Events Run Better, Cheaper, Faster & Greener: the Goal of BusyEvent

The founders of St. Louis startup BusyEvent, Brian Slawin and David Schenberg, are self-described, seasoned “events” guys.

You don’t work in the trade show industry for a combined 40 years — as they have — designing, building and managing tradeshow programs and technology products for dozens of clients without seeing a few things that leave you scratching your head and looking for a “better way”.  Things like long and unnecessary registration lines, participants aimlessly wandering the halls looking for breakout sessions, and what Schenberg calls, “adult trick-or-treating”, the practice of conference participants grazing vendor booths and scooping up bags full of bling that later is discarded, unused.

The opportunity to help organizers run their events better, cheaper, faster and greener is the driving goal of BusyEvent, a mobile web app for event producers that helps make their events easier to manage and more profitable to produce.

Schenberg recently told the startup-focused Nibletz.com website, “Our premier product, BusyEvent mobile, puts an entire tradeshow into your phone, making it easier to find and connect with the people, products and information event participants are interested in.”  Tired of standing in a long check-in line at your conference?  If your conference has contracted with BusyEvent, checking in is just a click away on your smart device, as are event guides, personal schedules, venue maps, information on breakout and learning sessions and a variety of other features, including those that will allow you to maintain a virtual private network of the people you meet, and those you want to stay in touch with after the event.

Schenberg asks anyone who wonders about the “greener” aspect of BusyEvent’s portfolio to think back to the last time they attended a trade show or business conference, and think about the pounds and pounds of bling, brochures and other collateral material they took home with them – then never used.  Thousands more pounds of that material is left behind at the tradeshow venue, and notes Schenberg, increasingly, event locales are charging event organizers thousands of dollars to dispose of the unused material.  With BusyEvent, those dollars can be saved and returned to the conference producer’s bottom line.

Now in its sixth year of operation, BusyEvent’s list of clients includes Domino’s Pizza, H&R Block, NBC/Universal, Ameriprise Financial, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Anheuser-Busch, Coca-Cola, Yahoo! and many more.   Slawin and Schenberg were the guests on KMOX Radio’s Innovation Tuesdays segment with Charlie Brennan on July 18.  Hear the interview here.