Northstar

JAN-FEB 2018 39 meetings & conventions • mcmag-asia.com As it turned out, we didn't have to. Apple did it for us. Coming out of WWDC, Apple has announced some sweeping changes to how they will manage their App Store; changes that will profoundly impact how live events deploy mobile event technology. Here is the net: Apple is now pushing mobile event app vendors away from the White Label Event App model towards a Slack- or Gmail-like model: a single, secure, vendor-branded app that lives in the App Store containing all of the deeply customised for each account. The benefits of this architecture are many: simpler app discovery leading to higher adoption / engagement, the ability to deliver cross-event functionality, the opportunity to efficiently roll out feature updates (or security patches), and the chance to deliver year round value, just to name a few. But what we couldn't figure out was how to get there. The White Label Event App model had become the industry standard, and we knew it would be difficult to break this convention alone. A t DoubleDutch, we've long known that the White Label Event App model (siloed, disposable apps for each customer) was not ideal. It was bad for attendees, overly complex for our customers, and inefficient and inelegant as a way to deploy software. We also knew that the right model looked more like Slack or Gmail -- a single, secure app that contained all customer networks, safely partitioned between groups and teams, yet still Just Took a Giant Step Forward (With a Little Help from Apple)

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