While I will miss my friends at the wonderful SEALS conference, I am excited to be attending and presenting at the Academy of Legal Studies in Business (ALSB) conference in Seattle next week.
For the ALSB conference, the organizers have set up a Guidebook App. I am just now exploring all the features, but it looks like an impressive and useful tool.
The App includes:
- The conference program.
- The conference schedule.
- Your schedule. You create your own schedule and can have reminders send to your phone.
- Full text of all the conference papers, organized by subject, author, and title.
- An attendee list, where attendees can share their contact information.
- In-app social networking.
- Information about exhibitors.
- A survey.
- Information about Seattle (restaurants, attractions, etc.)
There is a free version of Guidebook, but it looks like this ALSB Conference App has features of the rather expensive paid plans. The free version is limited to 200 downloads and doesn't appear to allow inclusion of presentation materials. Given the textbook publisher listed at the bottom of the App, I am guessing that the textbook publisher paid at least part of the cost, though that is pure speculation on my part.
While pricey for the paid plans, this might be something for AALS, SEALS, and other large conference organizers to consider for future years. The free version may be useful for smaller conferences.