, location, customer ID and interaction data that is as valuable in real-time as it is in planning the next event.

9. virtualeventbags.com - the mission here is to eradicate goodie bags. This digital event bag is effectively a platform which is used by your sponsors and exhibitors to share their content with your audience. The aim is to give your sponsors the maximum degree of control over the content they share.

10. Chatbots - Chatbots are essentially computer programs which are designed to simulate a conversation with another human being. They are really being pioneered by Facebook, through its increasingly ubiquitous messenger system. This piece of tech will enable event managers to deliver automated customer support before, during and after events.

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