Are you an Event Professional? A Producer? A Planner? The VP of Corporate Meetings? Well then, you’re likely planning a customer meeting, a sales conference, a launch, an awards gala, or some other program somewhere near or perhaps very far. Even if you consider yourself a bit old school, and like to take notes on paper in a bound notebook, chances are, you carry a device. Here then is a list of some apps that I find are my best digital friends whether I’m headed to a site visit in Soho or on a multi day event in Singapore.
1.Google Keep (Free) – I’ve been an Evernote user for the past several years, but when I stumbled upon Google Keep, I decided it was a “keeper.” It is fast, easy to use, and integrates into our company workflow quite nicely. I love it for site survey note taking, maintaining a to-do list or snapping off some photos to easily incorporate into a note. Since our company is on the Google platform (Drive) it’s very easy to share and add collaborators to the notes taken in Google Keep.
2. Tripcase (Free) – Alongside your preferred airline app, Tripcase wraps up all the details of your trip in a beautiful layout. There’s gate information, which is updated in a very timely manner, airport map, lounge availability, inflight entertainment choices, weather, and most useful, alternate flights for your booked route.
3. World Clock from timeanddate.com (Free) -This one is useful when you are working across multiple timezones. Let’s say for example you’re scheduling a Skype with vendors and clients in Singapore, Tokyo, New York and Dubai. Just plug in the cities and on one screen you see a display of the local times in each zone.
4. XE currency (Free) – I love this app for budgeting and expense reporting. Choose any currency and you see the conversion rates all on one screen. It also works well for shopping!
5. Units Plus ($2.99) – This one also does currency conversion, but I use it mostly for area measures, length and power measurements when working with our technical and stage design folks around the globe. Need to order a piece of soft goods in Croatia? Enter the lineal measurement in feet and convey it to your vendor in meters. It provides a colorful user friendly interface with lots of data options.
6. What’s App (Free) – This is our go-to for team messaging anywhere in the world. You can establish groups for messaging the client team exclusively, the production and tech teams, as well as local partners.
7. NOAA radar pro ($1.99) – As event producers and planners, it’s typical for there to be one or more events taking place outdoors. Having an accurate source for weather information is essential to the decision making process. And while there are dozens of weather apps (and everyone has their favorite), I’ve found this app to be more reliable than many others.
8. FaceTime or Skype (Free) – When the day is done, love these ones for chatting with my wife and kids.
9. Fitbit (Free) – The event life is a wonderful one – truly. One day you may be on your feet putting in 25k steps running around a convention center, the next day you may be seated behind a computer for 14 hours. Fitbit (or your preferred fitness tracker app) helps on those ‘office’ days by prompting me to get on the move, even if just for a few minutes.
There are so many useful apps out there, but these are just a few of my favorites. 2017 is bound to take us on some new adventures and these tools will be right there in my pocket. To see what Legend Productions is up to, check out our website at legendproductionsinc.com.