I’ve spent a bit of time this mornn playing with the Conference App this morning. Apple took its time to approve it, but it’s now downloadable from the App store and from wherever it is you get Android bits and pieces. (Update: As Jenny reminded me in the comments below, I should tell you where to look: Lib Dem Conf should do it.)
It works better than previous incarnations have. It allows you to create your own Conference schedule, adding in your own meetings. Mine already looks quite scary. My slight grips is that it doesn’t seem to list things in time order on the day. My Saturday starts with the Liberal Democrat Voice Awards and ends with the Safer Sex Work motion with the Presidential hustings in between It seems to list private appointments first, then fringe then agenda items.
It has maps of the venues, the whole agenda and directory and, as a separate item, the ministerial Q and As. I would like to express my great displeasure at whoever it was who decided to put Lynne Featherstone’s at the same time as Nick Clegg’s first session in the hall on Monday afternoon.
It will also be updated to have the Conference Extra, which has the amendments in it and all the questions to Committees. I’m hearing that there are a tonne of both, and the Conference Daily which has all the up to date news each day and things like the Emergency Motions ballot.
Jennie Rigg has raised concerns on Twitter about privacy, saying that the app wants permissions to access various parts of your smartphone before you can even download it, meaning that in theory your location would be tracked. If that’s important to you, you might want to check with the Conference people at HQ, who are usually pretty good at responding on the @LibDemConf twitter account if you raise things with them. Perhaps they might even like to comment on this article.
I had this mental image of Austin Rathe from LDHQ sitting with this massive “Marauders’ Map” thing from Harry Potter looking at all the little dots to tell where we all are. I doubt he will, but it amused me for a few seconds.
You could do Conference without this app, but it is useful. Good to have the whole agenda and directory at your fingertips. It can be easier than juggling paper copies of all the documents you need.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
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9 Comments
For those not psychic, look for “Lib Dem Conf”
I am glad you can find it. It is not on my Apple App Store
David, what phone do you have?
And, Jenny, thanks.
I found it no problem in the App store.
OK on iPhone. Good way to have all the docs in one place but the schedule is not good again. It says it is updating the device calendar but it doesn’t. And then it doesn’t put the appointments in time order. And three clicks to store every appointment?! So I will be hand cranking my appointments into my device calendar again. I go through this “so near but so far” every year.
For Android users, the app is on Play Store under Lib Dem Conf.
Very useful – you go through the listings and add those that are of interest to your personal schedule, and you then have a quick reference point for all your events. And if any event isn’t in the listings you can still write your own schedule event and throw it in, which is useful for all those unlisted AGMs – and I guess you could turn it into a complete schedule of every appointment and social engagement of the week.
Oddities:
Quite a few of the ministerial Q&A sessions don’t have an “Add To My Schedule” button, so you’d have to write them into your Schedule yourself.
And, yes, your schedule is in date order but not in time order – weird.
nothing under lib dem conf here. spring conf comes up after typing in lib dem.
I found the one last year a great help, but then it disappeared on the Tuesday and took the times of appointments with it.
At my age I don’t mind HQ knowing where I am – if I get lost Austin Rathe can come and find me and set me on right path 🙂
I found it in (Google / Android) Play Store right away. But using it to look at the Conference Extra gets a message about “You’ve reached the bandwidth limit for viewing or downloading files that aren’t in Google Docs format”. I don’t know whose limit that is – it’s not a message I’ve seen before – but if it’s one belonging to the App or to its developers, it’s going to be seriously strained over the next week.
Looking forward to my first conference hope to meeting many new Lib Dem’s frends for our fightback.