From nowhere to everywhere in under five years, that’s how fast mobile apps have become a “must-have” communications technology for meetings. The next big push is to extract reams of business intelligence from the meeting apps.

These analytics can be quickly aggregated so that meeting organizers can act immediately to impact attendees’ objectives, significantly improve engagement and generate revenues, said Patrick Payne, CEO of QuickMobile, which issued a white paper on 7 Predictions for Mobile Event Apps. An app dashboard can capture everything from types of and usage by multiple devices to hashtags and keywords utilized. Such activities as polling, surveys and gamification can reveal most popular speakers; words and phrases being used over and over; the most popular content accessed, downloaded or retweeted. “Second-wave” metadata can reach across multiple events to uncover trends and patterns that represent future opportunities. The bottom line: You can quantify the levels of engagement and experiences achieved.

Here are QuickMobile’s 7 mobile event app predictions for 2014:

1. Enterprise-grade apps will become available to everyone, as providers meet demands for scalability, reliability, flexibility, security, branding and most importantly, integration, which enables engagement through the app from the very beginning of the event lifecycle.

2. Event apps will embrace social networking by offering what is needed, not what is trendy, for three types of platforms: social, business social and enterprise social.

3. Event apps will need to work harder to earn the attention of attendees and other stakeholders, using such elements as: gamification; feedback from surveys and polling; video and rich media; touchpoints before, during and after the event lifecycle.

4. Event apps will need to deliver a more personalized and relevant experience to attendees, connecting users to all relevant online profiles and integrating technologies (like radio-frequency identification, global positioning systems, and Bluetooth Wi-Fi) to help attendees achieve their objectives.

5. Event owners will tap into more sophisticated analytics to provide insight and intelligence, and validate return on investment.

6. Mobile event app vendors will continue to proliferate, as demand for more extensive and complex services increases.

7. The “mobile engagement platform” will finally deliver on the promise of “connected communities” that are about much more than just the event. — Maxine Golding