Venue Tech Connect App Offers New Community to Venue Professionals Platform is intended to improve buying, selling, managing technology in sports venues By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Tuesday, February 20, 2024 - 5:54 pm
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The sports-venue world is a unique one, and it's often a disconnected one because staffers who work at venues are often so busy at the home venue that they don't have an opportunity to connect with counterparts at other venues. VenueTech Connect, a new community platform launched by industry veteran Greg Stocker aims to change that by connecting sports teams, sports venues, colleges, K-12 schools, and the technology vendors and consultants that support them.
VenueTech Connect can be downloaded from Apple App Store or Google Play Store.
VTC was created to improve how technology is bought, sold, and managed in sports venues, says Stocker. We have compiled the industry's most comprehensive network of buyers, sellers, and consultants of sports-venue technology, coupled with an unparalleled collection of unique tools designed to inform, educate, and connect.
Although this is the age of information, he notes, acquisition of knowledge is often hindered by such obstacles as excessive noise, gatekeepers, misinformation, and overwhelming amounts of information.
Thankfully, he adds, we no longer require a mystical figure like the great Oz to guide us towards enlightenment. What we truly need is simple and direct access to knowledgeable individuals and effective methods to evaluate and learn from the information available to us.
Stocker aimed to dismantle the barriers that hinder people from connecting, learning, and forging valuable partnerships. In a market filled with numerous exceptional products, talented individuals, and innovative companies, I sought to redirect the focus toward these elements, rather than solely prioritizing the lowest price and the latest trendy pitch.
Features at launch comprise a vendor directory (organized by product category and providing such information as how long a vendor has been in business, number of employees and clients), product roster (a visual, searchable location-based inventory-management tool with product specs, vendors, warranties, and more), and events (a searchable timeline of trade shows, conferences, and other events in the sports-venue-tech space).
We have added basic information on over 300 vendors and consultants to VTC, Stocker says. This includes organization names, logos, company age, number of employees, and Vendor Tags for their go-to-market strategies. Some vendors and consultants have already preregistered on our website and provided additional details.
Additional features to be launched this year include a web interface, subscriptions for push notifications, an RSS feed of industry news, and even a QR-code-based equipment checkout designed specifically for sports venues. As the platform matures, it will offer a way to connect buyers and sellers of used technology.
Getting started in VTC is easy, Stocker explains. Download the app from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store and complete the registration process. If your organization is already registered, an email will be sent to the admin to set up your user rights and provide you with login credentials. If you're the first in your organization to register, you'll go through a 2- to 3-minute registration process to capture basic company information. Once your account is set up, you can easily add details to your profile. Initially, you can manually list products, but soon we'll have a batch-import feature to streamline the process. We will also provide the option to link to your website for detailed product information and specifications in the coming weeks.
The launch version of VTC is free for all users, and all features that start free will stay free, Stocker says. More free features will be added, along with optional fee-based features that build off the free tools, starting in late Q1.
These tools will be aggressively priced and will offer enhanced functionality and advanced tools found nowhere else in the market, Stocker says. The application is built on an aggregation platform, and, because the features are designed to intersect, we are able to implement new tools that are far more powerful and significantly less money than if we had a single-feature application.
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Venue Tech Connect App Offers New Community to Venue Professionals Platform is intended to improve buying, selling, managing technology in sports venues By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director 
