This week startup Conferize announced that they will launch a new version of their popular conference service, called V1 – short for version 1.
This marks an end as a beta for the service, that has been around since 2011 when Martin Ferro Thomsen, former co-founder at Issuu, started the service.
What’s the fuzz about?
Conferize is a platform that opens up professional events to the world. They’re connecting people with fresh knowledge and thought leaders on any topic within the world of events. As previously stated by Martin in an interview with him, it is about making the conference and events business digital, and more then just short moments. Conferize wants to both help event organizers increase the quality of their events as well as creating active event communities.
Conferize is an open platform that will work with any registration service.
“We’ve developed an open API for any registration partner to integrate directly with Conferize. We’ve already announced the Eventbrite partnership, more will follow.” says Martin
What’s so special about Conferize?
Apart from offering the best search/discovery of events, the service also captures both collective media and the community that emerges around events. It means that people finally can find all types of event media in one place (video, presentations, photos, papers) and see who’s attending / speaking / following which events.
Why is this exciting?
“Because professional meetings are a backbone in the knowledge economy. It’s a trillion dollar industry, yet, still people struggle to access and engage with events in a meaningful and structured way online. That’s what Conferize solves.” Martin says
Great success for Conferize so far
Since it’s start the startup has seen a steady increase in users, events and reach. Earlier this year a partnership with TEDx events was announced. A lot of big organizations have started to use the tool for their events and conferences, such as The Guardian, Ad:Tech, Angelhack, Buzzfeed. Currently over 4 million users are registered, almost 40 000 of them speakers from the different conferences. Which themselves number over 15 000 that can be found on Conferize! Impressive numbers indeed.
Conferize works in a freemium model where it is free for users and speakers, but event organizers pay extra for more volume and advanced features, including many new tools that will be released in the next couple of month.
“We’re working on a suite of more specialized tools for event organizers to help them save time and headaches, while increasing the quality and attendance of their events.” says Martin
What’s new with Conferize V1?
The list of things that V1 includes or does better is quite impressive indeed:
- Every single page is redesigned and rebuilt to be “Simple, sexy and savvy”. UI and UX has been improved radically to help people discover and connect with everything related to events: People, media, activity and, of course, the events themselves. In short, it helps increase the lifespan of professional events.
- Everything is now fully responsive, so works well on smartphones and tablets.
- Media is now much more prominent on key pages. A media overlay now serves up any media type ‘natively’, regardless of its source (Youtube, Instagram, Slideshare, Issuu etc.).
- A new dedicated Media page, where you can immerse yourself completely in media across any category. Using crowdsourcing to identify the most popular media.
- Networking has been upgraded significantly to accommodate matchmaking/filtering across a large number of filters. It’s arguably one of the best networking apps for events, and it’s unique in the way they connect user and speaker profiles across events, making it effectively the biggest “Who’s who” in events with over 4 million event professionals listed.
- ‘Burning Questions’ is a completely new feature to facilitate in-depth group discussions around key topics.
- Event Series to migrate a community from event to event. It increases volume, helps sell create awareness through the network.
Launch partys coming up
The official launch will first be next week, and it will be at a special event: Conferize V1 will be launched together with STHML Tech Fest as an official launch partner. Also, a smaller, local, event will be held at Conferize new office at Founders House in the Startup Village, already this week.
