Northstar

FEATURE | IDEAS AND PLANNING 36 Jul-Aug 2016 meetings & conventions • mcmag-asia.com progress promises an imminent breakout. Maritz is using beacons and a proprietary integrated app successfully with auto-industry clients to push location-relevant messages and content to attendees, and Washington, D.C.- based Radius Networks is working with several venues on beacon-based solutions. Particularly noteworthy are the features Radius developed for last year's Consumer Elec tronics Show in Las Vegas, helping attendees navigate the mammoth trade show. Radius is building on that and adding features for this month's edition of the show. Count on more frequent and ambitious rollouts this year. "The majority of use cases have been within the retail market," acknowledges Katie Harvill, managing director of meetings, events and branding firm Matchstick Creative, based in New Orleans. But Harvill plans to take advantage of recent hardware and development advances to drive interactivity at her events. "As with anything else, you have to determine your objectives first," Harvill says. "Whether it's pushing out content, creating engagement by making the phones themselves essential in-session tools. Features include the ability to communicate with speakers during sessions, provide feedback, and interact with the presentation slides on mobile devices. Such capabilities have become more robust and more prevalent over the past year. Trade-show tech provider Freeman XP has issued a white paper (bit.ly/1UeEp1y) about how best to employ second-screen technology (Freeman's platform, FXP|touch, was born from a collaboration with Klowd. com). One huge benefit: by allowing attendees an easy way to interact with speakers and provide feedback in real time, organisers gain access to a wealth of data about what's resonating with their audience. Event tech company Evenium's innovative ConnexMe app (evenium. com/c/connexme) facilitates in- session collaboration. Attendees can ask questions of the presenter that can be projected onscreen, creating a conversation on the topic at hand. Not only can attendees take notes directly on the presentation slides via their mobile devices, they can draw on the slides with a finger or a stylus to add notes. Session organisers can even opt to make attendee notes publicly viewable in real time, so the audience can mark up a slide together, via their own mobile devices. 7. Relaxation stations Taking time out for a yoga breather can make meeting-goers more relaxed, mindful and productive. According to a CNBC story, L'Oreal, Facebook, Yahoo! and hedge fund Citadel have tried this at their meetings. Setting aside a serene place at a convention center during a larger event is nothing new. Called prayer rooms or quiet rooms, they traditionally have been simple spots that don't get much attention. But this is changing. The through networking or gamification, driving efficiencies through navigation or collecting user data, beacons are a catalyst to achieving these goals. However, it's up to you and the environment you create to determine the technology's adoption." 5. Live streaming for all Last year marked the debut of two popular apps that allow anyone to live-stream quickly from their smartphones: Periscope and Meerkat. Periscope, owned by Twitter, provides instant access to all of one's Twitter followers and can be shared by one follower to all of their followers, and so on, vastly increasing a potential audience. Periscope videos remain available for viewing for 24 hours, while Meerkat's disappear when the stream ends. Both apps have amassed millions of users, and more such apps likely will surface soon. The key here for meetings and events is the simplicity of these apps. They won't take the place of a professionally broadcast hybrid event, but they can very well supplement one, allowing anyone with a smartphone to do a live report on-site. The Professional Convention Management Association used Periscope at two sessions during its 2015 Educational Conference, and the PCMA communications staff will be streaming with Periscope once again during this month's Convening Leaders conference. There's an ad-hoc quality to such apps, and the process still involves some trial and error, but the implications for increasing reach and engagement are very real. 6. Apps that boost engagement In last year's innovations roundup, we wrote about second-screen technology, apps that make the most of attendees' potentially distracting smartphones "While it's important to make each session relevant and interactive, it's also critical to follow up with attendees, reminding them of what they learned and imparting more nuggets to help them retain and use the information." WILL THALHEIMER, PH.D., PRESIDENT OF WORK- LEARNING RESEARCH.

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