Demo: Conferize simplifies conference discovery with new portal

Conferize aims to help you discover conferences, see who is involved with them and follow the conversations that unfold around them. The company launched an alpha version of its service today at DEMO in Silicon Valley.

“We have platforms and portals for almost anything in the world, from indie music to pictures of cats. Yet with conferences, which is a trillion dollar global industry, no one has succeeded in creating that one point of entry,” Martin Ferro-Thomsen, chief executive and founder of Conferize told VentureBeat. “I thought that was crazy, considering the immense impact conferences can have on peoples’ personal and professional lives, and decided I couldn’t wait for anyone else to solve it.”

Conferize is a completely web-based aggregator of conferences. Through the free web portal, users can review conference agendas, organizer emails, original websites, social media feeds, photos, videos, available presentations and more. The website is currently in alpha, or its first round of testing.

Ask any person in public relations, and they’ll tell you finding conferences without knowing exactly what you want is a tough charge. Google searches are often noisy, and while many conference websites do give a lot of information, the ease of having it all in one place is Conferize’s strength. The website has a search of its own conference directory, where you can look for events, venues and users as well as tags on each conference so you can search by topic. Conferize also lets you friend other members to watch where they are headed.

Once you’ve found the conference you want, you can choose to show you are attending it, as well as follow the conference to watch for updates to the agenda and see any social media chatter about the event.

Other websites such as Lanyrd.com and Allconferences.com do offer conference discovery and a healthy listing of conferences happening in different countries. These websites, however, are a little more static. Lanyrd.com is the most active, but still points visitors away from its own website, toward the outlying websites created by conference organizers.

Conferize was founded in 2010 and is currently located in Copenhagen, Denmark with plans to move its headquarters to San Francisco, Calif. The company currently has four employees and is self-funded. So far it has raised $150,000.

Conferize is one of 80 companies chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Fall 2011 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After our selection, the companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.