Activ8 is a new Twin Cities-based event/class registration service targeted to the small business that has a limited (or no) web presence. Those who offer such services as dance, karate, gymnastics or fitness studios are perfect potential users, as are individual instructors in fitness, music, yoga or tutoring.

One of the great things about the Internet is how it's so perfectly geared to make the inefficient more efficient. The creator of Activ8, Marc Kermish, is an athlete who saw a lot of inefficiencies in event management among athletics service providers (and many others) and has delivered a web application that can dramatically simplify the entire event-management process.

Activ8 enables the posting of any sort of event, class or gathering that requires a participant to purchase a ticket. The event organizer can post the details, collect participant information and payments via credit card, and then communicate with participants throughout the event planning process. Activ8 takes a small fee from every participant transaction.

After I was initially contacted about Activ8 — and knowing that the event management space is fairly crowded — I poked around the site and app to look for potential competitive advantages that Marc might have and was pleased to have two that leapt out at me.

While others offer this, too, one of the key benefits of the Activ8 service is a branded event page and website address. What intrigued me, however, were two things that stood out as I got under the hood:

1) The simplicity and clean interface of the product, as well as the ability to promote one's event through the latest social media channels (e.g., Twitter) are a clear advantage.

2) The ability for participants to register via email or Twitter makes this especially perfect for those of us on the-go with our mobile devices.

It's the second one that is most interesting, because it leverages the capability of the real-time Twitter network and allows people to tweet the URL to the event and enable registration (clicking the URL takes them to the Active8 event page). As we all become increasingly mobile, this will also be "table stakes" to offer Internet-based applications.

The site and application are attractive and appropriately "Web 2.0-ish" in look and feel. The use of the words "easy" "simple" and "inexpensive" in several places around the site gives you an idea of the direction Marc is going with Activ8.

This is important, because one of the barriers to adoption of many web applications is the long time needed to climb the learning curve when they try to do so much. How many times have you used a website or application and thought, "Oh great. I have to learn yet another NEW interface and application?" As we use more and more web applications in our daily lives, simplicity and ease of use will be increasingly desirable and, in my opinion, will be "table stakes" to be in the web applications game in any way.

Having used many competitive event-management services in the past, I do expect total transparency with respect to any charges or fees. Most event management offerings have a pricing page or big graphic detailing their fees, but after a lot of poking around, I could only find a "we charge a small transaction fee" in the FAQs on the Activ8 site. What is that fee? It's imperative that an event organizer knows up-front what the costs are. Competitors like Eventbrite, for example, charge 2.5 percent plus 99 cents per transaction. Pricing a program or event properly without taking in to consideration fees the participant pays might eat into profits significantly for a small business event, so this is something Activ8 needs to address immediately.

It will be interesting to see how this service takes off, and I'll keep an eye on it. Bbut if you're a small business or running events for your organization, give this a try now, because it's ready to go, ties into Twitter easily and works.

If you'd like to see the Activ8 process in action, check out the video below and then head over to Activ8 to sign up.