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March 26th, 2012 by Gwynne Monahan

#ABATECHSHOW: There’s an App for That

ABA TECHSHOW is this week.

We speculated on conference apps in a previous post, wondering if conference apps would one day lead to paperless conferences. ABA TECHSHOW is taking a step in that direction with the addition of its conference app this year, created by CrowdCompass, which also created the app for the 2011 State Bar of Texas Annual meeting.

The ABA TECHSHOW app is available on the typical mobile platforms: Android, iOS and even BlackBerry. If you registered for the conference already, then you also received an email with your own registration code.

Entering that into the app opens up new possibilities, like customizing your own schedule. The app also includes a complete listing of all Exhibitors, broken down by name as well as category. Given that the list is quite extensive, “bookmarking” creates a list of your favorite exhibitors, which is handy for remembering the exhibitors you want to visit.

The Twitter feed for #ABATECHSHOW is visible, and it has its own icon in case you want to see the Twitter feed in full instead of just at the bottom. There are icons for Maps, the ABA TECHSHOW Blog, Messages, which is where you’ll get notifications from ABA TECHSHOW, like a thank you for downloading the app and fun things to do while in Chicago.

The Contacts icon provides a complete list of all Attendees, and you have the option of sharing your information. Those who share their information with you appear in the “Your Contacts” list. If they provided an email, its a live link that will open your email application so you can send a message. On Android, a new email in Gmail opens up, making it easy to send a quick hello or “hey, let’s meet here” message.

While this may seem standard, or perhaps expected, the real interaction comes as you drill down into the Schedule and Sessions. Not only can you rate, bookmark and tweet about the Session, learn more about the speakers and see the handouts, but you can also create your own notes by downloading an app called Catch.

Catch is similar to Evernote. It’s free (with limits, like Evernote), syncs across devices and is platform agnostic. The difference here is that Catch integrates with the ABA TECHSHOW app so whatever notes you take are also captured in Catch, and easily retrievable later. Catch also lets you sign in with a Google account or Facebook account, eliminating the need to create yet another new account for yet another application.

The addition of the ABA TECHSHOW app this year, and its integration with Catch to simplify note-taking, seems to be laying the ground work towards a more paperless conference.

Have you downloaded the ABA TECHSHOW conference app?

Post your thoughts in the comments.