Event apps have opened some fantastic doors for everyone in the industry. In general, technology has been a top-notch ally to put together world-class events! And because Event Tech Podcast is all about, well, tech, today’s episode is a very special one. Our hosts, Brandt Krueger, and Will Curran get together to do a round-up of their favorite event apps!
There’s a little something for everyone, whether you’re a planner, a manager, or a supplier. And no matter if we’re looking at security, productivity, or things directly related to your line of work, there’s surely an app for you. Today’s episode is all about making your life better and your job easier, so let’s get going – it’s time to know more about Brandt and Will’s favorite event apps!
Brandt begins by advising about digital hygiene: “One of the things that I like to do is actually completely wipe my phone a couple of times a year and it’s good kind of phone hygiene for a couple of different reasons”, he says. For example, “those apps just tend to pile up and you’ve got this conference app and that conference app and they’re all different and they’re all just kind of sitting there, but it also forces you to kind of narrow down what are the things that are most important to me? And then what are those apps that you re-install right away?”.
This helps give your phone a shiny and new kind of feeling. Will adds on the importance of security: “definitely the first thing I download is definitely my password manager”, he says. “We obviously talk about two-factor authentication being a huge one as well”, he adds. For this, in particular, Will goes for Authy, while Brandt opts for Authenticator Plus.
When it comes to staying up to date with everything, Brandt chooses Business Calendar. Essentially, “every time I open my phone up, if there’s something that I should be doing right now or there’s a meeting or something like that”. Will opts for the default Gmail app, but he does bring something extra to the table: “something that helps my calendar a ton is a Chrome extension called Checker Plus for Google Calendar“, he says. “It’s a little widget that lives in your icons in the top right of Chrome and has a little mini calendar and allows you to book, do all that sort of stuff really quickly from it.”
Will adds: “If these things, everyone gets these meeting links, right, where you go, and you click on the link, it takes you to the calendar, you can book it. If you’re not using this, save yourself some time. Definitely, make sure you get one. There’s a lot of really good ones.”
Tapping into the inevitable world of conferences, Will speaks about his favorite: “I use Zoom for all my video conferencing … I think that’s, a lot of people use it, have heard of it now. Just use Zoom and so much better that GoToMeeting or anything else. But, if you do a lot of Zoom meetings, there’s a Chrome extension called Zoom Scheduler.”
Speaking on extensions, Brandt brags about Streak: “Anybody that has used a CRM before, it has all of the basic filters where you can create and set up pipelines. Let me bring it up here. (…) It’s got call logging, meeting notes, email filters, save views, task reminders.” He found it by chance: “I found myself having to do these emails over and over again and so I started looking for a text expander and part of Streak is something called Snippets, where you can set up as much or as little of an email as you want.”
Will has a different approach, very much revolving around HubSpot: “HubSpot has Snippets built into it and autofills in names if their contact record exists.”
Closely related is Google Inbox, “an opposite way of looking at things. For me, that’s why Inbox … I used that as my triage. Going on Inbox was my way of going, of really cleaning out my email box in a really easy way. So, pour one out for the Inbox users out there. Sad to see you go.” On a similar note, Will brings up SaneBox, which “uses artificial intelligence to essentially automatically put your emails into certain filters.
Another one they mention is Email Meter: “This used to be a Google spreadsheet add-on that basically went through all your emails and gathered a bunch of data on it and it spits out a report once a month that told me things like my average time to response, how long does it take for them to respond to my emails versus when I respond to my emails, what times do I get most of my email in, when do I send most of my email, a bunch of data that just helped me kind of tweak my workflow.”
“One that I’m absolutely loving that this is probably my, this year I’d recommend this more than anything, it’s called Dark Reader“, says Will. “It basically turns websites into a dark mode”.
“Another really great app that I love that’s also a Chrome extension and that I, this is one of the first apps that I download when I get on my phone: Pocket“, he adds, “It saves articles offline”
On a funnier note, Will adds: “One of my favorite … oh this is actually, this is one for Gmail. GIPHY for Gmail. G-I-P-H-Y. Super duper cool. Basically what it does is it allows you to insert GIFs in your emails. I’m telling you right now, business is way too serious. Let’s have a little bit more fun. Insert GIFs in your emails, your clients will love you a lot more.”
Still, on the topic of extensions, there’s a lot to go through. Theater Mode For Youtube, Loom, VidYard GoVideo all make the list when it comes to Will’s favorites. Brandt also shares a few of his own, including Full Page Screen Capture: “This is just a little extension. It’s not doing anything until you need it and then you just go in and click on Full Page Screen Capture. You can say what kind of format you want. You can specify the download directory, maybe you want a PDF or something like that.”
“I actually went on a little bit of a quest this last month to try some new stuff out”, says Will. Todoist is one of them, “it just does that one thing well: to-do-lists. (…) It’s super duper fast. Super duper clean.” In addition to that, Will also mentions Rippling, “full employment, it’s the single database for everything and it’s fantastic because not only does it have payroll, it does your benefits management, but it also does software management.”
For editing, Will advises AirCall to stay in touch with your people: “If you’re using a traditional phone, use AirCall. It’s like a phone on your computer. It automatically logs the calls into your CRM for you. I love it.”
Accompany “is a daily briefing that allows you to see all of the people that you have meetings coming with today. It shows you their LinkedIn profile, and any news that’s happened about that person. It’s like your daily assistant to let you know about all your upcoming meetings”, while Buzzsumo “allows you to type in a keyword like “event technology” and it’ll show you the number one article shared across the web all across all social networks.”
Also, “there’s really only two main invoicing and accounting”, says Brandt. “It’s QuickBooks and Freshbooks“. And on the topic of employees and business, Will adds: “If you hire employees, which most people, if you have a company, probably hire employees, and you probably have a job board. Breezy, I found to be the most powerful. (…) we use Good Hire to do our background checks it has a button. Literally, I click send background check and it integrates, Good Hire goes and does their background check for me. Super duper cool.” Also, Lattice is a life-saver for remote teams!
“So, for those who don’t know, I laid out the marketing strategy at Endless, so I have a ton of marketing tools”, Will says. “hotjar for heatmap tracking on websites. Wistia for all our video hosting. BuzzStream for link building. CRM kind of thing. Ahrefs, which does all our SEO tracking. Facebook ads. A company I mentioned. Google Ads. Design Pickle, that’s an amazing one. If you do any graphic design at all, used Fiverr to do it, check out Design Pickle. It’s $400 a month, unlimited graphics design. Also, another good one, which I don’t have bookmarked, because I don’t actually do it, my team actually uses this team more than me, it’s called Repurpose House.”
“Headspace“, he begins. “I’ve really been continuing, I’ve been doing it for over a year now at this point and I really … without getting too deep at all, I think it’s really beneficial to me. To have something that reminds me and keeps me calm and focused in my work life and in my personal life. I find that I continue to do that and continue to enjoy it.”
“For my newsreader, I use Google News on the phone. I find it to be a nice mix of the actual headlines of the day and things that are specific to me. Everyone knows that I love Pocket Casts for my podcast.”
“Another one that I’ve been using a lot lately on the phone which is really nice. It’s called Time Buddy. There’s the website that goes along with it. It’s not the prettiest app in the world, but it does exactly what you need it to do. It’s an Android app and it is great for dealing with people in multiple time zones.” On this note, Will advises to “check out Rescue Time“, which “basically, you install it on your phone, you install it on your browser, you install it on your computer and it tracks what websites you’re going to, what apps you’re using on your phone.”
It’s the end of the app marathon! It’s quite a handful, but we’ve got you covered. Down below you can find the remaining apps mentioned by Will and Brandt! Whether it’s an event app or just a little something to help out, you’ll be sure to find what you need to turn your life around.
Do you have any favorite event apps? What about apps in general, what are your must-haves? Let us know!
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