Tech
Curing a
headache
Lineup Ninja aims to cut out the stress and
propensity for error from session management
at conferences and exhibitions, EN learns more
about the fledging tech startup
A
s with many companies
in the exhibition
industry, the idea for Lineup
Ninja was born from a
perceived gap in the market.
Co-founder Joe Atkinson
had spent time at a tech
company before leaving to
join a charity as an event
organiser. The company
had an annual event with
numerous speaker sessions
spread over various stages.
“There were a lot
different things happening
simultaneously,” he tells EN.
“Scheduling all the different
speakers at different times
could become quite complex.
I had to make sure that they
weren’t simultaneously
giving a practical workshop
and on a panel somewhere
else.
“There were all these
different considerations to
think about. I was doing it
on spreadsheets and sticky
notes, finding it was really
easy to make mistakes, and
I was constantly worried
about scheduling something
at the wrong time – and
of course eventually it did
happen.”
Atkinson accidentally
moved a speaker’s session to
a day he couldn’t attend, and
needless to say the speaker
wasn’t too happy.
“He was shouting at the
reception staff in front of
loads of other attendees. It
was really embarrassing,” he
recalls. “My chief exec was
trying to cultivate a strategic
relationship with this guy, so
it was a massive failure on
my part.
“I thought, ‘there must
be a better way of doing
this, surely there has to be a
product out there that could
help with this problem’. I
searched and searched and
couldn’t find anything.”
And so the idea for
Lineup Ninja – a conference
management software
company – was born.
Atkinson seemed up with
Gordon Johnston, an ex-
colleague from his time
working in the world of tech,
and they set about building
the platform.
“Gordon was working
as a solutions architect,
which means he did all the
design for a whole platform,”
continues Atkinson. “In
his spare time his hobby is
programming and writing
software, so he was the
perfect person. He’s got the
technical skills and I had
an understanding of what it
needed to do and the domain
knowledge.”
It quickly became apparent
that, along with scheduling
speakers, it made sense
for the software to begin
at the ‘call for papers’
stage of speaker/organiser
interaction, which would
provide organisers with more
data, save time and connect
up the whole process.
“We take it from the point
at which you design and
publish your call for papers
right through to scheduling
all the sessions and deciding
who’s on which stage at what
time,” explains Atkinson.
“It’s evolving all the time as
we speak to new clients and
they say, ‘it would be great if
it did this’.
“We’re always conscious
that the world of events is
quite diverse, there are lots
of different kinds of use
cases and different feature
requests and we want to
build something that’s
useful for people. We’re
always really open to hearing
what people need and then
building that into it and
trying to give it as much
value as possible.
“One of the principles
of how we designed it is to
try and keep it as flexible
as possible, so that it puts
you as the event planner
in charge. It’s a challenge
to give users what they
need without completely
overwhelming them.”
Lineup Ninja was first
conceived in late 2016 and
Atkinson and his co-founder
spent around 18 months
building, vetting and then
beta-testing the product,
although the company has
already attracted interest
by winning the ‘Launchpad’
start-up competition at
Event Tech Live 2018.
While the industry is often
seen as over-saturated with
new event tech companies,
EN at least will be watching
this space. EN
April — 53