Is it possible to replace the laptop for business meetings and conferences? Many event planners are hesitant to consider this because their attendees are probably using Microsoft Office on laptops. Inc. magazine recently interviewed business professionals who replaced their laptops with iPads and what apps they are using to make that conversion easy.
Joe Keller, President and COO of MotivAction, LLC uses GoodReader to view PowerPoint presentations and iAnnote PDF to make comments on any PDF file. “If I’m looking at a PDF document like a contract or a brochure, I can actually make comments on it and forward it to someone else who will get the highlighted version.”
Event planners…imagine having all presentations and documentation either in a PowerPoint format or PDF and making it very easy for attendees to make notes and diagrams with the touch of their finger! No more paper, just iPad.
Genevieve Haines, President of Haines & Co. PR, uses Keynote, a presentation app, because she speaks a lot. She plugs the iPad into the presentation services audio visual equipment and she is ready to go. “Since I’ve always been on a PC, using Keynote was a new thing for me. The Keynote app, however, played my PowerPoint slides just fine with a few tweaks.”
For event meeting services organizers and trade show booth operators, the app Square allows them to take credit card payments using the iPad. “Imagine a situation where it’s not cost effective to set up the infrastructure to accept credit cards, such as trade shows. Square handles the transaction and provides a digital receipt which is sent to the recipient’s email address.” said Mark Fieldman, General Manager of Harmon.ie.
In addition, Meeting Apps, a website dedicated exclusively to meeting and event applications, has over 1,000 apps that can run on iPads. It allows individuals to write and read reviews on the apps and rate the app from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent).
If you are thinking of adding mobile devices to your next meeting or event, here are other benefits to iPads over a laptop:
- iPads are much easier to carry, because they weight around 1 pound versus a laptop weighing between 5 and 7 pounds.
- iPads have around 10 hours of battery life, getting the meeting staff and attendees through the general length of a meeting. Laptops vary on their battery life, but the longest is usually 5 to 6 hours. Then, event organizers have to worry about having enough outlets.
- iPads are less obtrusive. Because you are opening up a laptop, it automatically creates a barrier between other attendees or between the speaker and audience. Presenters can easily walk around with their iPad as can attendees.
- iPads are more sophisticated and have higher visual impact over a laptop.
- If you rent iPads, the AV provider can bring the iPads directly to you on site and it will provide all attendees with “like” devices.
