On-Site Event Communication Unleashed: Inside There.app with Seth Kenvin

[00:00:00] So your conference or event is about to kick off. You might be at the airport, the conference center, or the hotel, but you need to stay in touch with your team. Half are using text messages, some are using Slack, and all of the volunteers are using WhatsApp. Trying to keep it all straight is driving you nuts, and you just wish there was an easier way. Well, maybe there is. Join us as we chat with Seth Kenvin, founder of ThereApp, a tool that allows you to communicate on-site with your team, share files,

[00:00:30] and know precisely where everyone is. Seth, welcome to the program. I won't dive into all of the trials and tribulations we've actually had getting to this point, but no, it's awesome to have you here now.

[00:00:57] And we have talked about TheirApp in the past. Tess and I did a video on it not too long ago, and I actually think you were a guest when we were at Event Tech Live a couple years ago, and then even when Bob Tuvee of Event Planner News and I had the Bullet Bliss podcast, you were either a guest or we talked about it along those lines.

[00:01:20] But just to get everybody up to speed, introduce yourself and give us a quick walkthrough of the TheirApp before we dive in. That way everyone knows kind of what to expect and what kind of a tool it is.

[00:01:35] Yeah, gladly. So my name is Seth. I've worked in a few areas professionally, including working on building out software generally around collaboration and how people accomplish goals together.

[00:01:52] But also functionally, I've worked a decent amount in activities that involve on-site field operations like exhibiting at trade shows, organizing meetings, shooting videos.

[00:02:07] And putting those things together, I felt like in my experiences working on-site was, if anything, getting kind of less focused and productive over time as there was a spread of more SaaS apps for different things and different ways.

[00:02:22] You'd stay in touch with different people on the team and the fact that you're on-site and where people are becomes a relevant thing to monitor that's not accessible through these platforms.

[00:02:34] And these platforms offer distractions outside of the particular project. And generally, people wound up too mired in their devices and technologies looking up information instead of having it at hand and had less focus to be on-site,

[00:02:49] making sure that we were getting all of our marketing qualified leads or we were getting our shoots done on time or whatever the goal of the project was.

[00:02:56] So their app aspires to be a resource to support people in those circumstances of working on-site in event operations, in conference production and things like that to execute better and be better coordinated. So when we're talking about... Oh, no. Go ahead. Go ahead, Kate.

[00:03:19] No, go. Go. You're probably going to ask the same question I was. So you go. Hit it. No, no, no, no, no, no. Go ahead. Are you going to use this? Sure! Why not?

[00:03:31] So, but no, my question was simply that, yes, to your point, there are so many other platforms out there that people can be using, whether it's WhatsApp or email or text messages.

[00:03:45] And they do offer a lot of other distractions. But what are some of the key features of their app that planners should know? Why does it keep people focused? And what are some of the other perks, I guess you'd ask or you'd say, of using their app?

[00:04:07] Yeah. The most essential distinctions include the fact that the app is architected so that your focus is on the particular project in which you're engaged at that time, especially during the time that you're on-site at that project.

[00:04:22] But within that project focus, you have access to all the areas of information, team communication and on-site execution that are relevant to getting it done.

[00:04:35] And to be more specific, what I mean is whether it's looking up a place, referencing an appointment, seeing the next to do item on someone's list, understanding someone's contact information or even where to see them.

[00:04:47] You sort of have this fluid access to all those things. So now I am in a project and this is some of the diversity I was just referencing.

[00:04:58] And you can see on one page, I've got information about a person. If I click through, I can see their specific details.

[00:05:06] If they share them, I can even ask for their live location. Also, I can actually see on that same page how the other modules in the app relate to them. What tasks are assigned to this person? What events are on her calendar? What chats are we in together?

[00:05:21] But on this page, I've organized what's most important for my team to know. So it's focused on this particular project, in this case the production of an art festival. And within this project, it's making a person accessible and then it's highlighting what's most important among locations.

[00:05:36] This icon references our places module, which I'll hop to a couple of our modules momentarily. And then what's the most important kickoff appointment? That's from our events module.

[00:05:47] So again, like whether it's a person, a place, an appointment, web page, a to do item, all those things are kind of accessible fluidly for people to execute. In this example, someone building a page that highlights what's most important towards the top.

[00:06:04] So what we're looking at here is actually the most recent module that we launched. This is a page from our board module.

[00:06:10] And again, like besides letting all this functionality be laid out, also gives the person producing the event who is eager to make the right impression on their team, to keep people aligned and motivated or with its client circumstance, to keep that client satisfied.

[00:06:27] So we give capabilities to control editorial and design considerations as well. And if I click on any of these icons, I'll go to the other modules. Now I'm going to leave the board module, for example, to go to our events module, which has our calendar.

[00:06:42] So this is our schedule of activities within this particular project. Again, I can click through and go from a appointment to look up information about a person who is in that appointment, to see information about the task assigned to that person.

[00:06:59] And whenever there's location information to show, we're going to bring that on map. So this is again another way that we're distinctive from a lot of collaboration and teamwork environments is we add this location dimension with rich functionality.

[00:07:13] So like if I click on an icon here, I can see what appointment that references just like I could see it below. I can take action.

[00:07:19] Like if I click this icon, I'm going to call it Google Map Navigation and I'll be able to get, you know, find directions to that place from any of the other places in the project.

[00:07:28] If I click one of these links, it would then hand it off to Google Maps. That's really cool. So if you click on another location, it's going to actually give you pull up the directions. So, yeah.

[00:07:39] So if I click on an icon, I get information about that location.

[00:07:43] And if I click this navigation option, then I can call it navigation either straight to Google Maps or pick one of the places that's in the project and call for a map for directions to get from one of them to the other. I'll see that is cool.

[00:08:03] So all the modules are here on this drop down and they're all basically straightforward versions of what you see there. Right. So there's a task module that likewise is going to show information on map based on where tasks are assigned.

[00:08:19] I can share files relevant to the project, either uploading directly or putting in a URL, for example, for a Dropbox file. So you can see both kinds of files in this particular project. Places in the project are tracked independently as well.

[00:08:37] And we can index whatever web pages are relevant to the particular project and have those accessible.

[00:08:44] So again, like it's one resource for all the kinds of information that are related to the project, all the kinds of execution, especially presented in a simple way for straightforward on site execution and community management.

[00:08:58] So if I go, for example, to the team module, I am logged in here as our demo user and I am actually logged in on my phone as myself.

[00:09:10] So I'm going to have the demo user chat to me and maybe point out that, you know, so I do. Sorry. What I just did there is I went into our task module.

[00:09:24] These are all our modules. I could pick a web page from our web module place from our. So I picked a task from our task module and. So as you're doing that, let's put it in context for use case.

[00:09:36] You've produced and planned your event from beginning and now we're to the end for on site. It's in several different platforms. You've got registration tool. You've got a cloud based service or a service to hold files. You've got project management aspects of of planning the event.

[00:09:59] So people on the team that you've invited to share information and then now what you're saying is that I now have a tool to bring all of those things into one place. So it's there in the palm of my hand.

[00:10:16] And this is the way that we can apply that and pull that information. Yeah, just to clarify. Am I correct with that? Yeah.

[00:10:24] And just the one thing I would add for clarification if it wasn't clear is that this is specifically for the team with which you're coordinating on the at the event. Right. So this isn't necessarily for the dozens or even hundreds of attendees in the audience.

[00:10:38] There might be multiple groups using our app within the event. Maybe there's a sponsoring company that has half a dozen people there and they need to be coordinated in addition to, you know, whoever's like technical AV operations on site.

[00:10:51] Right. So it's really truly in the bread and butter around on site. So it's literally all of the different people that have to make the event move forward and pull it together on site. It's a way for them to be able to communicate and keep track.

[00:11:06] And I can manage staff this way. Right.

[00:11:10] Yeah. And ideally and hopefully delivered in a way in which you find that it really keeps your attention on what's in front of you and what's going on around you and doesn't like tax more attention that you really have to give inside of a screen.

[00:11:25] Well, and piggybacking on what Tess said, I think that that all of those on site folks that are that are working the event may not necessarily be the people who are work or who are planning the event. Right. You know, that are part of that core team.

[00:11:39] So this is a great way when you don't want to give all of those people access to like Dropbox folders, Google Drive folders, whatever happens to be, you know, they just need a particular file.

[00:11:50] Right. You know, whether they're a volunteer or there's someone who's maybe going to work the registration desk. This allows them to have the information that they need without having to wade through, you know, mountains of data that are in like a larger Dropbox folder or something like this.

[00:12:05] And it also allows you to kind of keep track of, you know, where staff are at a particular given time.

[00:12:11] You know, we have an event coming up in at the end of June where a number of the team members actually have to go off site for an event. You know, they're going to go 15 miles away.

[00:12:21] You know, this is actually a great way to say, hey, they're still, you know, if they're unable to text or call or something, you can actually go into the there app and say, hey, you know what?

[00:12:30] We know that they're not back yet, so I'm going to have to assign this person to something that one of those folks might have to take care of when they got back. So that's really that's actually pretty cool.

[00:12:44] Yeah. And it's really, again, like Bill with consideration of a number of the aspects that you just referred to.

[00:12:51] Right. So the fact that you have on the fly team formation people you're not previously familiar with, they're not really tuning in at all to what's going on until they actually show up on site. So like me, that's me.

[00:13:04] I'm that person. I don't want to know it till you made a decision. Right. So the fact that the app is as straightforward as it is, like let's these people navigate it quickly and easily.

[00:13:15] You're looking at it here. It looks like an app and it is an app. It's an Android app and an iPhone app, but it's also a web app.

[00:13:20] You're looking at it here in a browser so people can use it with full capabilities, especially for getting started before they even make the commitment of downloading an app or not.

[00:13:28] We do a lot, you know, the layout of a page to help clarify what are priorities for the team.

[00:13:36] All those things are done to just presume that we're trying to service people in an environment where they have like, you know, snippets of half a minute or a minute at a time to like focus on looking at a screen and need to be like heads up and productive even if they're just showing up and catching wind of what's going on around them.

[00:13:55] Well, and I think and there are a lot of different use cases right for this. You know, as you mentioned, you know, my thinking is with the event team, right?

[00:14:06] But you also mentioned if a sponsor actually had, you know, an activation going on, their team could be using their app. You know, pretty much anyone who has anything to do with the event could actually even have their own versions for their particular team.

[00:14:20] So not so it's not only a tool for the planning side. It's also a tool for exhibitors, sponsors, anyone who might have anything to do with to do with a particular event. Yeah, and actually like there's really interesting even like crossover potential across those populations.

[00:14:39] Like if you have the production of an event and they have, you know, some count of exhibiting participants or sponsoring participants or presenting participants, they can set up these projects for the specific exhibitors, for example, and make it available to each one of them.

[00:14:59] And those projects can be pre-populated with, you know, useful or promotional or both information regarding the event itself. Here's where you should get an espresso. Here's a PDF with all the stuff you have to know.

[00:15:10] You know, here's the page for the art festival going on down the block. You just blew my mind at that one, Seth, because I was thinking of one use case, which I'll mention in a second. But I literally think yes. So that, my goodness. Okay. Blew my mind.

[00:15:26] So you could utilize it for sponsor relation. You could utilize it for your VIPs so that they have information on how to navigate. So what I was literally thinking. It was used by men for site visits before the event?

[00:15:40] Yes, yes. And that's another thing I was thinking about and also was thinking about I had to do an event a couple of weeks ago and it will remain nameless. But we had, I was in the stage managing role and we had to quote unquote herd cats.

[00:15:57] And there is a litany of people along the way that these people are coming from a red carpet. They are socializing. Then they needed to be brought from socializing to go on stage at some point and it's not close. Right? So how can we keep track?

[00:16:17] So the person, so we could have all as a quote unquote backstage team been a part of that because that whole piece with the VIP experience was a whole other set of people who were managing that. That had nothing to do with managing the stage if you will.

[00:16:34] So this is literally really cool. So I would have always known where that person was and where the handoff and the baton was about to come to me so that I can get you Mike. So that I can send you to the teleprompter.

[00:16:47] So that I can make sure that you hit the cue and hand it off to the people who are going to place you on all the things. Oh my gosh, I just worked it out. Yes, sir.

[00:16:56] That is really a cool use case and that takes it like to the next level. Right? It does. This is like my world. This is like what I love the most. Like all of that.

[00:17:09] Right and I guess consistent with that a lot of what we've emphasized lately, again some of which I've shown and some of which has been on screen without me pointing it out, is we're thinking more about what we provide especially at this launch phase for our company as an environment for basically a service provider or vendor to engage best with their clients.

[00:17:30] Yes.

[00:17:31] And really number one, like finally get the events world out of the era of Manila folders and clipboards and be more useful technologically but to do so in a way that's like really considerate of the client and their priorities and also just reflects the production quality of the event.

[00:17:51] So small things like the ability to upload a logo that corresponds to particular production, we let you pick the color theme that you see here in this bezel area including an ability to automatically match it to the logo.

[00:18:03] Again, like you saw before in our board module, the capability to build out a page and put design elements into that and editorial elements and just have this be like really a good stage to give clients confidence that this is a project that's well managed.

[00:18:19] This is a team that's making themselves accessible. I'm going to pay these guys 50% more to do the same thing next year. Absolutely. And I'll go ahead Keith, I'm sorry I'm cutting you off on this one. Let it go.

[00:18:31] So on the landing page that you have right there Seth, I didn't even think about this.

[00:18:36] Can I cut? So we let's say overall the event has that landing page with all of the general things that need to be there and then let's say me like I said I'm stage managing.

[00:18:48] Can I go and customize my own personal landing page that doesn't have anything to do with changing the main one so that I can see or do I create it or do I do a sub event that's just for backstage?

[00:19:01] Like do we do it that way or what's the best way to set up overall event and then I create my own from my own little area? So with the current state of the product, you're probably best off starting multiple projects.

[00:19:14] We will have more capabilities in the short term like to have projects that better manage the fact that like I've got my you know my contractors over here, my clients over here and you know I want some control over who's accessing what.

[00:19:27] But generally like this board, I mean if I click this plus button, I'm building a new board. So at any time you know you can have multiple boards within a project. One board can be starred.

[00:19:40] We'll have more of like a home capacity so that you can like pin one basically to the top of the project. But those are all kind of you know consistent with what we're taking there.

[00:19:50] But you know I you know for transparency with most events right, having multiple boards within one is okay. You know but to Tess's point if you. Yeah.

[00:20:01] You know but if you needed to create you know depending like I know one of the events that Tess just worked on where they would probably want to break it out into its own separate elements or separate you know projects because you don't want the two co-mingling.

[00:20:14] But I just look at this from a standpoint of making life easier for everybody who's on site right.

[00:20:22] You know we've come off of many many different events where you know they're using a tool like let's say WhatsApp right and they'll say okay this is the WhatsApp channel we're all going to use. Well when everyone's using the same WhatsApp channel it will make you insane.

[00:20:35] And what happens is people start ignoring it because there are 8,000 conversations as I knock things off the desk. You know 8,000 conversations that are going on that in one thread that literally have nothing to do with what your role is. Yeah.

[00:20:53] Yeah so this gives you like a little bit more of a dimension instead of like basically one chat thread for the entire team there's a chat environment within your project and you know in this well here you've got a bunch and they can have names you can have multiple chats with the same people each has a different thread.

[00:21:10] So yeah we try to like come up with basically like approaches that have some combination of you know clarity and simplicity with like you know enough you know dimension and not have the problem of one gigantic noisy room with stuff that's irrelevant to most of the people.

[00:21:29] So for anyone who wanted to you know start using their app you know how does it work right? Does it work by a project basis an event basis is it an annual thing or you know what is your launch kind of looking like?

[00:21:49] Well you teed me up well we're pre-commercial launch there's been a lot to build I mean the nature of our solution is based again on being a single resource for all these aspects of accessing info communicating with the team and executing on site.

[00:22:03] And even still like I've made reference in this call like I'm not supposed to do it what we still have to build but there's stuff left for us to build so we're a pre-commercial product I hope what comes through that like we're ready for like really solid use among

[00:22:17] a matured team and we're trying to basically advance our beta and pilot usage program so we actually have a special program running right now which I have landing page for queued up here so let me quickly show that mostly just to tell you the address as you can see is there.app

[00:22:39] and then slash and it's launch partners with a hyphen so as this landing page points out a lot of the highlights of the product to which I just made reference and it's a program in which if you have a project that fits our use case happening in the next few months and that means a project that involves activity that's on site happening over the course of a few hours or a few days with a team that maybe is measured in the dozens you know five to fifty people collaborating and then we're going to be able to do that.

[00:23:07] We'd love to work with you on getting a great project built and executed we're happy to be there with direct support and consultation and then beyond the project we'd like to consult with you about your experience and figure out what our priorities are and should be going forward and from there we're going to extend free use of our product for ways going forward let's connect more to go over the details of that but basically yeah this landing page sites in the highlights and leads to a certain amount of feedback.

[00:23:37] So we have a survey in which you can tell us a little bit about your project activity how frequently how big they are and what technology use and if it looks like it's good alignment with what we're looking for you get the chance to be a free there.app user for several years so that's how it could work for you.

[00:23:54] Nice.

[00:23:55] I'm excited about that though Seth I mean come on now so Keith and I are always the ones to try to get our feet nice and dirty in apps early on in the ground up and it's our pleasure to really bring something to our watchers and listeners around pre-launch time because sometimes you can really get what you want people don't realize that tech companies are out there and wanting to hear from their users or potential users.

[00:24:23] To help develop and grow and that's really how it should be because no one has all the answers so actually to have an ability to be able to test it out and then also be a part of that growth because I think this is going to be excellent for my people.

[00:24:37] My execution people that's why I call my company I social execution. That's the focus this is going to be amazing.

[00:24:45] Yeah well I mean all of our customers and users are indeed like special and brilliant but you know the truth is there's we're in a market in which there's a lot of fish in the sea like we're focused on you know event execution especially by independent parties that are bringing production services and there's a lot of entities like that out there in the world and we'd like to find a few dozen to engage with especially closely to mutual benefit and use that to make sure that we're able to do that.

[00:25:10] Yeah definitely. There's really nothing that I've ever seen to help us not like this.

[00:25:14] Yeah what a cool way to bring it right you know typically what happens is you know developers or whoever you know event tech companies they create something and they go well here it is this is how it works go use it whereas you guys are very much focused on the product and the product itself.

[00:25:27] And what a cool way to bring it right you know typically what happens is you know developers or whoever you know event tech companies they create something and they go well here it is this is how it works go use it whereas you guys have kind of taken a little bit of a different tact where you're like hey we built it go ahead and use it and then tell us how it should tell us how to fix it or tell us how to make it better which is actually a really cool thing that most event tech companies don't do.

[00:25:56] Right right. We don't do enough of publicly. Yes. And I so I thank you for that. I really thank you and we're going to make sure that you get some some great ones in there. Tess you want to bring us home. Can I do a dark screen?

[00:26:14] No not until I ask him this one. Can I do dark background instead of white background? Does it have that ability yet? If not that's my first contribution. Are you talking about Riverside? Oh you're talking about us? No. Yeah dark mode. Oh we have dark mode.

[00:26:31] Oh no we haven't done dark mode. Yeah that's really. Okay dark mode topless please. Say Tess say do dark mode. Dark mode. And I'll second that one so it's got the up votes there's two up votes on dark mode. Yeah.

[00:26:51] So that Seth this has been eye opening I think for some of our listeners and those of you who do realize that the life on on site execution is very different than a life planning the event.

[00:27:10] And now we finally have a technology that can help us pull those elements together in a noncommittal way is what I like to say. That's why I was trying to ask that question earlier.

[00:27:23] It's a noncommittal way so you can play and do all the things and all the different other technologies but literally when you need to focus on the event itself to me it's a lightweight thing that can sit in the palm of my hand and give me the information I need so I can move through all of the elements for on site execution.

[00:27:40] Pretty smoothly. Did I miss anything with that? I hope I didn't Keith. I think you nailed it. I think you nailed it. So thank you again Seth we really appreciate you being here.

[00:27:52] I can't wait to go ahead and maybe in about let's say six months from now come back around and see where we are with things. Hopefully you'll have six months of experience using it between now and then.

[00:28:06] Yeah, absolutely and see what kinds of things we can do and play with that. Thanks for joining us this week on the event tech pull up.

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