Bizzabo is a new startup, currently in private beta, that allows people attending technical conferences to find the people that are really important to advance their careers.
If you’re paid to be geeky, than attending technical conferences is a way of life. There’s CES, OSCON, E3, USENIX, SIGGRAPH and other alphabet soup conferences you can attend to not only learn about new developments in your field, but also to network and meet new people to hopefully advance your career.
Any way you slice it, attending one of these conferences costs money. If you’re not flying or taking the train, you’re still probably paying for gas at least to get you there. And you also have to pay for the tickets. And that’s not counting the cost of the food or the price of the drinks during those wild nights at the bar after all the workshops have ended for the day.
So how do you maximize your investment and minimize wasting your time?
Bizzabo is a startup based in Israel that uses smartphones to help you determine who’s important for you to boost your career at conferences. This video explains how it works:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kH-euex-Sg&feature=player_embedded
Just install this app on your phone and you can manage all your present and past conferences. Their algorithm is intended to find people at conferences that Bizzabo thinks you should meet, based on the information you’ve put into it. In turn, Bizzabo should recommend you to other people looking to advance their careers as well.
Bizzabo was one of the many startups debuting at TechCruch disrupt last week, and launched a private beta during the conference. If you’re willing to put in your email address and have a conference coming up, you might see if you’ll get lucky.
But the Bizzabo team does operate a neat and insightful blog.
“The past couple of months at Bizzabo have been something between one big, bonded family to an elite commando unit focused on its mission,” Founder and CEO Eran Ben-Shushan said in a post. “It’s been an addictive cycle of starting the day with the whole team over a bowl of cereal and ending it with a pizza (oh, and I must mention the awesome homemade lunch competition – but that’s for another post…). That cycle + being surrounded by a group of talented individuals simply make you feel alive and kicking!”
If the response when Bizzabo finally launches to the public continues to be as enthustiastic as it has been (they won the TechAviv Peer Award in August) then maybe this app will have a bright future ahead of it.
If you liked this article, you might also be interested in Connect a Job, a website that makes job hunting more personal and the Top 5 Apps for Job Hunting.
