ABCey’s Tech Tuesday: 2019 Bay Area Tech Events and Conferences

Can you believe we’re already half way through the year? For today’s #TechTuesday, ABCey features our top five Bay Area tech events and conferences to attend in 2019.

1. Y-Combinator Demo Days

Twice a year, Y-Combinator Demo Day gathers it’s latest batch of YC-funded founders to present their companies to a room of selected investors and press. Over the course of two days, founders hope for investors to take a chance and invest in their companies. Because of this selection process, this event is invitation only.

When: August 19th-20th, 2019 | Location: Pier 48 |

2. Oracle OpenWorld

Oracle OpenWorld, the tech giant’s deep dive into all things cloud, offers more than 2,200 educational sessions, hundreds of demos and hands-on labs, and exhibitions from more than 400 partners. Over a course of four days, you’ll engage in free-flowing ideas that will help you and your business do tomorrow’s business goals, today! You won’t want to miss out on today’s première business and technology event.

When: September 16th-19th, 2019 | Location: Moscone Center |

3. TechCrunch Disrupt

This large conference allows startups to sign up and present their business ideas on the stage in front of investors, media for exposure and win prize money. In addition, the featured guests this year include Heather Adkins, Michael Rogers, and Evan Spiegel. You sure do not want to miss out on an opportunity like this!

When: October 2nd-4th, 2019 | Location: Moscone North |

4. Open Data Science Conference West

ODSC West 2019 is one of the largest applied data science conferences in the world. It’s the conference to engage, to build, to develop, and to learn from the data science community. At ODSC, their goal is to host those looking to accelerate their skills and knowledge by offering programs of varying difficulty levels, from beginner to advanced and in between. No matter what skill level you are, there is a program for you!

When: October 29th- Nov 1st, 2019 | Location: Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport |

5. Dreamforce 19′

Dreamforce is an annual conference hosted by Salesforce in San Francisco. Each year, Dreamforce attracts tens of thousands of professionals and provides thousands of workshops. Because of this, attendees will be able to learn how Salesforce can help take their business to the next level.

When: November 19-22, 2019 | Location: Moscone Center |

What tech events and conferences are you planning to attend? Let us know what you think in the comments below or onFacebook and Twitter!

Want to plan a conference after-party? Look no futher, as ABCey is here to help. Click here to learn more about events we’ve done for other San Francisco startups and Fortune 500 companies,

Startup Monday: Zenefits

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!

In light of a lot of recent difficult press, ABCey still has high hopes that Zenefits can overcome these growing pains! Zenefits is working to bring attention to what has made their products so appealing in the first place: Shopping for health insurance is really frustrating!! As a business owner, what do you use to organize your employees health insurance, payroll, FSA, 401k, and other HR tasks? Are you spending lots of money in your HR department or doing these tedious tasks yourself? Look no further, Zenefits can help solve your problem.

How it works:

Although Zenefits mostly focuses on health insurance, this software is used by more than 20,000 businesses to streamline HR systems. Instead of using multiple different programs for tracking employees health insurance, payroll, 401k, FSA, contractors, etc., this startup helps small businesses by bundling all of these systems into one easy to use software.

With this platform, you are able to track:

Benefits/Insurance
HR Management
ACA Compliance
Payroll
Time & Attendance
PTO
and more!

Why we love it:

Zenefits has great benefits! It is an all in one platform that makes managing administrative tasks a breeze. The program is easy to set up, eliminates tedious paperwork and the costs of hiring HR employees! We also love the changes that Zenefits is making including a new CEO, who is determined to change the company in a drastic way. Like Zappos, they have recently scaled down their employees to ensure that everyone is 100% invested in the company. With the new direction their company is taking, Zenefits has a bright future!

Planning on using this amazing platform for your team? Let us know in the comments below or on Facebook & Twitter!

3 Event Networking Apps to Upgrade Your Experience

Over 40 million Americans attend a convention, trade show, or a conference each year. For the attendee, one of the greatest benefits of a business conference is the unlimited access to networking. This is an excellent way to create lasting business relationships, while maximizing on career opportunities and potential. However, in an ocean full of people, how are you supposed to network with the RIGHT ones and how do you sustain these relationships? In the year of tech, there is always a solution, and this solution can be found right at your fingerprints. These 3 networking apps are the greatest new addition to your cellular device and your networking career!

1. SUMMITSYNC

For all of our LinkedIn readers you will be very pleased, SummitSync utilizes your LinkedIn login as it’s backbone to connect you to your conference. Once you’re logged in, select your conference and merely swipe left or right across the attendee list to connect with fellow participants who you are interested in networking with. Once a mutual connection is made you are offered a platform of capabilities like in-house messaging, email accessibility, and calendaring tools! Enterprise customer relationship management (CRM) tools also become available and ensure company productivity by recording clientele data to optimize interactions. Oh, and once April hits Google maps and location services will be accessible with the app to cover all grounds!

2. CAMCARD

For all of our earth friendly readers, this is the app for you! There’s no longer a need to bring 20+ business cards to your next networking event when CamCard is just a click a way. Allow CamCard to store your business card so you can go paperless to events while you virtually exchange information at your next meeting, trade show, and/or seminar. Contact cards are quickly and easily stored into the database and provide management efficiency with features like notes, reminders, quick searches, tagging and sharing, and most importantly productivity. Enjoy the convenience of accessing this information anytime and anywhere with iCloud on all of your database platforms.

3. CHARLIE

While attempting to impress a prospective business relation or employer, you may have competition with the 3 other individuals who are just as prepared and just as interested. However, what your competitors may not have is Charlie, which literally will put you two steps ahead of the game. The Charlie app provides virtual insight prior to any interaction that will enable you to make a lasting impression. Forgot you scheduled a meeting in the midst of the weekend? No worries. This app understands the hectic agenda of a professional and will send you email reminders with pertinent research to ensure you’re fully prepared to present yourself to the best of your ability. Charlie ensures that you’re maximizing all possible opportunities, without you even having to ask!

Which one of these networking apps will you be using at your upcoming conference this year? Let us know on Facebook or Twitter!

Tech Tuesday: Intro, the digital business card

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!

The new app, Intro, from About.me will revolutionize the networking world because it is a digital business card!

While About.me provides a visually appealing snapshot of your professional profile, Intro makes creating and maintaining business connections so much easier. You decide how much information you share with your new friends and business acquaintances on this digital business card by deciding whether to share your page, phone number, and/or email address depending on the person!

Why We Love Intro: ABCey thinks Intro is so awesome because it lets you keep track of who you’ve shared your card with as well as who has shared with you. Since we tend to meet a lot of people at events, Intro lets us keep track and remember who’s who by viewing their About.me page and downloading specific information right into our phone’s address book! One of the biggest bonuses of this digital business card: Intro is FREE!

Would you use Intro to connect with friends and build stronger business acquaintances? Let us know in the comments below or on Facebook and Twitter!

Startup Monday: PlagScan, The Unique Content Verification Tool

This week, we want to draw your attention to PlagScan, a startup located in Palo Alto. PlagScan offers an unique content verification tool and is the leading service for the detection of plagiarism in Germany, including many parts of Europe. PlagScan is now establishing its service in the US market, cooperating mostly with academic institutions. While most other plagiarism detection services are only available for the academic market, PlagScan can be used for business as well.

You might wonder how a plagiarism detection software could be relevant to your job or your business and why ABCey would recommend to check PlagScan out. Let’s say you are an event planner, marketing director, or work in any job that requires creativity and unique content. You spend a lot of time writing marketing texts, blogs, or press releases. Wouldn’t it be great to check if your work is actually unique and hasn’t been written before?

Plagscan is useful even if you are not the one writing the content for your business. Let’s say you have hired writers or interns. Imagine they use published or copyrighted content in your business blogs, without giving proper credit. This is called plagiarism and would shed negative light on your business. With PlagScan you can easily check for plagiarism and make sure that your content is unique.

How it works: PlagScan uses advanced technology in its software that compares billions of online sources with the document you want to check. You can easily upload a document or copy and paste text. After submitting your text, you get a detailed report with the results.

Why we love it: PlagScan is cost-effective and fast. The company offers a competent service that is definitely worth investing in. Best of all: PlagScan also helps to improve your search engine optimization.

Would you use PlagScan? What do you think about this software? Tell us about your opinion in the comments below or on Facebook and Twitter!

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!

Event Spotlight: Khazanah Nasional

We are super excited to be producing an event this coming Sunday, September 22nd, for Khazanah Nasional! They will be opening up a new office in beautiful downtown San Francisco. The event is Malaysian themed and they will be welcoming their Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak!

Khazanah Nasional Berhad is the Government of Malaysia’s strategic investment fund. They promote economic growth and make strategic investments on behalf of the Government. They have invested in over 50 major companies around the world which range over a broad spectrum of work.

ABCey was hired to manage all aspects of event planning and production including, AV, lighting, catering, decor, florals, entertainment, videography and photography, and we couldn’t be more thrilled!

Step it Up: The 5 Most Influential Words in Social Media

Social media is a strange and delicate thing. It has the potential to drive in hundreds of prospective customers or alienate you completely! ABCey helps you hone in on what’s important so YOU won’t be the one in a social media dead zone!

1. Share | Social media exists because people like to share and make connections! In the end, your goal is to successfully share your message with the world, and you love seeing “shared” and “retweeted” pop up on your notifications! Before you post, ask yourself, “would I share this with my friends?” If you don’t find it interesting, others probably won’t either!

2. Interaction | Tweeting can sometimes feel like sending messages off into the void of cyberspace. The only way to know what people think of your tweets is through interactions under the “connect” tab. If you’re not seeing as much interaction as you want, include language like “tell us your opinion” and “what do you think” to encourage your followers to respond. Also, try following those you think would be interested in what you say!

3. Reach | Your message can be witty, well-worded, and interactive, but it won’t matter if only 15 people see it! Below every post, Facebook will tell you home many people saw what you said, whether it was shared, on their news feed, or found through a friend. Beef up your reach by adding more people, especially people who are friends with those who “like” your page! Go on a friending rampage a few times a week and you’re sure to expand your audience in no time.

4. Network | LinkedIn and every other social media site are constantly encouraging you to expand your network with “people you may know” and “who to follow.” Our advice: listen to them!! Following someone on social media is a low-pressure way to keep in touch with someone and maintain relationships. You never know when you’ll want to reach out to them someday, and being “friends” is a good advantage to have!

5. Like| Whether you’re a company promoting a product or a teenager posting vacation pictures, you know that more “likes” is key! Like, duh. Amp up your liking potential by targeting the audience that will be most likely to generate business for you. When you start getting positive feedback (tons and tons of “likes!”), keep the momentum going!

What do you think of our social media tips? Agree? Disagree? Tell us your opinions! Leave us a comment or reach out to us on Facebook & Twitter!