Evernote started out as a note-taking application but over time, it’s built up a portfolio of products through acquisitions and internal development. Now, it’s increasingly looking at how to educate people on the many uses of Evernote and its family of products. That’s one of the big themes of Evernote’s second annual Trunk Conference, scheduled for August 24.
While the inaugural conference was dedicated to developers, this year’s agenda is split between developers and users, who can attend a “Life Series” track. The lifestyle track will be led by Evernote’s ambassadors, a group of leading users across a number of areas who were first announced last October.
The idea is to further educate users about the way they can apply Evernote in their real lives. And it helps expand Evernote’s audience to more mainstream users, who now have more tools to use to organize their lives. Evernote in December released mobile apps Evernote Hello and Evernote Food to help people remember contacts and past meals respectively. Evernote also bought services like image-sharing app Skitch last August and handwriting iPad app Penultimate last month. Here’s what CEO and founder Phil Libin had to say:
People feel they’re not using Evernote to its full potential. There is an appetite for people who want to get the most out of it. And there’s definitely more opportunity because Evernote is much bigger now. The goal has always been to make you smarter and more productive but the ways to do that has definitely increased. We want people to learn all the ways you can use Evernote.
Libin said the first show sold out immediately last year with more than 400 people attending and expectations are for this year’s show to attract double that number. Despite its developer focus last year, the conference attracted a number of regular users interested in finding out more about the service. He said by creating dual tracks, he believes the two groups can help spur each other on.
The developer track will also teach people how to use Evernote’s APIs, will showcase top apps on the Evernote platform and will give attendees a sense of where Evernote is headed in the future. Developers can also compete in a $ 100,000 Devcup competition. There are already 2,000 submissions for this year’s competition, double that of last year.
Evernote continues to steam along toward Libin’s goal of creating a 100-year company. The start-up raised $ 70 million last month, increasing its total funding to more $ 160 million to date. Libin said the company is still preparing to be “IPO ready” by the end of 2013, but will likely hold off on going public as it continues to innovate and take risks.
For GigaOM readers interested in attending the Trunk Conference, there’s a 50 percent discount code for the first 25 people who sign-up. The code is: ETCGIGAOM
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