Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Nov 21

SuperInvestor: Helping the financial world network itself out of the recession

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Last week, Place Vendôme, in the heart of Paris, was filled with illuminations from its luxury boutique windows, winter holiday decorations and the charming glow of brasseries. A few meters away, down the idyllic Rue de Castiglione, the Westin Hotel was also alight with the screens of hundreds of Blackberries, iPads, and iPhones, all belonging to private equity investors using Yasmo Live.

They were attending Informa’s SuperInvestor conference, which gathers the world’s top private equity investors, to discuss partnerships, emerging markets and solutions for the unique issues facing their industry.

SuperInvestor is indeed super charged. On day one, its 800 attendees were averaging 20 discussions and panels per day. On day 3, Louis, cappuccino “artiste” at the conference bar reported serving 388 caffeinated beverages before lunch time.

We won’t pretend the conference wasn’t a tense affair. We are still weathering one of the worst financial crises in modern times, and Guy Hands, Terra Firma’s iconic leader, summed the mood up well when he explained to a packed audience how desperately the industry needs those who actively take risks and create innovative solutions for real world problems.

It wasn’t surprising in that context that delegates were generally impressed with our app, and with having the entire conference at their fingertips. The PE types to like to be plugged in after all!

This was the first of several investment conferences that Informa ICBI has appointed us to handle around the world. So watch this space to see how we are helping financial professionals around the world network themselves out of the recession!

Oct 20

Making digital history: LondonLaunch:Live

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Another event, another global capital. We might be in a recession, but that hasn’t slowed London down on the innovation front: when London Launch advertises its Live exhibition as “super high tech” it really isn’t kidding. In fact, London Launch was created three years ago with the specific goal of revolutionising the events industry, no less, so we felt quite privileged when they hired us to be a part of their flagship conference.

The concept is simple: simply take apart everything you thought you knew about organising events, and super-charge each element with cutting-edge technology. The result is as beautiful as it is efficient: traditional stands are replaced with digital 3D canvases, marketing collateral is entirely virtual and, of course, networking is put on steroids thanks to the most innovative of all conference apps: yours truly.

LondonLaunch:Live is an event for event professionals, and there is no doubt that it perfectly captures the industry zeitgeist: technology is making quantum leaps, fast moving from the status of nice-to-have to NEED-to-have. In short, the lovely people at London Launch are our type of guys: bold, hungry and perfectly in tune with the era. Our partnership with them is over the long term, so watch this space!

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Sep 07

Presenting Yasmo Live V3: Ubiquity!

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You clamoured for Yasmo Live to work on Android, and we listened. You yearned for the day you could harness the networking power of Yasmo Live on your Blackberry, and we delivered. You dreamt of a time when Yasmo would make full use of your iPad’s potential, and we made that dream come true. Here’s introducing Yasmo Live Ubiquity, the most powerful version of our app to date, available on every major mobile platform.

Following months of intense collaboration with some of our main clients, we have completely revamped the app, to make it slicker and much more user friendly. The result, for one, is that it looks beautiful on all platforms, even on Blackberry which is notorious for its small screen and low-res display. It also makes life a whole lot easier, synching with Outlook and your mobile’s calendar and enabling push notifications so that you never forget any of the meetings set up through Yasmo ever again. We have also reworked the ad-display system, with rotating banners that give our commercial partners a gorgeous, fully immersive advertising platform that adds to the overall aesthetics of the app, without damaging the user experience.

Ubiquity pretty much does what it says on the tin, allowing you to network before, during, and after events, wherever you are and whatever device you’re using. It’s also our biggest innovation to date and our pride and joy. Download it now for iPhone, iPad, Blackberry and Android.

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Jun 21

Hobnobbing with the elite: the New York Forum

Event Networking, Uncategorized No Comments »

Every successful company has its defining moments: the important turning points when everyone involved knows that they are creating history, the ones that you know for sure will propel you into the big time. Twitter had its SXSW festival, Skype had its Ebay, and now Yasmo has had it’s New York Forum, an invitation-only leadership forum that gathers some of the world’s brightest and most successful executives.

To be sure, we’ve done bigger events. Technology World, for example, catered to more than 2,000 people compared to the NYF’s 500. And it’s not the first time that we have worked for a prestigious company. We have, after all, managed events for the likes of Bloomberg and TechCrunch. But the New York Forum is in many ways simply in a league of its own. For one, the production team behind the event is absolutely world class, led by the former organiser of the World Economic Forum, Richard Attias. The level of participants is astounding too. We had never seen so many Chairmen and CEOs appear on the “People around you” tab of the app. Just check out the list of speakers and you will understand what we mean…and the 500 other “mere” attendees were just as high level.
Then there was also the fact that we were rolling out V2 of our app at the event: fully skinned in the colours of the NYF, featuring Twitter and LinkedIn integration and live video streaming of the sessions. There was even a 17″ screen dedicated to our app in the main lobby, where participants could casually check the programme of the next panel, or the whereabouts of their next break-out session.

It’s fair to say that we have never worked this hard for an event, and collaborating with the likes of Richard Attias & Associates really makes you up your game. And it was all absolutely worth it, obviously. The level of engagement with the app was phenomenal, and on a personal level, it is hard to exaggerate how incredibly inspiring two days of brainstorming with some of the world’s most successful leaders can be. Watch out for your invitation to NYF 2012…you might get lucky!

Oct 21

What are trade shows doing to generate new sponsorship revenues: Capitalising on data

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Our answer to a very interesting discussion on Linkedin:

http://linkd.in/9uvjIY

I agree with everyone’s post.

All we talk about here is a way to measure our on-site interactions and provide valuable data to clients and sponsors. All we’re after is something that will bridge our on-site/physical presence with our digital selves, so as to be able to easily extract data and be able to offer stats and demographics to the sponsors and even measure how successful a stand was at an event; how many leads they’ve generated, what was the follow up etc.

Well obviously the key is mobile. It is the only device that can bridge our physical and digital selves and provide long-anticipated data that clients and sponsors can capitalise upon. I really want to put out an opinion piece here rather than advertise our services, but I do have to say we ourselves were so frustrated that we didn’t have this ability for all these years, so we created a system which captures:
1. Everybody who enters a venue (to attend an event) with demographics (gender, industry, profession,location, their objectives from the event) directly from their mobile phone.
2. Capture who is interested in which delegate through the profile views they exchange.
3. Capture how many appointments where arranged on-site and among which delegates
4. Capture every single delegate that the team at a stand talks to and a system where they can file on their mobile phone what they have talked about onto each of those profiles. Afterwards that shows as a follow up agenda onto their online account with full info about the person they need to follow up with.
5. Event Analytics of delegates’ activity throughout the day.

The solution is there, it is interactive, it syncs mobile and web instantly and it answers the need that 70% of the respondents expressed at this summer’s report by Fast Future Research ‘The Convention 2020 Report’: they considered on-site social networking to be the most anticipated technology in the conference market.

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Dec 08

We are live at TechCrunch ChristmasCrunch!

Advertising, Event Networking, Event Sponsors, Real-time mobile conferencing, Uncategorized No Comments »

We are very proud to announce that on Tuesday, 15 December at the TechCrunch ChristmasCrunch event in London, we will premiere our  real-time mobile conferencing platform.

At the TechCrunch event, we are inviting a select number of attendees to us Yasmo Live and they will be able to see and search through a rotating list of picture-based profiles of fellow attendees on their mobile phone, not a rented device.

How does it work?  Simple. The Yasmo Live platform deploys Wi-Fi enabled networks, increasing the speed of data exchange and surpassing mobile data charges, especially for conferences taking place abroad.

Developed for both the conference goer and the organiser, so that neither lose any business opportunities, users can immediately locate and meet sought after business leads, customers, partners or media contacts, or store their details for later use, making every moment at the conference count.

Plus, for the conference and event organiser, we provide a compelling new advertising platform as well as the means to increase attendance rates and registration. Our white label service gives sponsors exclusive visibility amongst highly targeted audiences by enabling them to ‘dress’ the application with their brands and track the effectiveness of their advertising.

We believe that there needs to be a union of both the physical and digital world at events and conferences and Yasmo Live reduces the cultural and technological barriers for event organisers and creates a two-way communication platform for vendors, sponsors and attendees. The platform enables better tracking of registered delegates, easy gathering of feedback forms and identification of the demographics and special interests of attendees all of which lead to more profitable and meaningful events.

Installing Yasmo Live on the mobile phone is simple and requires one download. It allows users to save and take notes on individual profiles onto their personal Yasmo Live account, where they can login and pursue contacts made or even missed at the event. Users can filter connections through preferred criteria and search for those business leads they want to network with. The second version of the application will feature embedded microblogging features for extended networking capabilities in Q1 2010.

If you are in London at the TechCrunch event, we hope you will try this new real-time networking experience and sign up at www.yasmolive.com. See you mobile!

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Nov 16

Facilitating networking efforts at conferences and trade shows

Event Networking, Uncategorized No Comments »

Preparing for a trade show or business conference is a huge task. There are many details and logistics to arrange for an event that unites buyers, sellers, media representatives and partners. Identifying who you are targeting or pursuing is an obvious requirement in order to maximize networking efforts and receive valuable feedback.

The location, timing and content are three critical issues for all conferences, but more important is building connections and introductions. However tedious a show may seem, it is important that the show provides participants with useful activities that complement the general atmosphere of the show and facilitate successful networking between buyers and sellers. Trade shows and conferences create remarkable and impressive environments for exhibitors and attendees to meet prospective partners and customers in a very short period of time, personally present their products or services (and any useful product information) and establish a dependable relationship and fine first impression.

The trade show gives vendors an ideal opportunity to make early introductions that can lead to future fruitful business communications and dealings. Therefore it is worthwhile for vendors to make the effort in two main areas:

  • define and grasp the message to express to all attendees and visitors
  • pre-plan to meet relevant attendees and prospects

Two main types of supporting solutions available today for exhibitors and attendees at conferences include hiring an expert to assist with organizing the show and related activities, or various applications that provide a platform for organizing show details and tasks. Building on the deep need for fruitful interactivity between show participants, and on advancement in mobile technology, YasmoLive offers a new kind of solution to help enhance networking activities and easily connect with customers, prospects and the media attending the conference. We invite you to explore our website and learn more about YasmoLive and the great features it offers for all those interested in fruitful networking.

Please check back for fresh insight and information, Areti.

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