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Meetings Technology Trends to Watch for 2012
publication date: Oct 9, 2011
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author/source: Corbin Ball
The rate of technology
change is increasing; meetings and tradeshow technology continues to
advance with technology products becoming better, cheaper and easier to
use and innovation is bubbling with new options.
Despite these limitations, the move to HTML5 will drive down the cost and development time while increasing the flexibility for mobile app development for events. It will also make the do-it-yourself model easier to provide as well. 5. Conference recording and distribution is becoming cheaper, faster and much more capable. Conference recording has been around for decades starting in the days that audio-cassettes of the presentations were mass-produced onsite and sold in the foyer. Recent technology advances have made it possible to quickly and relatively inexpensively distribute speaker video, audio and visuals over the web in real-time and on demand afterwards. This technology to do this was simply not there just a few years ago. The price of high-definition video cameras has plummeted (we are even carrying them around as mobile phone feature). Accessibility to reliable broadband is as available for most meeting facilities and the price is dropping. Video streaming encoders are turn-key. Presentation management software has proliferated. For example, the “video recording and webcasting studio in a box” pictured below is the Roland Systems Group (rolandsystemsgroup.com) VR-5 incorporating a 5-channel video switcher, audio mixer, video playback, recorder, preview monitors and output for web streaming. What previously would have required crates of equipment and $100,000+ has been shrunk into a 9 pound (4.3kg).box for under US$5,000 greatly simplifying the production, recording and streaming of live events.  Using
these smaller, cheaper, and faster tools, it is now possible for
conference recording companies to record video/audio and slides for
dozens of simultaneous presentations and have them available for sale or
distribution on the web that evening. Streaming technology for real-time distribution is also easier and simpler than in the past. Some of the companies providing these services are: Content Management Corporation cmcgc.com, Freeman freemanco.com, OmniPress omnipress.com, PSAV Presentation Services psav.com, Sonic Foundry sonicfoundry.com and Soma Media soma-media.com. More information and details on the benefits for conference recording can be found at the following article: http://ow.ly/6i8Mh 6. Hybrid meetings will extend the reach and broaden the impact of face-to-face events. A hybrid meeting is an event that combines both face-to-face and virtual experience for local and remote attendees. It will become commonplace for many events in the next few years. Meeting professionals are recognizing that it has become much easier to extend the impact of an event beyond the four walls of the meeting room. A hybrid event can multiply the event’s impact and can recruit new attendees for future events. Live steaming sites such as LiveStream.com provide easy methods to stream conference video to remote attendees with a range of pricing plans from free to enterprise level. Increasingly, interactive tools such as polling and remote Q&A will engage the remote participants. Twitter.com using event hashtags is currently being used to allow remote attendees to comment and ask questions during a presentation as well. Skype.com can connect HD video signal from four locations for free. The HD option allows events to bring in remote speakers or groups in high enough quality to project on a large screen in a meeting room. Google Hangouts (plus.google.com/hangouts) is a great free, new option for events allowing video from up to ten locations to be seen on each screen in a reliable and relatively low-bandwidth format. Event Camp Europe (eventcamp.eu) has recently used Hangouts to have a “Hybrid Wine Tasting” connecting face-to-face groups from four cities in Europe. The wine was shipped to the four cities, poured and distributed, the wine was introduced and described, attendees held the wines, smelled the bouquets, and tasted them. All five senses were engaged simultaneously in multiple locations! 7. Near Field Communication (NFC) will provide streamlined connectivity and services for events.  NFC
is a short-range wireless connectivity standard to enable communication
between devices when they're touched together. It is expected to become
a widely used system for making payments by smartphone in the U.S.The applications for events are significant allowing for very fast, secure and simplified means of:
Companies such as Poken.com use NFC to provide many of these features with a small, inexpensive (US$18), NFC-enabled “pokenTAG” that is worn around the neck and glows green when information is exchanged. The game changer, however, will be when NFC becomes commonly available in mobile phones. Blackberry’s three new Curve models are NFC-enabled as are dozens of Android phones as well as many Nokia and Sony phones.  The
tipping point, however, may be if the soon-to-be-released iPhone5 will
offer NFC. Whether it is this year, or next, NFC will provide much
better and faster data exchange, ticketing and micropayment options for
events.8. YouTube and other social publishing tools will be used increasingly to promote and manage meetings and to engage attendees. Much has been written about the power of Facebook.com and the other social networking sites to engage potential attendees before an event to increase attendance and networking onsite. I believe the wide range of free social publishing tools will also be used increasingly for similar purposes:
a.) Encourage your speakers to make short video describing what they will speak on and upload this to YouTube. b.) Link or embed these videos at your event site. c.) Keep the videos short (no more than 3 minutes). d.) Record in HD. e.) Choose a compelling thumbnail image using the posting tools YouTube provides. f.) Enable the comments and sharing options. g.) Rename the videos using meaningful names (MPI-WEC-speakers.mov is much better than 38404949.mov) h.) Use a keyword-laden, meaningful description of the video. 9. Social gaming tools will be used to engage face-to-face and virtual attendees at events. People spend more than 3 billion hours a week globally playing online games! Jane McGonigal in her noted TEDTalk speaks of how gaming can make a better world by deeply engaging people and by encouraging collaboration and cooperation. She proposes to harness gamer power to solve real-world problems. Online gaming engages people. It can immerse in a different reality. It can be very fun! …And it will find its way increasingly into events. On a basic level, location-aware programs such as Gowalla.com, FourSquare.com and Facebook.com/places encourage people to check in at locations. People will win badges and prizes and receive tips from others. This, however, is much more than building loyalty at a favorite restaurant. All of these free online tools have developed options for checking in at events. These location-aware gaming options can help networking at events. Scvngr.com is another online social gaming tool (free for non-profit groups and associations) that engages attendees with treks and challenges. This tool has been used recently at the Consumer Electronic Show and SIGGRAPH shows to guide people through the exhibit hall and to win prizes by performing a challenge such as signing up at an exhibitor web site. Social gaming is also being used to engage virtual and hybrid meetings attendees. Contests and challenges have been proven to engage people attending virtually. The Cisco GSX hybrid conference had 19,000 virtual attendees with one million views, 13,000 active players of the “Threshold” an interactive espionage immersive reality thriller, 8,000 participants in group chats and 9,5000 playing GSX mini games. 10. iPads and tablets will provide a new medium for accessing data at events. The iPad is the most recent of the long-running, game-changing innovations from Apple. This and other tablet devices represent new ways to access information. Light weight, highly mobile, highly intuitive. The larger screen allow for bigger fonts, easier readability and more real estate to display material in a page-like format. The navigation is intuitive (with your fingers instead of a keyboard and mouse). Tablets are a natural for events as our industry is a mobile one:
11. Free, easy to access Wi-Fi is increasing expected by meeting planners. Free basic Wi-Fi broadband internet access is expected by planner in the meeting room, guest rooms and the lobby. Although some luxury properties are clinging to internet fees as a profit center, internet access is viewed by attendees as a utility similar to lights and water. Planners are saying “do not nickel-and-dime us with add-on charges for basic internet access.” If “Motel 6” can provide free Wi-Fi, so should meeting hotels and venues. However, this does not mean unlimited access. Internet bandwidth can be expensive and most venues cannot handle unexpected, very large demands. If 500 event attendees pulled out their iPads to access HD video simultaneously, there are few venues in the country that could handle this without making special arrangements. If a group needs dedicated bandwidth, a dedicated IP address or other internet services, it is reasonable to charge for these. But basic, throttled access (with a minimum of 500kb/second download -- fast enough to access email and limited video streaming) should be free. Additionally, venues need to make logging onto the Wi-Fi network easier. Opening the browser and clicking “OK” is all that should be required. As mobile devices are being used for internet access with greater frequency, make the logon screen readable in smaller formats as well. Better yet, use autosensing technology and provide a mobile web log-in page optimized for a smaller screen. See more on the advances of hotel guest room technology at: http://ow.ly/6kJqx 12. “Indoor Positioning Systems” will greatly assist in event and trade show way-finding and navigation. Standard GPS does not work indoors. Standard Wi-Fi triangulation only gets to about a 100 foot (30 meter) accuracy -- not good enough for precise tracking though an exhibit hall, venue or for person-to-person finding at an event. New technology from at least two companies (Wifarer.com and Sherpa-Solutions.com) promise to overcome these challenges to provide very precise positioning (as fine as 1 meter) by tracking Wi-Fi enabled smart phones, carried by an increasingly larger percentage of the population. These tools will be able to provide:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKhOHfPQnmg  ©2011 Corbin Ball Associates - Reprinted with PermissionCorbin Ball, CMP, CSP is a professional speaker and consultant focusing on meetings technology. With 20 years of experience running international citywide technology meetings, he now helps clients worldwide use technology to save time and improve productivity He can be contacted at his extensive web site: www.corbinball.com and followed on Twitter: www.twitter.com/corbinball The rate of technology change is increasing; meetings and tradeshow technology continues to advance with technology products becoming better, cheaper and easier to use and innovation is bubbling with new options.
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