For those of you who may not know, international education conferences are an opportunity for educators and professionals to come together, share knowledge, network, and learn from each other – much like any other networking event, only this time, for the world of academia. These events provide a platform for educators and academics to meet and share ideas and best practices. Just as with any other event, you want your international education conference to be truly effective, so it needs to be well-organised from the get-go and engaging for all participants. That's where event apps come in.
Whether you are attending or organising an international education conference, an event app, like Eventee, can enhance the experience for everyone involved. Event apps can provide attendees with instant access to the conference schedule, session details, speaker bios, and other essential information. So, let's dive in and discover how you can use an event app to make your international education conference a success!
Promoting Global Connections
Since your conference is aimed towards an international audience, it’s pivotal that you keep that at the forefront of your mind. We’ve put together some tips on how you can promote global connections and ensure your event caters to a wide spectrum of nationalities.
Supporting multi-language functionality for diverse attendees
Being an international education conference you can expect that you’ll be hosting a multitude of nationalities. Make sure that you have sufficient resources in place to accommodate and include each guest. A translation tool is one resource that will prove invaluable at your conference. Having a helpful and user-friendly translation tool will help your attendees stay engaged throughout your event, all whilst highlighting inclusivity and going the extra mile to accommodate all involved.
Highlighting international partnerships and collaborations
Make sure you use your international education conference to highlight those ever-important international partnerships that you’ve nurtured in the run-up to the event. You can do this by promoting your relevant partners through an event app.
Facilitating Intercultural Experiences
By facilitating intercultural experiences – you’ll help to foster diversity and inclusivity. This gives your attendees the opportunity to learn more about the other attendees and therefore, aid them in making new collaborations for themselves.
Benefits of Using an Event App
When planning your international education conference, undoubtedly, you’re going to want both the organisation and the execution to run as smoothly as possible. To make your life easier, Eventee’s app will do just that. It provides you with a plethora of tools at your fingertips to elevate your conference to no end. Here’s how:
Centralising communication into one place
No more trawling through past emails and phone screenshots. You can use the app to provide attendees with access to all the key information - like the event program, real-time notification updates and session reminders. With Eventee, you can keep all your communications in one place without scattering your event information across different platforms. Meaning that attendees know exactly where to find pivotal conference information and updates at the press of a button.
The technology and options have come a long way since I first built an app for a conference in 2017! This year's #UIINconf employed Eventee to help us better centralize and digitalize our communication while facilitating easier networking opportunities. The overall feedback from our University Industry Innovation Network (UIIN) organizing team and community of users was that this was a great success 🎉 Looking forward to seeing what more we can do with tools like this in future events.
Linkedin post from Lauren Kroemer-Pope, University Industry Innovation Network B.V.
Hybrid event experience is not a problem
Given that this blog covers all things “international”, as the title suggests – you can well imagine that some international educational conferences are indeed held virtually, or often, hybrid.
A hybrid conference can, oftentimes, be difficult to navigate and can sometimes lead to a poor-quality experience. Especially, for those attending virtually. However, Eventee’s app is designed to support virtual attendees and keep them just as involved as the guests attending in person. Taking away any stressors you have around your hybrid conference.
"We used Eventee (both desktop and mobile versions) to manage the schedule for the 2022 Editon of the PLS Conference. It was a hybrid event, with participants from over 25 countries, in different time zones. Eventee provided us with the necessary tools to manage our conference program's essential aspects. Also, when we had technical questions, the reply from Customer Service was very prompt (less than 6 hours) and, at the same time, offered adequate solutions to all our inquiries."
Review on G2 from Andrei S., Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca
Connecting attendees and facilitating collaborations
An event app can be incredibly helpful when it comes to your fellow academics engaging with one another by providing a networking opportunity at their fingertips. Eventee’s clever Tinder-like tool lets attendees swipe to connect with their preferred “matches”!
Real-time questions and polling
With your event app, you can create limitless polls to ask your attendees questions on relevant topics in real-time. The attendees simply submit their votes and responses on the Eventee app. Questions can even be submitted to the speaker in real time adding a fresh approach to live question sessions.
Feedback at your fingertips
Eventee provides an analytics tool that gathers your event data and presents it in an easy-to-read format. Because the experience is fresh in the attendee’s mind, it’s proven that events will capture more, and importantly - genuine feedback - when requesting it in real-time. You’ll already know that feedback and post-event details are essential for assessing the event and assisting you with enhancing the participant experience at your upcoming events. So, having it at your fingertips is the most ideal solution to post-event evaluation.
Showcasing speakers, sponsors, and partners
Eventee allows you to create profiles for your speakers within the app. Ensuring that attendees have key information to the speakers at their disposal. You can also use the app as another platform to promote your conference sponsors and partners – providing them with even more exposure.
Pre-Conference Planning with an Event App
As your international education conference draws closer, there’s a few steps you’ll want to take ahead of time. Here are some pre-conference planning tips you can use with the help of your event app:
Customising the app to match the conference theme and branding
Staying on brand is something that any successful marketer will always promote. The same applies to your app branding too. With Eventee you can customise the app to keep the content in line with your branding and that of the conference.
Creating a comprehensive schedule and session descriptions
Having your schedule planned well in advance, not only allows you to stay on track, but it also gives your attendees an idea of what they’ve got to look forward to on the day of the international education conference. Update this on the app as far in advance as possible to create anticipation for the day.
Introducing speakers and their backgrounds
As we mentioned earlier, you can even use Eventee to promote your speakers. Including information such as a profile image, expertise and where they’re based. Both your attendees and speakers will thank you for this one!
Testing the app
Familiarising yourself with the app and ensuring it’s fully functioning ensures you feel confident on the app's workings. Having a good understanding of the app beforehand can also help you with attendee onboarding on the day.
Promoting the app well in advance
As suggested in the last point, it’s not just you that wants to get to grips with the event app – your attendees and speakers do too. So, make them aware of the app and how to use it well in advance so that come the day of the international education conference, they’re a natural whizz!
Generating pre-event hype
As with any event, it’s important to create pre-event hype to get your guests excited for what’s in store. You can read our recent blog post on generating pre-event hype below.
Engaging Attendees During the Conference
Audience engagement is often the deciding factor of an events success. Engaged attendees are happy attendees and will want to return to your future conferences time and time again. So, make sure you familiarise yourself with these steps to maximise engagement at your international education conference.
Setting the right mood with push notifications
With push notifications – you’re in control. Use Eventee’s push notification feature to notify your attendees of what’s going on, or simply as a tool to welcome them to the event and get them excited on the day.
Encouraging social interaction through networking features
One of the key ways to engage your attendees is to encourage them to interact with one another through the networking feature we mentioned earlier. Once your attendees are engaged with one another, it leads them to share their ideas and thoughts with other attendees and creates a more positive experience for everyone.
Promoting engagement and friendly competition with Gamification
A little healthy competition can really help create an excitable atmosphere for your guests and encourages everyone to get involved.
Motivating attendees to share their experience via Social Wall
Let your attendees know that they can share their own posts on the event app using Eventee’s Social Wall. As host, you can administer and moderate the content so that you can provide the best experience for your attendees.
Leveraging Post-Conference Features for Continued Engagement
It’s not just on the day of the international education conference that you want to have your attendees engaged. You want to keep that momentum going with continued engagement even after the event.
Sharing session recordings, presentation materials, and resources
You’ll know from conferences you’ve attended that, since there’s so much valuable information shared on the day, it’s nigh-on impossible to remember everything as an attendee. So, it’s your job as the organiser to circulate any and all resources after the event. Your attendees will appreciate this no-end!
There’s certain content that your attendees will want to be able to refer back to time and time again. So, ensure it is available to them as soon as possible after your international education conference.
Sending post-event surveys to gather feedback and suggestions for improvement
When searching for valuable feedback from your attendees, you’ll want to do this within the first couple of days after the event. This makes sure that the conference is at the top of their minds, meaning you will get accurate and useful suggestions to work with.
Nurturing post-conference networking and collaboration opportunities
As host, you have the power to create networking opportunities throughout the conference that can then be nurtured post-conference. Ensure you make the necessary links between your guests so that they can keep in contact with their fellow academics.
✍️ In conclusion
With the help of an event app like Eventee, you can make your next international education conference a success. Event apps are a fantastic way of helping people connect with one another and foster cross-cultural and intercultural experiences. And you don't have to be an expert to use Eventee! All you need is a little preparation and some guidance from this blog post to ensure your international education conference goes off without a hitch.