When we decided several months ago to bite the bullet and invest the money to rent a booth, purchase airfare for two, and hotel accommodations, it was with the hope that the National Main Streets Conference in Des Moines, Iowa, would not only bring in more business for us, but to also raise awareness amongst the Main Street Communities that apps are not only the future…but also the present.

As we were setting up our booth, we were already being approached by our booth mates who were also wondering if we could develop an app for the business they were exhibiting for. What transpired over the course of the next couple days was completely unexpected and totally exciting.

What you have to understand is that we eat, sleep, and breath this business. We believe in it. We find the technology utterly exciting, and love playing around with it — challenging ourselves to find more and different ways of using a geo-locating app.

In all my years of doing Trade Shows for other industries, I’ve not ever had the experience we had at the National Main Streets Conference. We had lines of people waiting their turn to talk to us. Most of the conversations started with either “What is this?” or “We know we need to be going in this direction….what do we need to do to get there?”

We had spent hours creating a slick slide show that was running on the table inside our booth. Mostly, people ignored it, and asked the same question: “How much does this cost?”

So, Monday, I quickly bailed on the presentation and put up our simple three-tiered pricing slide.

The second-most asked question was “What other Main Streets have you done an app for?” That led me to create a new slide show that gave screen shots of every app we’ve created, along with the simple pricing structure.

We came away from the conference completely excited to continue conversations with those who were interested in having us develop an App for their Main Street Community. We also came away exhausted. Talking and standing all day is a challenge.

We can’t wait to dig in and launch some new apps for Main Street Communities!