Month: September 2014
Startup Monday: Travel Planning App, Gogobot’s “GoGo This Week”
Startup Monday is ABCey’s weekly post that features some of the best and brightest companies in the Bay Area. They are often companies that we have our eye on or have worked with in the past & would like to share with friends and followers of ABCey Events!
ABCey Events loves exploring and discovering San Francisco, but isn’t afraid to use travel planning apps to find out about events going on around the city too. That’s where Gogobot comes in to play. From hotels, vacation rentals, things to do and restaurants, Gogobot is a travel planning app for iOS and Android that lets you know where to go based on what city you are visiting and when you’ll be there. With more than 740,000 reviews and 4 million photos of more than 60,000 destinations around the globe, it is one of the largest sources of reviews for restaurants, hotels and attractions. Founder and CEO Travis Katz created the travel planning app to help people of all lifestyles and interests be aware of the happenings going on in their current city through recommendations by their friends and people like them. It is considered “the go-to place for places to go.”
Gogobot creates personalized, authentic experiences for you by highlighting places popular with people who share your tastes and interests. Once downloading the app and creating your Gogobot account, you choose travel styles or interest categories called “Tribes,” which will allow the app to match your personal style to others around you. Then you are given recommendations of sites and attractions by other people with similar interests so you know you’ll love them!
Last Thursday – September 11, 2014 – Gogobot announced the addition of “GoGo This Week,” a hand-curated list of events and activities in six cities around the world: Los Angeles, New York City, San Diego, Silicon Valley, London and San Francisco! Each week, when Gogobot members open their app, they will see 10 – 15 fresh, personalized recommendations of great events in their local area – from activities to festivals to restaurant openings – based on their distinct “tribes.” Users are able to tap through to learn more about each event and “Why to GoGo.” With the bookmarking feature to save events on multiple lists to check out for later, users are able to share lists with their friends who can also add events to the lists. The future goals of this travel planning app includes expanding the “GoGo This Week” feature to more cities in the coming months by bringing on editors for each city to create the hand-curated lists.
ABCey Events loves Gogobot’s new feature, GoGo This Week, because we are always looking for new ways to discover the fun events in San Francisco as well as showcase the events we are producing. Because Gogobot is a source of trusted travel advice for so many users, event publicity can spread at an even greater rate and can be targeted toward people who would be interested in our events!
Will you download Gogobot? What do you think of its extension, GoGo This Week? Let us know in the comments below or on Facebook and Twitter!
Five Favorite Apps Friday!
Happy Friday everybody! Let’s kick off the weekend right with ABCey Events’ five favorite apps of the week, apps that help our lives healthier, happier, and more organized (which comes in handy in the bustling world of events)!
1. Mint
There’s no time like the present for you to get your finances in order! Our favorite budgeting app of the moment is the Mint (free on iOS, Android, Amazon, and Windows). Mint helps its users stay organized by collecting all of their financial activity including savings, investments, and spending. You are able to input your financial goals and receive advice specifically tailored to your financial needs (did we mention all of this info comes in a beautiful pie chart?)! Plus a little budgeting can come a long way when getting ready for the holiday season. It’s apps like Mint that ABCey Events can’t wait to try out for our next event!
2. Fooducate
With the holidays coming up, particularly holiday food, what better way to stay in shape than keeping track of your diet. Our favorite healthy-living app of the week is Fooducate! The way Fooducate (free on iOS and Android) works is that its users can easily scan barcodes and get loads of information on just what exactly they are eating, highlighting things many manufacturers overlook like transfat, excessive sugar, and MSG. Fooducate not only helps users keep track of their diet but also educates them in the process!
3. Yahoo! Weather
When planning an event, particularly an outdoor one, weather can be a tricky element to plan around. With Yahoo! Weather (free on iOS and Andriod), users are able to not only check the weather report (including wind pressure and precipitation, etc), but also are able to do so while enjoying the beautiful backdrop of the corresponding city. And who doesn’t love an app that’s both informative as well as visually striking?
4. Afterlight
For all the Instagram fans out there, Afterlight takes mobile photography one step further by allowing its users to control an image’s brightness, contrast, and saturation, along with a wide array of fun filters and frames. Afterlight ($0.99 on iOS and Android) also includes one of the best crop tools as well as other basic photo editing features. We definitely can’t wait to try this app out when capturing our upcoming events!
5. Lovely
Let’s face it, San Francisco is an expensive city, especially when it comes to finding a place to live. Lovely (free on iOS) provides renters access to great apartment deals while helping users find a place quick and easy with its real-time listings. Lovely keeps users in the know by providing notifications when new listings are available. Trying to move out of your apartment or looking to relocate to a new city? Lovely is your app!
What are your favorite apps of the moment? Share with us your thoughts in the comments below or on Facebook and Twitter!
ABCey’s Weekend LineUp: San Francisco September 13-14, 2014
Do you feel like this week went by incredibly fast and you haven’t made plans for your weekend yet? Don’t worry, ABCey Events has you covered! Whether you’re into science, literature, food, or fashion – we’ve gathered a list of the most exciting events in San Francisco on September 13-14, 2014.
Free Shakespeare in the Park: The Taming of the Shew
Saturday and Sunday | 2pm | Main Post Lawn | 103 Montgomery Street, Main Post, Presidio
The ideal event to bring your friends and family together! Bring a blanket and some snacks and enjoy the funny and crazy plot twists in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shew. A Green Show describing Shakespeare’s background and history precedes the play, which makes this event great for non-Shakespeare literates as well.
Chic Metropolitan Fashion Show
Saturday | 7pm – 1am | 950 Mason St, San Francisco | Cover $30-50
If you are into fashion, you can’t miss the Fast and Luxurious fashion show by Chic Metropolitan this Saturday. Held in The Grand Ballroom of the Fairmont Hotel and presented by multi-millionaire Robert Herjavec, Chic Metropolitan will introduce the latest fashion from Colleen Queen on more than 50 models. The Bay Area mash-up band The Rock-It Scientists will be playing at the event. Feel fancy and dip into the world of the rich and famous. Click here for more information and tickets.
Ghirardelli Square Chocolate Festival
Saturday and Sunday | 12pm – 5pm | Ghirardelli Square, San Francisco | Free entry but chocolate samples must be purchased.
Chocolate lovers will enjoy this weekend’s 19th annual Ghirardelli Chocolate Festival! More than 30 vendors will be offering all kinds of sweet and delicious samples. The sampling tickets can be purchased here and the money will be donated to Project Open Hand. If you don’t want to spend money on the sampling tickets, there are still plenty of other reasons to check out this event! There will be chef demonstrations from chocolatiers, cupcake bakers and many more, as well as the popular ice-cream sundae eating contest.
California Academy of Science: Free Admission Day
Sunday | 11am – 5pm | 55 Music Concourse Drive, San Francisco
This upcoming Sunday is one of the rare days when the California Academy of Sciences opens its doors for free to the public. Seize this opportunity! Bring family and friends and visit the world-class 400,000 square foot institution that includes an aquarium, a planetarium, a natural history museum and a four-story rainforest.
Apple’s September iPhone 6 and iWatch Event Launches Exciting New Tech
Big news! Yesterday, Apple hosted its September 2014 iPhone 6 and iWatch Event! We can’t wait to try out all of the new tech products below! Especially the new app Apple Pay which could come in handy on small purchases at big events!
iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus
When we look at the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, the first thing that we notice is the significantly larger screen size with iPhone 6’s 4.7 inch screen and the iPhone 6 Plus’s 5.5 inch screen with rounded edges and a camera lens which protrudes the phones body. We can also note the phone’s thinner and lightweight body!
New Camera Specs: include an 8MP iSight camera with 1.5 micron pixels and a f/2.2 aperture. The new camera has the capacity to shoot 1080p videos at 30-60fp using continuing auto focus, perfect for covering live events on social media! The front-facing camera feature offers users a burst mode and single shot HDR and HDR videos.
Both phones will come with iOS 8, with the iPhone 6 starting at $199 for 16GB and the 6 Plus starting at $299. Both phones will be available to ship on September 19th, pre-orders starting on September 12th.
Apple Pay
Apple has introduced a new payment process called Apple Pay! Apple Pay uses NFC and Touch ID to confirm purchases, with users using their Passbook App to browse through their credit cards after verifying the card with their bank. Apple Pay creates a one-time device-only number which protects the user’s credit card number in the event of theft and allows the user to suspend payments without the hassle of canceling their credit cards. This tap-and-go style payment is similar to the R.F.I.D. style of payments used for a number of large events!
Introducing the iWatch!
The most exciting announcement at the Apple Event was the unveiling of the long awaited iWatch! The iWatch will act, not only as a watch (accurate within plus or minus of 50 milliseconds), but also serve as a competitor of popular fitness devices like Jawbone or Fitbit, with its equipped heart monitor, gyroscope and accelerometer. The iWatch will also include Siri and a navigation system known as digital crown. Apple will also open the WatchKit SDK allowing third-party developers to create additional functionalities on the Apple Watch.
Style: The iWatch will come with various customizable options including six types of strap and two metal frame colors, in three different collections: the original Watch, Watch Sports, and a 18k gold Apple Watch Edition.
The iWatch will be available early 2015 with prices starting at $349.
and since we love events!
Tim Cook wrapped up the unveiling declaring his profound love and involvement in music, before welcoming U2 to perform on stage as well as giving out the bands latest album “Songs of Innocence” free on iTunes (offer lasts until mid-October 14th).
Which products are you most excited about?! Our personal fave is the Apple Pay! Let us know on the links below or on Facebook and Twitter!
Tech Tuesday: TuneTug, the Interactive Party Music App
Tech Tuesday highlights the best and brightest ideas in the tech world. ABCey would like to recognize these up and coming technologies for their innovative ideas and impact on the event world!
Ever been at a party or event and wanted to choose the songs being played? TuneTug is a new party music app that allows guests to check out the event’s playlist, add music from their own online libraries and ‘tug’ up and down on their favorite songs for the DJ to play next!
How it works: Just download the free app, upload your playlist from iTunes or Spotify or create a new one from scratch, and let your guests do the rest! As long as they can use internet on their mobile devices, your guests can access the link you’ve shared and start ‘tugging’ on songs they want to hear or even add their own to the mix. The more popular a song, the quicker it will get played!
Why we love it: Instead of worrying if your guests will like the music, TuneTug takes away that anxiety by putting the music in their hands, literally! By giving your guests the choice of what songs to play on this party music app, they will be more involved in and committed to the event because they are choosing and listening to the music they want to hear.
Would you use TuneTug to involve and entertain the guests at your next event or party? Let us know in the comments below or on Facebook and Twitter!
Startup Monday: Unwind Me, Massage Booking Made Simple
Startup Monday is ABCey’s weekly post that features some of the best and brightest companies in the Bay Area. They are often companies that we have our eye on or have worked with in the past & would like to share with friends and followers of ABCey events!
Mondays don’t have to be so manic with this week’s startup – Unwind Me. Launched publicly last month at Y Combinator’s semi-annual Demo Day in Mountain View, Calif., Unwind Me is a web application massage booking service that lets you order a massage therapist straight to your home for a flat rate of $89.
How it Works: For customers, Unwind Me is simplifying the process of booking a massage and in true San Francisco startup fashion- allowing instant gratification to its many users through massages only hours after booking online; it’s massages made simple! For the massage therapists working with Unwind Me, the startup’s low overhead costs means they get to see a greater portion of the $89, all while enjoying an extremely flexible schedule.
Why We Love it: We’re so excited to watch this company grow. We’re thinking this will be incredibly useful for conferences. Imagine being able to offer massages at your conference booth or networking happy hour!
What type of events would you like to see Undwind Me at next? Let us know in the comments below or on Facebook and Twitter!
Using Technology to Enhance Guest Experience
In an era of apps, event planners are not only utilizing technology on the back end, but are starting to incorporate wireless technology into the events themselves to enhance guest experience. For marketing professionals, it’s also interesting to think about how some of these new trends can be leveraged to further elevate your brand. Lets take a look at a few examples of this in action:
1. RFID Technology
Music festivals such as California’s Coachella Festival and Belgium’s Tomorrowland music festival use radio frequency identification technology, RFID, wristbands in lieu of admission tickets. This not only makes festival entrance a little more seamless, but as an added social benefit where daily attendees can check into stages and otherwise connect with one another.
Tennessee’s Bonnaroo music festival also allowed attendees to swipe their wrist bands at various photo booths around the festival and have the photos automatically upload to their Microsoft OneDrive cloud account.
2. Snapchat’s Our Story
We saw the power of the event hashtag with Instagram and Twitter, being able to remotely browse pictures and tweets from an event. Now, Snapchat’s Our Story features aggregates users ‘snaps’ happening at an event into one fun photo,video story. The implications of adding a new level local and remote awareness to your event could be huge.
3. 3D Selfies
With the increasing popularity of 3D printing, companies like Shapeways bring a whole new dimension to the selfie. Party goers interested strike a pose, hold still for about two minutes while a camera works its magic. Two weeks later, your mini-me arrives on your door stop. The ultimate party favor!
Have you seen any of these technology innovations at events you’ve attended? Any other impressive uses of technology in the events? Tell us about it in the comments below or on Facebook and Twitter!
ABCey’s Weekend LineUp: September 5th – 7th, 2014
It’s that time of the week again! Kick off your September right with with the help of ABCey Events. We’ve put together a fun list of things to do in San Francisco, September 5th – 7th, from science exhibits, ping-pong, street food, and more!
Featured Event:
The Grand Budapest Hotel Outdoor Screening | Saturday, September 6th | 8pm-11pm | Washington Square Park | Free | With summer heat radiating through San Francisco air, what better way to spend a hot summer night than a relaxing evening at Film Night in the Park! Kick back with some friends and enjoy Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Did we mention it’s free?!
1. After Dark: Civic Hacks
Thursday, September 4th | 6pm-10pm | Exploratorium Pier 15 | $15 | Due to increased popularity the Exploratorium has expanded their monthly After Dark events to a weekly Thursday evening program. Enjoy the amazing bay views, delicious nibbles, and all kinds of libations! And don’t forget to stay and enjoy the Exploratorium‘s endless amount of thought provoking and amusing exhibits.
2. Friday Night Markets
Friday, September 5th | 4pm-9pm | UN Plaza, 8th and Market | Free | Stop by United Nations Plaza for the Grand Opening of Friday Night Markets! Come and enjoy food from six to eight food trucks and stands, a beer garden, DIY workshops, live music and dancing, games and more!
3. Berlin-Style Ping Pong & Hip Hop Dance Party
Saturday, September 6th | 8pm| Rickshaw Stop, Hayes Valley | $10 | Stop by the Rickshaw Stop and partake in American Tripps‘ Berlin-Style ping pong and hip hop dance party featuring DJ Beauregard, spinning 90’s hip hop throughout the night! What can be better than becoming king, or queen, of the ping pong table, paddle in one hand and a beer in the other?
4. Haight Street Music & Merchants Street Festival
Sunday, September 7th | 12pm-6pm| Haight Street | Free | Haight Street is hosting their First Annual Music and Merchants Street Festival honoring the long time merchants who cultivated Haight Street into the infamous hot spot it is today. The festival will include three sponsored stages filled with amazing music, art installations, and plenty activities for adults and children alike.
5. Hidden Ropes Course in the Trees
Sunday, September 7th | 1pm-4pm| Fort Miley Adventure Challenge Course | $35 | Want to wrap up your weekend on the adventurous side? Why not try out the ropes course at the Fort Miley Adventure Challenge Course. With ropes built into the trees, the ropes course provides a great and strenuous workout with rewarding ocean views! Test your strength and have a fun afternoon in this hidden San Francisco gem.
What will you be doing this weekend? Enjoying some great food at the Friday Night Market? Or having a little adventure up in the trees? Let us know in the comments below!
Best Practices in Leveraging Social Media to Expand your Network
As event planners, we are constantly interacting with large networks of professionals and meeting different influencers. If you’re a professional of any kind, you’ve likely had to walk the fine line between seeming desperate and building a healthy network. Luckily, leveraging the right social media tools will help you connect with the contacts you have made, without being intrusive. Here are some tips we’ve put together on how to best use social media to help expand your network!
1. Identify Your Target Influencers:
Try focusing on connecting with people in a profession that’s relevant to yours. This way, you won’t waste your time on people that don’t have an impact to your business anyway. You might find your target influencers on social media or industry events. so take a peek at industry publications or get recommendations from your colleagues.
2. Use Twitter:
Most accounts on Twitter are public and therefore easy to find. Look up your target influencers and send them a tweet. Fully exploit your 140 characters. The more personality you give your tweet, the more chance they reply!
3. Use Linkedin:
Linkedin is the biggest online network of professionals. Sometimes, it is not possible to “connect” directly to a person if you don’t know them personally. In this case, you can easily join a group that your target influencer is part of and participate in discussions to call to their attention. You can also send connection requests using the group, which doesn’t make you seem like a stalker!
4. Write a Personal Email:
Email addresses are often challenging to find, but if you have actually located an email address, write a message – but make sure to keep it short. Illustrate exactly what you want and get to the point quickly. Including that you like your influencers’ work or point of view is a great way to obtain their attention. This way they can see that you’re genuinely interested in them and they would be more are likely to share perspectives and advises.
Have any of these social media tactics worked for you?
Tell us about it or share other ways to connect professionally with influencers in the comments below or on Facebook and Twitter!