New SCHED*: Reboot Britain

We are pleased to annouce that Reboot Britain will be using SCHED* for their conference on July 6th. Check out the SCHED* here.

“Reboot Britain will be an extraordinary one-day event which will take a totally different look at the challenges [Britains] face as a country and the new possibilities that – uniquely - this generation has to overcome them.”

Guest speakers will include Martha Lane-Fox, Howard Rheingold, Sir Michael Bichard, Professor Lizbeth Goodman, Jeff Saperstein, Daniel Heaf, Craig Newmark (Craigslist founder) and Stan Stalnik.

For more information or to purchase tickets visit the official website at http://www.rebootbritain.com/

New SCHED*: 2morro ‘09

We are pleased to annouce that 2morro will be using SCHED* for their festival on July 4th. Check out the SCHED* here.

“2morro 09 will be the biggest ever festival in the UK for young people interested in changing the world and getting heard. The festival will allow young people to learn how to use technology and media to run campaigns better, showcase and share plans for a better future, and debate, explore and celebrate new possibilities. There will be loads to see and do throughout the day, including opportunities to promote individual projects, swap skills, and meet mentors.

“Tickets for 2morro 09 are free but only available for people involved in partner organisations.”

For more information or to get tickets contact 2morro at hello@2morro.org.

IFFS Festival Sponsorship Webinar on 6/23

The International Film Festival Summit will host a free webinar on June 23rd for film festival professional to discuss sponsorships. Topics to be addressed include the most active sponsor categories, why companies sponsor: top objectives, most desirable benefits; the sponsorship solicitation process from A to Z; and five keys to successfully recruiting corporate sponsors.

We’ve included a link to the press release but if you’d like to sign up for the event, contact Wyatt Royce via e-mail or call at (561) 277-9452.

Spark of Genius

Mashable is an online leader in cataloguing social media. SCHED* was profiled as part of its “Spark of Genius” series on June 4th. The review covers our many features and benefits. We’ve included an excerpt below.

Probably the biggest advantage to using SCHED* is just being able to offer the very desirable features discussed above to your attendees, but as a paying customer you’ll also enjoy the ability to edit and update the schedule from a web-based spreadsheet in real-time. Any updates you make will be reflected on site and in users saved personal agendas.

We think SCHED* to be a conference lifesaver.

SCHED* A “Killer Startup”

SCHED* was recently profiled on Killer Startups, a website dedicated to cataloguing and reviewing new companies. Their writers summarized our reason for being killer as,

“It makes for organizing any event in a smooth way indeed, and for making any change or even cancelation that might be necessary.”

Even though we’ve been around since early 2008, we are very happy to be included on their site but we’re much more interested in being a killer application for your events.

Event Submission Forms: The Answer For Attendee Generated Events

Did you know that we can create an online submission form for your event allowing attendees to create events for your SCHED*? This is especially useful for conferences, conventions and festivals where the attendees create the events or if you want other related activities, like parties, captured on your schedule.

Contact us for more details about setting up a form for your event.

Touching Is O.K. (Demo Accounts Available)

Visitors to our website are always encouraged to take our product tour and to interact with all of our listed previous events. This includes creating a personal account, creating a schedule and testing out any event specific features. Taking the tour and interacting with our previous events helps people become familiar with SCHED* and our capabilities. While this is useful, we are sometimes asked if there is a way to “test” our system out, or input their data into our system to see the output.

In order to address this audience, we have established a demo account. While our demo account has certain limitations, it will allow you to use our web based publishing system to see your schedule in SCHED*.

Contact us if you’re interested in using our demo account today.

New Feature: Event Call Out

Our motto here at SCHED* is Simple. Social. Scheduling. and everything we do is focused on improving our clients and the end users experience. One issue many of our clients faced is that they often wanted one particular session or event to “stand out” from the rest of the sessions as it may be a particularly important or useful session. To help address this desire, we’ve created a new “Event Call Out” feature. Simply type “featured” into the “tag” column in the web based spreadsheet and these special events will standout from the rest of the pack with a star, bolded title font and a yellow border.

We hope you will find this feature useful and feel free to contact us if you have other ideas you think would be helpful!

SCHED* Reviewed on WebWorkerDaily

WebWorkerDaily is a site dedicated to covering the future of work in the age of the internet. The site offers advice, resources and tips for anyone who uses the web for work with the goal of helping us to be more productive, more connected and more successful than we could otherwise. SCHED* was recently reviewed by WebWorkerDaily contributor, Imran Ali. Her review details the steps required for set-up and ongoing management and ends on the following note:

“What’s perhaps even more valuable for organizers is the level of direct support and account handling that the company provides, something that’s lacking in most of the self-service web services around today. Well done for great service, SCHED*. If you are involved in organizing meetups, BarCamps, work events and other gatherings, SCHED*’s a powerful tool for organizers and attendees alike.”

While we always look for feedback to help us improve and meet your growing and changing needs, it is always nice when clients recognize our efforts to serve them in the best possible way. Thanks for the great review!

MailChimp, one of the leading providers of html email marketing services, continues its relationship with SCHED* as the official schedule sponsor of Internet Week New York 2009. The sponsorship is a great fit and branding opportunity for MailChimp who’s services are geared toward businesses owners, marketers, advertisers and general “do-it-yourselfers” interested in email marketing.

Schedule sponsorships can not only provide great branding and conversion opportunities for advertisers but can also provide new sources of potential sponsors for our client’s events. If you are interested in sponsorship opportunities with SCHED* for existing or upcoming events, contact us for more details.

Business Card Alternatives

One of the great things about conferences and festivals is meeting new people. While business cards are still the dominant way in which people exchange information we recently came across a great article sarcastically called “Business Cards Suck” describing some alternatives that take advantage of the growing power of technology.

Two of our favorites mentioned in the article are Dropcard and Contxts. While both services are free and allow users to set up a profile/message that includes their contact information, they differ in their delivery method. Dropcard sends your profile information via e-mail and Contxts sends via SMS text messages. They also differ in who has to take action in order to get the information.

With Dropcard, you text the email address of the person you wish to have your contact information to 77950. With Contxts, the new contact (i.e. the person you want to have your information) must send your username to 50500. Contxts will then send a return text message with your profile information.

We think these services are great and while they probably won’t replace business cards in the near future, they do provide an interesting alternative to the standard. As stated on Contxts’ home page, “…with the environment in shambles do you really want to be that guy who is handing out chopped up pieces of bleached trees?”

SCHED*v3: Website Re-launch

Its taken us about six months but we’ve finally re-launched our website! There are several reasons why we’ve decided to do this but it basically boils down to you: our site visitors. We want our website to be a place where people can learn about our application, get answers to the most frequently asked questions, discover new events and hear about the latest developments here in our blog.

We hope you enjoy our new site and let us know if you have any comments or suggestions by contacting us. Also, be sure to sign up for our quarterly newsletter to gain access to planning tips, new resources and exclusive discounts.

SCHED* Reviewed by ‘The Next Web’

A few weeks ago we began working with The Next Web to set up a SCHED* for their annual conference in Amsterdam. They decided to use us a week or two before their event so it came as a complete surprise to us when they decided to review our application on their blog here.

The Next Web had lots of good things to say about us including discussing the ease of use, scheduling flexibility, benefits of the social networking aspects, advantages provided by our mobile format and the ease they had getting set up which is pretty much summed up by the statement, “…Sched is amazingly easy to use…” Our favorite portion of their review is the closing line, “I see many more possibilities for Sched in the future, but for now it’s already a great web app with superb functionality. A must-have for your tech event.”

Thanks for the great review!

Internet Week New York

We are excited to announce that Internet Week New York (“IWNY”) has selected SCHED* to be their conference scheduling solution provider. IWNY is a weeklong festival of events saluting New York’s thriving Internet industry and community. The conference is presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences in cooperation with City of New York and The Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre & Broadcasting. Last year there were over 80 affiliated events/conferences and this year will be even bigger! Anyone can attend and anyone can throw events. IWNY starts June 1st so mark your calendars now!

Shy? Privacy Concerns? Private Personal Accounts Now Available!

SCHED* does many things including helping to create social networks for your events. Even though we do this, we realize some people are not comfortable sharing their plans or information about themselves. To address these concerns, we recently added the ability for end users (event attendees) to make their schedules private. This will allow users to hide their schedule, profile and attending status from other users. Even though their accounts are private they will still have access to other SCHED* features like mobile versions, print ready versions and exporting their schedule to other programs. While private account users will have their status hidden, they will still be counted for popularity measures, preserving the accuracy of these statistics.

This latest development helps add to our suite of privacy features and further shows our commitment to helping you and your attendees get the most out of our application by putting the control in your hands.