The 17th annual National Ethanol Conference is just around the corner, February 22-24 in Orlando, but those who are registered can start networking with fellow attendees now through the NEC mobile app.

NEC Connect provides access to the online social networking community designed specifically for the NEC, allowing attendees to design their own profile, link other social networking sites to their profile, communicate with other attendees via conversations and private messages, as well as see which attendees they have the most in common through categories and tags. NEC Connect also lets each attendee design their own session schedule and invite other attendees to private meetings.

NEC Connect provides a dashboard with updated information, organizes schedules with one click, allows attendees to receive instant communications if there are any changes in scheduling or updates, has a built-in Twitter feed and ways to share photos, and even has RSS feeds with industry news.

NEC Connect is available as a native app for iPhone and Android, and as a hybrid web-based app for Blackberry, and there’s also a web-based version of the application for all other web browser-enabled phones. Registered attendees should have received an email about the app, or it can be downloaded for free on the conference website.