TGIF Android Party Planning
Android Party Planning…Thank God it’s Friday
When is a good time for a celebration? FRIDAY. Whether it’s a huge promotion or that you won your divorce settlement, parties are seen as a time of making new friends, visiting with old acquaintances, and just letting it all hang out. Android Party Planning? Where to start? How many people do you invite? What types of foods or refreshments do you set out? What is the process behind the things that professional party planners get paid to do?
General Guidelines
For large parties you are going to want to invite 20 percent more people than you think will fit at your venue. Typically only 70 to 80 percent of those invited attend. From that point, you decide on a theme if you aren’t going to go with an all out rager. This is the part that determines decorations and music. The next step is invitations. Make your mail, e-mail, and phone invites count. If you want to have food out or you think you get away with a bunch of chips, salsa, and beer then forgo the fancy dinnerware but always remember to get things that can be made ahead of time. If you plan on enjoying the festivities, have someone hold down the fort or hire some help to keep things under control.
Realsimple.com has a great article on entertaining and planning that you may want to take a look at.
Out of all the elements you need to do the most important three stick out in any person’s itinerary. You want to make a playlist for the music, shop and prepare the food, clean up your party site, and buy the drinks.
(If you are planning on setting up the party in your house then we would advise you to hide your valuables and personal effects just in case, keeping everyone honest.)
It doesn’t sound too hard does it? Take a look at these 5 apps to keep you on top of things!
SquadUP
[Price: Free with payment gateway]
This app was created with the sole purpose of managing an experience instead of an event. This experience planner allows you to plan, update, and monitor the events in real-time–right from your phone or better yet, your tablet. Registrations, check-ins, and ticket scanning are included. According to SquadUP:
“SquadUP provides social sharing, content aggregation from social platforms, real-time messaging and photo sharing during the event. The company supports organizers from event creation to the event itself — and even post-event where guests can review the photos in the social gallery to relive the experience.”
With such an all-inclusive support network that’s on hand to help you engage with attendees before, during, and after the event you can be sure network has to recoup some of their investment. The best part about this is, events that are free cost… Nothing! When your event begins to tread into payment territory then things change-up a little with a simple payment bracket based on price per ticket, service fee, and credit card processing transactions.
All things considered, if your party isn’t one of those that require guests pay at the door then give this application a try. You won’t regret it.
Guest List
[Price: Free with in-app purchases]
One of the best draws for this application is the lack of internet connectivity issues. The only thing you would need connectivity for is in setting up the application, adding events, and adding guests. Granted this is just a guest list application and doesn’t do the same thing as SquadUP, if you don’t need a big function for a smallish get together (less than 100 guests) then you may only need the ability to check people off. A neat feature is to have them use their phones to check in if they have one with Near Field Communication. You’re also able to edit lists on the fly as well as import and export using various cloud services.
SmartHost Guest List
[Price: Free with in-app purchases]
This is an expanded guest list that isn’t quite as advanced but the layout is a winner for us. It fulfills the basic role of keeping track of who you invite and who you don’t and seeing that it’s a new application it’ll be interesting to see what gets added to it in subsequent updates. The only real payment you might make is the ability to get rid of the ads–which we’ve said before we end up paying just cause.
Planner – Calendar & Organizer
[Price: Free]
If you happen to be one of those individuals that have multiple engagements that require your time then getting the paid version of this app is a must. The rationale behind electronic planners is you always have your phone with you. If you always have your phone with you then you can never forget things you enter into your planner. Gone are the days where we would lug around a chubby binder for our itinerary. What we have is a full-fledged planner in the tradition of Franklin Covey.
Some other great features are:
– Sync with Google calendar and events
– Supports all-day & cross-day events
– Supports recurring tasks and projects
– System reminder for each task
– Unlimited number of notes for each day
– Full records searching including events, tasks and notes
My Party Planner
[Price: $1.50 USD]
Looks aren’t everything. While it resembles something from Ice Cream Sandwich days, with its Holo inspired layout, it actually does a great job at making sure your event goes as planned. It has five sections: TO DO, guest, menu, shopping, and budget. You are able to import guests from contacts on your phone and manage RSVP. Under menu you can enter in shopping items for a specific dish. Shopping and budget include the same task lists. Everything that has to be done while you entered in any of the other 4 sections under guests, menu, shopping, and budget are automatically updated and sorted by date in the TO DO tab.
Reminder
You may not need all the bells and whistles for backyard get together, but if you want to create a memorable experience for those massive parties then you are going to need a little more help than you think. Everyone may not remember what exactly they did at the party, but you can bet they’re going to remember how great a job you did providing them with said entertainment–when they were sober that is.
Stay safe, get a designated driver, and have fun.
Top image Copyrights by Moyan Brenn
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