Simon on: App security

Ask any organiser whether they would mind a competitor getting hold of a full list of their registrants in order to promote a competing event and most would probably object. 

Yet, according to recent reports, that’s what’s happening at some events. In some cases, the organiser has apparently been told that it’s possible and has ignored the warning.

The situation has arisen because some conference apps (not all by any means) allow any user to download a full list of registrants, in some cases, along with all their personal information.

A competitor doesn’t even need to attend the event. All they do is download the app to get free access to the registrant database.

The fact that some organisers have been told that this is possible with their event app and have done nothing to prevent it suggests that they don’t care about the security of their data. 

Unfortunately this seems to be a common attitude these days. A recent conference session on Internet security attracted only a handful of delegates while another promoting the wonders of social media was a sell-out.

Perhaps it’s time for organisers to learn how to safeguard their assets before being swept up by the latest bandwagon.

Originally published in Conference News

Simon on: Event apps

Every meeting planner needs apps – right? Well, not necessarily. It depends on how useful the app is to the attendees, how painful it is to set up and how reliable it is at the event.

This is the balancing act that a planner needs to understand. For example, if you’ve got a significant number of breakout sessions at your event, an app might be useful to remind attendees that a session is starting.  That said, the app is still not going to be popular if it is too fiddly to set up. This is the pain threshold: some attendees will be happy to grapple with a tricky set up operation but the majority will probably give up before getting to the end of it.

Even if it’s useful to users and easy to install, if it doesn’t deliver consistently onsite, it will still fail. How many event apps rely on having an Internet connection? The best download and store their information on the phone itself so the app will work even if the wi-fi or the mobile network is groaning under the load from other attendees.

So before diving in and having an app developed think: is it useful to the attendees, pain-free, reliable? If the answer is no to any of these, then think again.

Originally published in Conference News