Sometimes you travel for work, and sometimes you work for travel.  Everyone has to pay the bills somehow…

It just so happens that the biggest event of the year is nearly upon us in the travel blogging community in TBEX.  What better time than now to talk about the apps & technology you’ll want when you attend your next conference, be it travel related or not.

Conference Apps

With everyone making such a green push, it’s too bad that business cards are still the main method for swapping contact details.  How many of those do you keep anyways?  Here are some of the best apps for conferences.

Evernote Hello

Perhaps the best app for keeping those memorable people you meet actually memorable, Evernote Hello allows you to pass your phone to the person to quickly fill out their own details and shoot their own self portrait.  There is a space for notes if you need to fill in any other details.

Best of all, Evernote Hello shows all of your new contacts chronologically, and with their photos for context, making it easy to put two-and-two together in the cloudy days after the conference.

Lastly, it syncs all of the information to your Evernote account so it’s safely up in the cloud to view on your laptop and beyond.

Available for iPhone and Android (Free)

QR Code Reader / Creator

While I’m not sure QR codes will ever totally catch on, they are still an easy way to capture a website or contact details with a quick snap of a photo.

For those who don’t know, QR codes are those “2D barcodes” you see on packaging and signs these days.  Unlike normal barcodes, QR codes can hold much more information, and with a quick scan on your smartphone or tablet, can take you to a website (or more) without a single letter typed.

Finally, you can even create your own QR code for free and show it to people to scan instead of carrying around traditional business cards.

Available for iOS (Scan – Free) and Android (QR Droid – Free)

Twitter Apps

Nothing says nerdy conference like a Twitter #hashtag.  A good way to keep up to date with the goings on around town, following a Twitter hashtag will let you see what everyone else at the conference is tweeting regardless if you follow them or not.  It’s also a good way to arrange meetups and making friends that aren’t in your circles.

From your Twitter app, choose “Discover” and type in the #hashtag and you’ll see a stream with all of the mentions with it.  For the power users looking to track more than one #hashtag, try Hootsuite (iOS, Android – Free) or TweetDeck (iOS, Android – Free).

Honourable mentions to Cardmunch for capturing business cards & LinkedIn information which we reviewed earlier (iPhone only, Free), and BUMP which takes the fist-bump greeting to another level to exchange contact information (iPhone / Android, Free).

Conference Gear Tips

Be sure to get your tech ready to rock by charging up the batteries. If you’re at a particularly forward thinking conference, they may even have a recharging station to juice up your gadgets on the go.

Pack your camera for those memorable meetups and great photo ops.  Your smartphone camera should do the trick.  I’m sure that seeing all of the Instagram filtered photos you see over the weekend won’t get old.

Bring along your smartphone / tablet for communication and collection of information.  Also handy for passing the time during those boring talks.  (Dave recommends the staple “Angry Birds”)

So if you happen to be at TBEX this weekend @ Keystone, Colorado, be sure to keep an eye out for the Dave and I of Too Many Adapters lurking around.  Come and say hi!

Dustin Main

One of the editors of Too Many Adapters, Dustin just can’t get enough travel or technology.

When not directly feeding his above insatiable habits, you can probably find him at some far away ice cream shop taking pictures and tweeting of all the flavors to jealous followers. That, or on top of a mountain somewhere shooting panoramas with his DSLR.