Showtime for kiwi start-up with smarts

Media Release

7 July 2011

Showtime for kiwi start-up with smarts

Battered by recession, bludgeoned by budget cuts and looking for silver bullets, the events industry is rapidly developing an appetite for apps. Smartphone applications to be specific.

‘It’s amazing what these little ‘gizmos’ can do,’ says Marie-Claire Andrews, whose company SmartShow Limited is more than ready to feed this ravening beast.

‘At their very simplest, event apps put a digital event programme in the palm of attendees hands via their smartphones,’ says Andrews.

As well as that, her app allows event participants to exchange contact information, collect digital brochures, connect, plan their time, receive news, alerts and Twitter feeds, collect leads, measure ROI, view activity reports about what they’ve, who they’ve liked or reports—and more—before, during and after events.

SmartShow Limited was founded in early 2010 by an experienced team who know events and technology and the power of combining them. Its product, branded ShowGizmo, is a hosted website to which show organisers upload information, which then populates native applications on iPhone, Blackberry and Android devices – giving those organisers a mobile app for each of their events without them needing a geeky/techy bone in their body.

ShowGizmo was successfully launched at NZ CIO Summit in July 2010, and has since been deployed at a range of events around the world and selected as the official event application for International Confex 2011 in the UK and The Perth and Middle East Event Shows 2011.

“We’re amazed by the appetite for technology and apps in particular,” says Andrews. ‘To meet the demand, in the last three months, we’ve appointed sales agents in the UK/Europe, Australia /Pacific and the Middle East. We’re really ramping up our presence in these regions and also have our sights set on Asia later in the year.’

Asked why she’s so confident, given that smartphones accounted for only 21.8% of mobile market, Andrews says,

‘But that’s 74% more than the previous year and the pundits are predicting that 50% of all business transactions will happen on smartphones by the end of 2012. And what we have now is only the tip of the iceberg! Very soon event apps will have fully interactive floor plans with ‘heat maps’ showing the most popular exhibits, where individual contacts are at any given time, and how everyone is connected to everyone else… It’s mind-boggling really what will be achievable via a phone - and with the pressure on producers to ‘green’ their events too, mobilising just makes sense’.

ENDS

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