Emerging Trends: Apps in Event Management

Vishalaksh Aggarwal
Dept. Of Electrical Engineering, IIT (BHU), Varanasi
C-536 Saraswati Vihar
Delhi-110034, India
+919450952468
vishalaksh.aggarwal.eee10@iitbhu.ac.in
Nadeem Ansari
Dept. Of Electrical Engineering, IIT (BHU), Varanasi
13/2/H/3 Patwar Bagan Lane
Kolkata-700009, India
+918874055575
nanadeemansari@gmail.com


ABSTRACT
This paper will present an experiment in which an event
management app named Technex was made for android, which
hosted several features to assist the crowd participating in the
event. The paper analyses the public reception of the app and how
it assisted the people. Further, this paper presents the concept of
how this app can be extended from an institute level to city level
and helps the people in different aspects using open data.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
J.1.1 [Computer Applications]: ADMINISTRATIVE DATA
PROCESSING Marketing, Government, Law.
General Terms
Management, Design, Experimentation, Human Factors,
Standardization
Keywords
Android App Development, Event management, Push
Notifications, Open Data
1. INTRODUCTION
Since the coming of iPhone, this world has witnessed a huge
boost in the sales of smartphones. The market for smartphones has
been ever-growing since then. This market is shared by key
players like iOS, Android, Windows and Blackberry.
Smartphones give users immense power right in their hands.
Through mobile devices, people can have any kind of
information, be it maps, news, contacts etc. Developers have been
making various kinds of apps which assist people in different
ways. One such area is Event Management.

During the events and conferences, people may be in need of
information related to the area. In such cases, their mobile device
can prove to be a single point of information. Hence, the authors
built an event management app for android platform to be
implemented for an event named Technex in Indian Institute of
Technology (BHU), Varanasi, India. This app was released on 3rd
March 2013.
The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 gives the methods
adopted during the analysis of above mentioned app. Section 3
presents the features of the app that are currently implemented and
Section 4 presents the upcoming features. Section 5 provides an
analysis of the performance of the app based on number of
downloads and user reviews on Google Play. Section 6 discusses
how this app can be scaled up to take leverage of the open data
and implemented on the city level. Section 7 concludes the work
reported.
2. METHODS
This paper has been written based on the experiences of the
Technex app. This is available ONLY on android platform.
Most of the applications implemented on larger scale are available
across all the platforms. This app was published on Google play
and the number of downloads and reviews are based on the sales
on Google play [1]. The data collected is of the period from 3rd
March 2013 to 9th March 2014. However after 27th February
2014, the app was distributed outside of Google Play, i.e., via
emails, Bluetooth, etc. The trends shown in the paper are based on
the number of downloads from Google Play only although the
actual number of users are higher.
3. DESIGN AND FEATURES
This app mainly focuses on providing all sorts of possible
information to the delegates that might be helpful to them. The
current version (v2.3), which was published on 27th February
2014, hosts the following features:
3.1 Push Notifications
This is the single most important feature of the app as it enables
the organizers to post various kinds of information to the users at
any point of time. These information can be classified as:
1. General news, announcements
2. Publicity material like posters, ads etc.
3. Event date, time and location directly available on maps
which can be updated even at the last minute

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IWP'14, June 1, 2014, Hyderabad, India.
Copyright 2014 ACM 978-1-4503-2855-5/14/06... $15.00.

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IWP14, June 1, 2014, Hyderabad, India
Copyright 2014 ACM 978-1-4503-2855-5/14/06...$15.00
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2593761.2593767
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3.2 Reminders
Owing to the large number of events in any conference, the
delegates might find it difficult to keep a track of the schedule.
Therefore this app automatically sets the reminders as soon as the
event time is updated via push notifications.
3.3 Maps and Navigation
This feature helps the delegates to navigate the venue of the event.
This feature is mostly useful in cases where many events are being
organized at a single place, say a college campus, where people
new to the area may easily lose their way.
3.4 Detailed Information
This app provides the detailed information about all the events
being held. For the competitions it provides the problem
statements and the various rules and regulations, judging criteria
and most importantly it provides the contact details of the various
coordinators of the corresponding event.
3.5 Social Media Integration
Users can quickly spread the word about the events just by
tapping on the Facebook share button corresponding to each
event. Push messages of all types can also be shared via
Facebook.
3.6 User Feedback
This app enables users to give their feedback about the event and
proper action can be taken immediately by the concerned
authority.
3.7 Intuitive User Experience
This apps user interface is made by using a specific theme and
color set which is uniform across all the activities in the app.
Also, the features which are frequently used by the user can be
accessed quickly.

Figure 1. App screenshots describing the UI

4. UPCOMING FEATURES
Following are the upcoming features in the app:
4.1 Integration with Technex Backend
The backend of the Technex website [2] uses graph database in
which participants, who are friends on Facebook form connected
nodes. This leads to the formation of a Technex Network similar
to that on Facebook. So through their mobile devices, the
delegates can get in touch with each other.
4.2 Check-ins
Delegates would be able to check-in through their mobile devices
and RFID cards for a particular ongoing event, to keep their
friends posted about their status. They can see locations of various
friends on the map which are updated on regular intervals.
4.3 Friends Activities
Each person has a profile which shows their recent activities like
the events which they attended, their status updates etc.
5. ANALYSIS ON GOOGLE PLAY

Figure 2. Daily user installs, uninstalls and current user
installs

The app was first introduced on 3rd March 2013, just 4 days
before the 2013 edition of the grand event (7th to 10th March
2013). Within such short span of time, the app experienced the
peak in the current user installs of 91 on 10th March 2013.
Current User Installs is the number of users who have the app
currently installed on at least one active device [3]. The Average
rating was 5.0 at the stated time.
After the event was wrapped up, the app experienced a gradual
decrease in the current user installs since it was of little
assistance after the fest. The average number of installs remained
around 21-22 until the next update which was released on 26th
September 2013 after which the app saw consistent increase in the
number of installs with each update of the app.
On 8th March 2014, the current user installs were 293, almost
222% more than the last year. This is the number of app
downloads from Google Play. To get an idea of total number of
users which includes other channels of app distribution, the
authors analyzed the total number of device registrations on
airbop [5]. This is the service that was used to push the
messages. It was found out that the total number of devices on
which the app was installed was 802 on 11th March 2014.
People now prefer to look at the app for any updates regarding the
events via push message rather than visiting the website or the
Facebook page of the event.
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Figure 3. Current user installs and total user installs

In figure 3, the gap between the total and current user installs
indicates that users who are installing the app are increasing,
though some people uninstalled the app after having passed out of
the institute or having participated in the previous edition of the
event.


Figure 4. Average rating of app at different times

The app consistently received good ratings and reviews with
average rating of 4.80 as on 11th March, 2014. A total of 84
ratings were received.
6. FUTURE SCOPE AND USE OF OPEN
DATA
Next the authors are going to discuss how this event management
Technex application can be further extended to meet the
requirements of people by using open data. Open data is the idea
that certain data should be freely available to everyone to use and
republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright,
patents or other mechanisms of control [6]. The open government
data can be leveraged as it serves two significant purposes: the
system can become more transparent and accountable and
secondly, various public and private demands can be met by
developing and improving the applications and services using
available data.
The increasing popularity of open data can be seen from the
statistics provided by Indian government. Currently 5890 datasets
from 59 ministries have been made available for public use as of
29-01-2014. 24 apps have also been made using this data [7].
Now we discuss the points in which we will explain how we are
going to integrate the use of open government data in our app.
The user must register in our app with his name, profession,
residential address. The uses of our app are given as follows:
1. We will extract the information of all public toilets and
feed it in our mobile application. The toilet nearest to
user will be shown using the map feature and then
he/she can navigate to that particular toilet using
Navigation feature of the app. This will help the people
with bladder problems to be more active in society.
There is an existing website in Australia [8] and New
Zealand [9] which gives nearest public toilet location.
For Australia there is an iPhone app [10] and for UK
[11] there is an Android app which does the same job.
In India, Chennai has a master sheet [12] where this
information is available whereas Delhi [13] gives this
information on a Google map. We need more cities in
India to provide data to further improve this application
[14][15].
2. A database of air quality index can be created with open
government data using the air quality of the area in
which the user is present. The location of the user can
be tracked through GPS. If that area exceeds the
threshold level of air quality index then the user will be
automatically notified that the area is intoxicated
beyond the threshold level. In this way the user
suffering from specific health problems related to air
quality can keep a check on the environmental status of
their location [16][17].

Table 1. Air quality conditions for given AQI values [20]
Air
Quality
Index
Values
Meaning
0-50 Air quality is considered satisfactory, and
air pollution poses little or no risk
51-100 Air quality is acceptable; however, for
some pollutants there may be a moderate
health concern for a very small number
of people who are unusually sensitive to
air pollution.
101-150 Members of sensitive groups may
experience health effects. The general
public is not likely to be affected.
151 -
200
Everyone may begin to experience health
effects; members of sensitive groups may
experience more serious health effects.
201 -
300
Health warnings of emergency
conditions. The entire population is more
likely to be affected.
301 -
500
Health alert: everyone may experience
more serious health effects

3. The application can also be useful in making the people
decide which place is best suited for them in terms of
their work, duration of work, housing prices and the
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aesthetic value of the surroundings. Tourists can fully
take leverage of such type of application. The location
can be seen on the Map integrated with this app. This
application demands open data in fields of healthcare,
housing prices of all hotel and lodges, environment and
previous reviews of all the people who have been in the
places before. The reviews will be posted on Facebook
using the social integration feature of the app. This type
of facility available to the public will make them
independent of others even in an unknown place. The
extra costs of guides will be minimized. Services like
Mapumental [18] in UK and Mapnificent [19] in
Germany are known to provide this facility.
This is how the potential of open government data can be
unleashed. The real goal will be achieved only if the data is made
public without any legal restrictions. It will remove the overheads
of filing RTI for various kinds of information. Both workload and
costs of extra labor for government can be saved and a world class
application can be made, reused and improvised using open data.
Our aim is to develop an app that can act as a central point of
contact between public and government, with customizations
based on the user preferences.
7. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, we studied the key features of the event management
app (Technex) and observed that push messaging service proves
to be a great help when it comes to inform the crowd about some
important information. The social features in such apps will help
users in networking. In the end, we came to know the endless
possibilities of creating and recreating the innovative apps using
the open government data. We concluded that there can be an app
that can act as a central point of contact between public and the
government.
8. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors acknowledge with thanks the guidance and support
given by Dr. Biplav Srivastava, IBM Research. He was always
available whenever needed.

9. REFERENCES
[1] Technex '14 IIT-BHU. Retrieved March 8, 2014 from
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vishalaksh
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[2] Technex 2014. Retrieved February 22, 2014 from
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[3] Application statistics. Retrieved March 9, 2014 from
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[4] Technex Android App Promo. Retrieved March 11, 2014
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[5] GCM Push Messaging Server for Android App Developers
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[6] Auer, S. R.; Bizer, C.; Kobilarov, G.; Lehmann, J.;
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[8] The National Public Toilet Map, A Project Of The National
Continence Program. Retrieved March 13, 2014 from
https://toiletmap.gov.au/.
[9] Toilet Map. Retrieved March 13, 2014 from
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[10] National Public Toilet Map by Human Solutions Pty Ltd.
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[11] Nearest Toilet/ Nearby Alert by Firas Zuriekat. Retrieved
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[12] Dataset with data on public toilets. Transparent Chennai.
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204dce,New+Delhi,+Delhi&ei=2F0TUujFAYm4rAfAm4D4
DQ&ved=0CLgBEMgT&source=newuser-ws.
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[15] Physical Progress Of The Total Sanitation Campaign In
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[16] Details of Comprehensive Environmental Pollution Index
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[17] City and location wise ambient air quality for the year 2010.
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[18] Mapumental | Public transport travel-time maps from
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[19] Mapnificent - Dynamic Public Transport Travel Time Maps.
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