It seems all you tech people are obsessed with making conferences work better, perhaps because you seem to go to a lot? Thus there are numerous “conference startups.” There are apps to schmooze at the event itself, like Bizzabo, Presdo, Oleapark, Shpare, Schmooze, CrowdVine, Eventasaur and Omyconf, not to mention generic location-based networking apps like Highlig.ht, Sonar, Ban.jo and Intro. And there are platforms for the conference organisers to get the word out, like ConferenceHound, AllConferences, Cvent, ConferenceAlerts and Lanyrd. Today Conferize joins them, claiming to be a full service content marketing platform for the conference industry.
Its Conferize Highlight Player is designed to enable event organizers to easily present an interactive version of their event by finding the relevant multimedia content from sites like Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Slideshare and more. It’s like an About.me for conferences, I guess.
It then displays everything related to the conference or event in one central place without the need for the user to jump around. Sounds quite like Lanyrd then.
Supported content formats include YouTube, Vimeo, Vine, Instagram, Twitpic, Yfrog, Twitter, Slideshare, SpeakerDeck and Prezi, as well as any live-stream service available.
Conferize monetises by offering a Highlight Player on a freemium basis to event organizers, speakers, venues and members of the press. It can then be shared to a site.
Conferize was founded by Martin Ferro-Thomsen, and launched at DEMO.
Ferro-Thomsen says “the idea for the new Conferize came from watching the flood of tweets from TC Disrupt last fall. We wanted to follow the best and most engaging stuff in a visual and fluid way that was more true to the conference format, and not just a gazillion tweets organized with a timestamp.”
Taking a look at the service it does seem pretty comprehensive. However, we feel Lanyrd has the platform head of steam right now, while Bizzabo and Shpare look like the ones to watch in the apps space. That said Conferize looks slick and probably serves a slightly different purpose, and it runs automatically whereas Lanyrd is much more manual and only presents links — no previews.
