Services such as Yahoo’s Upcoming and Meetup and Facebook’s Events, coupled with a decentralized and grassroots meetup and “unconference” culture have led to an explosion of event invitations in our various inboxes. That first generation of tools is looking a little creaky to today’s event planners, so here’s a roundup of the current generation of “eventware.”

The current generation of eventware all offer a mix of registration, ticketing, mailing list, analytics, payment and promotion features, but each is pretty distinct in its niche:

• Amiando. launched in 2006, Amiando powers some of the European tech industry’s larger, more formal conferences, including Thinking Digital and Le Web. Though private events can be listed for free, public events incur an excessive €1 + 6 percent of the ticket price for each ticket sold. However, the service includes some unique features, including comprehensive Facebook integration and the ability to run an entire conference site from within the app.
• Eventbrite. I can’t think of a week that goes by without receiving multiple invitations to Eventbrite-powered event (including GigaOM’s own conferences). It’s a great solution, with a very vocal and engaged development team constantly providing new features, though the interface can sometimes be a sprawling mess and it’s easy to forget how a previously completed task was completed. Eventbrite’s real power lies in the ability to quickly list and promote an event without too much effort.
• Expectnation. Heavily utilized by O’Reilly Media’s conference team, what’s unique about this service is the ability to manage session proposals, calls-for-participation and manage a conference’s schedule and structure, as well as the sales and ticketing processes. It’s a pretty comprehensive solution, though the absence of pricing information suggests it’s a very premium choice.
• OpenConferenceWare. Perhaps the most interesting development is the open-source OpenConferenceWare project where the creator’s motives were to offer a free and open app to empower others in creating events. It was most prominently utilized in 2009′s Open Source Bridge conference. Like Expectnation, OpenConferenceWare provides features to manage submissions and schedules, but also enables delegates to personalize custom schedules for their attendance (just like SCHED*, reviewed here). Unfortunately, as an installable app, setup requires some knowledge of Ruby and web hosts.

Amiando, Eventbrite and Expectnation are fully formed and comprehensive suites for event planners; albeit expensive. However, I’m intrigued by OpenConferenceWare’s philosophy; with the groundswell in this software category, could OpenConferenceWare evolve into the WordPress of its segment?

If OpenConferenceWare was as easy to customize and install as WordPress, we could see a sophisticated and proven free alternative to the big commercial solutions as well as a vibrant ecosphere of plugin and theme developers. Even a hosted, freemium service — like WordPress.com (please see disclosure at the bottom) — could outmaneuver larger competitors.

Which event planning and ticketing solutions do you use?

Disclosure: WordPress.com is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.

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Photo by Flickr user LornaJane.net, licensed under CC-BY-ND 2.0

It’s been said that the apps that break out at Austin’s South by Southwest festival are those that help festival-goers navigate and orient themselves within the sprawl of parties, panel sessions and gigs.

The 2007 edition of SXSW was Twitter’s big moment, the tipping point for the now iconic service. The following year, many thought that SCHED*, a web-based event calendar and agenda builder, would be the breakout service of 2008 — the “new Twitter.”

Though such expectations were inflated by the media, SCHED* provided useful personalized schedules that have endured through two editions of the festival. The latest edition of the app now includes mobile support, iPhone compatibility, and the ability to integrate with iCal and Google Calendar.

As the organizer of a “proto-SXSW” here in the U.K. — LSx 2009, the second Leeds Web Festival — I figured this was a great opportunity to put SCHED* through its paces with the somewhat smaller schedule of events for LSx. Also, it’d be a useful trial run for a fuller deployment in 2010, when LSx will likely merge with the Live At Leeds music festival.

Here’s how things work:

1. Upon making an inquiry via the SCHED* web site, I was put in touch with the company’s business development people to collate our requirements and also to discuss which plans and pricing would be most appropriate for LSx. At this stage, SCHED* simply needs to understand the demographics, audience size and dates. The company offers Basic, Premium and Premium Plus plans, ranging from $399 to $850, depending on features rather than usage. The company was generous enough to let us experiment with the app using a nonprofit discounted plan.
2. Once the invoice is settled, you need to provide a logo, official conference/festival name, URL of the official site, your chosen SCHED* subdomain (http://lsx.sched.org), event location and the beginning and end dates.
3. Once your new site is live, it’s administered and updated in batches using a SCHED*-supplied offline Excel spreadsheet or online Google Spreadsheet. It initially seems an odd choice to utilize a spreadsheet interface to administer your SCHED* site, but the complexity of venues, events and categories would likely not work well at all in a web-based HTML form.

It’s unfair to compare SCHED* to Twitter as a SxSW breakout service — Twitter is a consumer app, whereas SCHED is really intended for festival and conference organizers. However, I found SCHED* to be competitively priced — compared with Crowdvine and Expectnation — and  it certainly adds value to the audience of a conference or festival. What’s perhaps even more valuable for organizers is the level of direct support and account handling that the company provides, something that’s lacking in most of the self-service web services around today. Well done for great service, SCHED*.

If you are involved in organizing meetups, BarCamps, work events and other gatherings, SCHED*’s a powerful tool for organizers and attendees alike.

What tool do you use for scheduling your events?

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