Asian startups that are shaking up how events are run (part one)

While the Internet is commonly being seen as distinct and separate from real life, that notion is increasingly being challenged. Augmented reality, as well as mobile commerce technologies like QR codes and NFC, are blurring the lines between the physical and virtual world, allowing consumers to transit seamlessly between both.

This trend is happening in the events space as well. Startups in Asia are at the frontier of this revolution, arming event organizers and participants with digital tools that enhance productivity and foster personal connections.

Here, we’ll look at just how these Singapore-based startups are shaping the way events are organized and merging them with the digital world.

Beepmo: A location-based professional social network for mobile

Billing itself a professional social network, this startup invites direct comparison with LinkedIn and BranchOut. Yet it isn’t the same.

Co-founded by Simon Lower and Mark White, Beepmo has developed a mobile app that enables event participants to easily find and connect with one another. It is now available on the iOS, and coming soon to Android and BlackBerry.

I do like a lot of what I’m see at Beepmo.  I can post status updates, find people that are nearby and filter them out by certain characteristics. I can connect with people directly on the app, chat with them, and even add them on LinkedIn without launching the LinkedIn app, similar to Rapportive.

The ‘Ice Breaker’ feature stands out as one of my favorite features. This nifty tool allows me to see the common friends a person and I have on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Beepmo, and even the common interests we share, based on Facebook ‘likes’.

I also like that I can check out nearby industry-related event. Not only is it a great feature, it makes much sense business-wise, offering Beepmo a potential revenue stream.

It becomes not just a social network, but also a platform for organizations to promote their events, like what Bandwagon is doing for the music scene in Singapore.

Launched only this month, Beepmo has so far seen over 2,000 connections made across 70 industries in 26 cities.

The app is still in its early days, however, so a lot of features aren’t ready yet. The most glaring obmissions are the event-related tools, which according to Simon, are on the way.

As of now, while I am able to see the events around me, there’s no way I can ‘check-in’ at an event, or find out on a map how to get to the venue. I’m also curious to know if the app will offer a self-serve platform for organizers to create their own events.

Some minor gripes with the app: Curiously, I can’t respond to a friend’s status updates, and I can’t find a search function to invite people to join Beepmo from my list of contacts.

Noddon: Eliminating the need for physical namecards

While Beepmo has great all-around functionality, it doesn’t quite close the loop in digital professional matchmaking. There’s no way I can save the contact information of people I know on Beepmo into my mobile address book.

Noddon, however, promises to deliver a mobile app with this feature. The app will hopefully provide an efficient process for exchanging contacts — better than giving and receiving namecards, which I find anachronistic and cumbersome. Digging up that obscure namecard you need post-event is a nightmare, as I’ve learnt.

Even while writing this article, I realized that I needed to contact somebody for information. Unfortunately, I left his namecard at home, along with his mobile number.  Sure, apps that scans namecards do exist, but I find that they’re inaccurate.

Noddon’s co-founders, Jackie Lam and Kelvin Koh, have sent their app to the Apple App Store, but they’re still seeking approval. They’re also developing versions for Android and the web.

Nonetheless, from what we know so far, noddon will enable users to discover one another at conferences and meetings, exchange contact information, and automatically update a contact’s particulars when changes are made. This is achieved by syncing the app with the mobile phone’s address book.

Like Beepmo, Noddon will only be useful only if more people use it, so it remains to be seen what user adoption strategy it has.

Until we try out the app ourselves, we can only show you this video, which illustrates what it’s about:

Pigeonhole Live: An easy way to ask and moderate questions during live Q&A sessions

This startup fulfills a different need: It provides an easy way for an audience at a live Q&A session to ask and rate questions.

Here’s how it works: A password will be publicized online for users to access the Pigeonhole Live web app before the actual event, where they can vote any question they want. Fellow attendees can continue to vote and ask questions before and during the event.

Organizers have the option of getting the top questions displayed on a projector screen as the Q&A session begins. Questions will move in real-time according to how the audience votes — popular ones will shift to the top while unpopular queries will disappear out of sight.

Co-founders Lyon Lim and Joon Yeng Hew have been off to a blazing start. Not exactly strangers to the tech scene in Asia, their startup has already been featured in many publications (including ours).  Companies and organizations like Canon, P&G, A*STAR, and Nanyang Technological University have used this app.

And most recently, they’re seeing action on a couple of programs on Channel News Asia: Talking Point – The Vote, and Bridging Asia — The Singapore Debates.

One limitation they face is that Pigeonhole Live personnel must be present at every event that is running their system. This restricts the number of markets they can reach out to. However, they will soon be launching a self-serve platform that would enable anyone around the world to use Pigeonhole Live.

If user adoption picks up, 2012 would be a very eventful year for the company.

How PigeonHole Live works:

Check in next week for more startups that are rocking the events space. If you know of more startups in Southeast Asia related to event publicity, organizing of events and so on, drop us a note below and we’ll be sure to check them out.

 

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