Save your time with business card mobile apps!

During an event or after a negotiation, the traditional way to keep contact with clients consisted in exchanging a lot of business cards.  It was really useful but it took time after the event to collect and classify these data on an excel sheet. Today, the arrival of IT mobile apps enables to reply effectively to this need in a smarter way. Some applications like Bloodhound offer companies and event organisers a new service: business cards mobile apps.  

Bloodhound is mobile application that will help businessman on trade show or during meeting to collect faster data by taking a picture of the business card and to receive a database on a proper excel sheet post-event.

Bloodhound SWOT analysis

Strengths	Weaknesses
Ø     Gain of time post event: in order to create a database             Ø     Adaptable to all kind of smartphone (IOS & Android)   Ø     No WiFi needed to use the app   Ø     Free app without extension   Ø     No mix with your phone contact: it goes directly to your dashboard app.   Ø     Merging data: One dashboard per company for all sellers.   Ø     Easy connectivity with the CRM of the company   Ø     Sustainable: less waste of paper	Ø    Cost: service extension of $30/ month   Ø  Impersonalised contact due to the standardisation of business cards in the database. Because of that, businessman might not associate well faces and contact names.
Opportunities	Threats
Ø     Development: get into new markets and reach new customers.   Ø     Innovation: create the possibility to add a picture in the database for a better recognition.	Ø  High competition: similar applications are totally free   Ø  Invention of a product

Business card mobile apps are revolutionary in terms of time saving. Moreover companies will benefit from a sustainable advantage as business cards‘ exchanges are made virtually through these apps.

We highly recommend companies to use this tool to improve their efficiency, connectivity between CRM and sellers to increase revenue.

Don’t waste time, subscribe and take a picture!

Anne-Lucie Talarmin & Sébastien Haag

References:

Bloodhound article

Picture 1

Picture 2

New meeting trend : The Online Conferences

More than 41.6 percent of people identified technology in work and life to be very influential in the future of the meetings business. In fact, as we all know, event technology is a rapidly growing field.

Indeed, a new trend in the Event Industry is borned from this technology evolution: the “Online Meetings” instead of  “Onsite Meetings”.

Few companies already use this kind of meetings and managed it for a long time through conference calls, for instance. However, this kind of events called  “hybrid events” seems to be more and more usual and extend to leisure events too.

This type of conference definitly has a lot of avantages, for companies and for the audience. First of all, it allows to reduce the production costs. By consequent,  as the actual economic climate is not very good, online meetings are well welcomed; Online Meetings are cheaper than Onsite Meetings. Various costs can be cut as accomodation, meals, transports, or venue rental. It also allows more flexibility; for the women, for example, who need to manage their time between their job and  their family. With the online meetings, they don’t need to leave the house for long periods. More over, the audience can be larger thanks to Online Meetings : it allows to share the meeting content with more people. For example, nowadays people can watch and listen to an Opera show, a ballet or a concert in a cinema with a high quality of images and sound. This example shows really well how online events allows to reach more people; first, the price to watch an opera in a cinema is a lot less expansive than watch the opera in the opera and secondly, there is no limitations (or less) regarding the space.

The bigger problem of this kind of events is to keep the audience engaged and participating.

Few studies show that the audience of a leisure event is generaly  more involved and engaged in the online event because they are interested on the topic that they choose. This is easier to motivated people and make them participate even if it’s online event.

Social network, particularly Facebook or Twitter and hashtag, are some important key tools in hybrid evenst: it allows to make the meeting more interactive between speakers/organizers and the audience. This offers the possibility to ask questions, share opinions and exchange with other attendees in live; this aims to engage people in the event and to make them part of it, as if they were attending an onsite meeting.

Sonic Foundry’s Mediasite Events is a company specialized in those hybrid events. They identify 5 ways to engage online conference attendees to make the hybrid event really sucessful.

First of all, as event manager, you need to check that the hybrid technology is working well in the venue. In order to be ready, some tests are essentials. Every venue is different and doesn’t react the same way to connections and bandwidth.

The second advice is to give to the online audience special attentions. To reach this goal, you have to pay attention to them, to their needs, questions or issues encountered and to make them feel supported.

Thirdly, make sure that your presenters are comfortable; they need to see the camera as a person when they are speaking. Thank to this behavior, the audience will feel really connected to the event.

The fourth way to engage online conference attendees is to open few sessions for free to promote it. The goal is to develop engagement and interest in this kind of events.

Finally,  it’s a good thing to offer a few in-person perks to the online audience. To make them engage, it could be a good source of motivation to send them occasionaly the bag gifts of the event or even remote the “most engaged attendee”.

If you want more informations about this company, watch this video :

Ready to follow this new trend? Go for it !


Sources:

http://www.mpiweb.org/Portal/Content/20131226/5_Ways_to_Engage_Online_Conference_Attendees?source=home

www.freedigitalphotos.net


Camille Gallet and Clémence Fazilleau

Create a unique Event with Augmented Reality

                                                                               

                                                                        

The most important thing to attract people to an event it is to sell the idea that the event is going to be unique and that the attendees never see something like that before. According to the study of Yeoman.I (2013) in A futurist's thoughts on consumer trends shaping future festivals and events (pp. 249 - 260), consumer research “unique experience” or something which trigger a “magic nostalgia” of one on their memories.

To do it, the event planner has to innovate and use the new trends in organization event field. Nowadays, everything is controlled by the technology and we use it everyday, in our work for leisure with the use of smartphones, tablet, and computers.

As the result, to be fashionable to the organization of an event, the event planner has to use some new tools like the augmented reality, interactive windows, and all the gadgets, which give the event some added value.

The exploitation of the kind of tool opens your event to another dimension.

For example, the use of the augmented reality in the launch of product or just for MICE industry. As defined by Wikipedia the Augmented Reality is “a live, copy, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented (or supplemented) by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data. It is related to a more general concept called mediated reality, in which a view of reality is modified (possibly even diminished rather than augmented) by a computer. As a result, the technology functions by enhancing one’s current perception of reality.”

The augmented reality allows you to make appear some holograms of products, people or other things. You should not hesitate to break the rules that mean that with gamification, the attendees can now be a part of the event. Indeed, the audience doesn’t want to be passive and they want to live the event in another way like role-play People want to be remaindered.

This technology can be use to the registration of attendees by the facial recognition. The idea is to use the social account and virtual badges of attendees to be sure of their presence on the event.

The aim of the use of all the tools is to make your event so unforgettable that people will talk about it during a long time and promote your organization for your next event but you have to be careful and innovative for each event, as it is not because an event has been successful that the second edition of it will be too. In fact, the expectations of the attendees rise since the first event to the next one.

Check out this video to have a better idea of what augmented reality is : 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0Q8f3waxeM

(China use Augmented Reality for Guangzhou Auto Show 2013)

Kate Sempara & Laetitia Vartanian

References:

-       Yeoman.I (2013) in A futurist's thoughts on consumer trends shaping future festivals and events 

-       http://www.eibtm.com/Media-Centre/Blog/Augmented-Reality-is-coming-to-an-event-near-you/

-       Tom Wood, Kudan, Augmented Reality is coming to an event near you

-       http://www.eventmanagerblog.com/augmented-reality/

-       http://techcorner.tsnn.com/content/what-augmented-reality-technology-what-can-it-offer-event-industry

Images:

-        http://www.wpcentral.com/nokia-lumia-augmented-reality-event-sydney

-        http://www.indiatimes.com/science/augmented-reality-enters-the-real-world-7319.html