Spark.me Backway App: What It Takes to Build a Great Conference App

Spark.me  is now a very fond memory in the mind of many conference-goers and a part of that special experience was also a very special app created for the purposes of this conference. Backway app for Spark.me was simple, efficient, easy to use and had all the important info available offline, making life easier for all who attended. The creator of the Backway apps, Božidar Ševo,  was so kind to share his thoughts on what makes a conference app great

Last year I was at Webfest in Budva pitching  BackWay at Webup competition. After pitching, hanging out with people and some feedback from Ivan Brezak Brkan, I decided to use BackWay funcionalities for making apps for conferences and events.

BackWay works completely offline and that is really important when you are going to conferences and events. You dont always have  internet access, sometimes you travel internationally for the event and dont want to pay a lot of money for roaming, just to get simple information like agenda,  info on the speaker or how to get to important locations.

When you attend a conference or some kind of an event, you stay there for a couple of days and don’t travel large distances, so you would like to know if there are some good restaurants near the event venue, where  the nearest store is amd similair. Basically, you need the important locations for example within a mile radius.

First Custom Apps

With friends from Fresh Island Festival and I made first Custom BackWay app. It was created for the Fresh Island Festival this summer at the island of Pag, which featured some big names from the entartainment industry, like Snoop Dogg, Iggy Azalea, A$AP Rocky. Then I made one for the RockPaperStartups conference in Rijeka, and the last one was for the Spark.me conference in Budva.

As you can see in the image above,  Spark.me app provided users with all the important information: conference agenda, speakers list and info, important locations conference goers might need when they are using BackWay offline and some other usefultidbits about the conference. Having attended a couple of conferences and event,s I realized that these are the features people need and want.

All of that data and features are available for user offline, so you can always access the important info and get directions to important locations. If there some changes occur,  for example in the conference agenda, users can refresh the data in a second. It is important that all features work offline and that they do not comsume a lot of battery power.

Simple and Efficient Conference App is the Way to Go

I have seen that a lot of apps for conferences and events have a lot of features that people dont even use. That’s why I make these custom BackWay apps as simple as I can, only with informations that users will need during the conference andfeatures they will use.

I am now working on a new version of custom BackWay app/apps. I see that a lot of small events do not have mobile apps and they don’t have the budget for developing them. Mobile apps should be easy to use, simple and fast. That is why I will try to make a new step with apps for events, conferences etc.

Spark.me is one of the best organized conferences I have ever attended, and being a production partner was really special. If you are organizing a conference or an event you can check out examples of custom BackWay apps.