The Lib Dem conference directory is
published as a pdf. It has fringe listings, and handy maps. Except that, incomprehensibly, the maps are badly compressed bitmaps. The maps are also available as high quality images, and it's trivial (with Apple's OSX "print preview" app, for example) to replace the crap maps with the good ones. It took me about 10 minutes, which is why I don't understand why the published directory has the crap maps.
I've also found the official conference app unusable. It takes about a minute to start, which is far too long when you're looking for the location of a fringe event, for example. These things need to start instantly. The "killer" feature of the app is, or would be, the ability to create a personal agenda. In theory, you can do this: adding debates, fringe events, and training events. In practice, nothing that I "add" to my agenda actually gets added.
It would work quite nicely, even with the delay, if "adding" an event would just create an entry in my calendar app. Actually, that would be better than creating another diary in the official app. But that doesn't appear to have been considered.
So, that's why I've created a
Google calendar with the main conference agenda, and a couple of the more popular fringe events. I've also made myself a
cut down version of the directory: with legible maps, and fewer adverts (many of which are also illegible because they're over-compressed bitmaps instead of vector graphics).
