I love, love, love all things events and technology. If you can’t tell by my tweets, Facebook posts and all my other social media interactions, I love to talk about events and the tools that help us do what we do better. In June 2011, I partnered with an organization called imbookin to bring you PlannerTech – an event technology showcase. This weekly blog series is going to help continue to expose you to new tools you need to be aware of as an event planner. Also, in case you missed it, PlannerTech could be coming soon to your area!
Today, we’re talking about Qrious
Your name: John Federico
Company/Tool Name: Qrious
Website: http://qriousapp.com
Twitter: @qriousapp
What is the “problem” that your tool seeks to solve?
More often than not, the top reason that people attend professional events and conferences is to meet others. Yet the time and money spent at these events is often gambled on serendipity instead of thoughtfully-targeted, pre-confirmed meetings.
While the act of organizing an event provides certain efficiencies in making new connections, once the number of attendees exceeds 50 people these efficiencies start to deteriorate.
Using Qrious and the Qrious smartphone app, attendees, exhibitors and sponosrs arrive at a professional event and Qrious tells them who to meet – and why – using their role, goals for the event, existing social networks and specific business interests.
We like to say that Qrious is “Foursquare meets LinkedIn and eHarmony.”
What is the best audience for this tool? Corporate events? Social? Other? Large? Small?
Anyone looking to connect with a specific type of person at a professional event can benefit from the free Qrious service, but participants looking to initiate customer or partner relationships are the most active and frequent users. For them, Qrious is a sales automatation and lead generation tool – our premium service makes this capability even more powerful for these participants.
What does your tool help event planners do better?
Qrious helps increase attendee and exhibitor satisfaction. (Really. People get very excited about Qrious: http://jfed.me/n)
We ensure that your attendees and exhibitors leave your event having met more of the people that are important to THEM.
How is your tool different from/better than the competition?
Right now, there are generally two kinds of apps in the market: On one side of the market there are free, downloadable apps to help you “meet people anywhere.”
These apps suffer from the “cold start” problem of new or ad hoc social nets (“Hey! Nobody’s here!”) and the context problem (“I’m not in the mood to network right now, thankyouverymuch”).
On the other side of the market, there are software vendors that will create a custom social network just for your event, usually for many thousands of dollars. These ad hoc social nets typically require attendees to populate them with lots of data and when your event ends, this stand-alone social network disappears – along with all that valuable data.
Qrious integrates with your registration system and your participant’s existing social networks to automagically help facilitate connections between them ahead of (and during) the event so they can efficiently plan their time – without the burden of feeding data into Yet Another Social Network, nor divulging personal contact information.
What is the single coolest feature of your product?
The Qrious Radar.
When you find someone that you want to meet, you put them on your Qrious Radar. When they register or check-in to a Qrious-powered event or conference session, that activity appears on your Qrious Home Screen. You can use that information to (appropriately and tactfully) find an opportunity to connect with that very important person.
Anything else we need to know?
I like gadgets.
Related posts:
Tags: eHarmony, event planning, Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn, Social Media/Technology, Social network, Twitter
