news article

Introducing the Annual Conference App

April 16, 2018 / By Shannon Hodson / .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

The Upper New York (UNY) Conference is excited to announce that there will be an Event app available to use at Annual Conference this year from May 30-June 2 at the Onondaga County College SRC Arena in Syracuse. Now you will have the option to access everything related to Annual Conference right from your phone or tablet instead of thumbing through pages upon pages of materials in your packet.

Upper New York Conference’s IT team is leading the way with the implementation of this app for Annual Conference through a partnership with the United Methodist Church’s General Council of Finance and Administration (GCF&A). GCF&A designed this app through QuickMobile software.

UNY IT Manager, Doug Thomas said, ”The whole idea of GCF&A providing this app to Annual Conferences is to consolidate services.” This app program is called UMC Meet—it is an event planning app that has been used for a variety of events in many Annual Conferences.

Currently the UNY IT and Communications Ministry Areas are pulling together everything one normally receives in their Conference packet and creating electronic versions for the app.

Thomas said, “It’s a very feature-rich and user-friendly app.”

Included in this app will be the schedule of events, menus, maps, and a whole lot more. If there are any changes taking place at Annual Conference (for example, plenary beginning earlier on Friday than intended), an alert will appear on your phone through this app.

You can also contact anyone attending Annual Conference through a messaging option on this app. No need to have people you want to connect with in your phone contacts!

With the introduction of this app, we will be limiting the number of printed packets. In addition to being environmentally friendly, the UNY Conference will be saving dollars. The app itself is only costing the Upper New York Conference about $.50 a day per person.

Doug Thomas also mentioned how this app could potentially streamline the arrival and check-in process. He said, “The process of arriving and check-in will be quicker through simply using a QR code to check-in.”

If you are not too familiar with apps, do not worry! There will be plenty of volunteers on-hand to help you download the app onto your mobile device. The app will be made available to download and familiarize yourself with in early May. More details will be coming soon.