Near Field Communication (NFC): All for Event Success

The development of mobile technology bring lots of convenience and surprises to people’s life; meanwhile, some special mobile techniques, like NFC, injecting new vitality to events. Inadvertently, NFC has come around our life. In recent years, plenty of the Android and iPhone use this technology on their phone. People have to admit that with the popularity of hardware, NFC become the first choice of file sharing, data exchange and device connection, etc. which also bring great convenience to event attendees and event planners.

NFC (Near Field Communication), also known as the short-range wireless communications, is a short-range high-frequency wireless communication technology, allowing for non-contact-point data transmission between electronic devices (within ten centimeters) to exchange data. The technology consists of a contact-free radio frequency identification (RFID) evolved, backward compatible with RFID, first developed by Sony and Philips, mainly used in mobile phones and other handheld devices to provide M2M (Machine to Machine) communication.

In event, NFC technology helps event planners to coordinate all aspects of planning matters, such as the collection and integration of more effective information without communicate with attendees, omitted a lot of manual processes, speed up and improve the efficiency. Also, the NFC technology Offer gamification features such as scavenger hunts, so that more participants enjoy the feeling of participating in event. It can also be smart send useful message to attendee roles directly, making the whole event process more simplify. For event attendees, NFC can facilitate automatic social media posting, if attendees participate in fun events like photo booths, they also could get more information about this event during the presentations through their smartphones. When they want to have meals and drinks, they can use smartphone to pay for the meals, it is more free style, giving the attendees more choices.

In Conclusion, NFC technology allows event attendees to have more channels to get information about their events, they can understand more and enjoy their event participate process. Meeting organizers can easily access the more effective information about the attendees to perfect their customer database, and more understand their participants’ mindset and needs, better serve them.

Resources:

http://www.eventmanagerblog.com/near-field-communication

Near Field Communication – A Game Changer in Event Technology

Near Field Communication (NFC) is a growing technology that allows smartphones, tablets and similar gadgets to connect via a radio connection. Only few companies are using NFC today. But more and more are recognizing the huge potential of NFC and start investing in that technology. 

The main advantages could be:

Higher engagement level of attendees

With the help of NFC, event organizers can make their events much more interactive. Terminals with NFC readers could encourage attendees to take a picture and automatically share it on social networks, for example.

Easy entry management and access control

There are already some innovative ways, such as Apple’s Passbook, to offer ticket buyers an easy way to enter an event.

Check-ins

Attendees could easily check on screens or in a mobile event app, which keynote presentation or workshop still has available space. This would enhance the event experience significantly.

Mobile Payment

Event organizers can use mobile payment to make it extremely simple and convenient for attendees to buy food, merchandise or other products with a simple tap on an NFC reader.

Networking

Especially at business events, trade fairs and conferences, networking is a very important activity for attendees. A lot of business cards are being exchanged and some might get lost. With NFC technology, this whole process can be handled digitally.

Source

NFC technology can increase attendees’ enjoyment of events while making organizers’ jobs easier. NFC is quickly becoming the future of event hosting, expanding capabilities, driving interaction and capturing attendee data in a way that marketers and planners have only dreamed of in the past.

Here's an example of how NFC System could be used in events.

Sources:

http://www.genie-connect.com/blog/part-2

http://blog.amiando.com/2013-02-11/near-field-communication-a-game-changer-in-event-technology/

http://www.eventmanagerblog.com/near-field-communicationhttp://www.nfcworld.com/events/

Smarter Life and Work with NFC

 -- Take a look at MWC 2014

From 24^th to 27^th February, the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2014 had been taking place in Barcelona at the venues of Fira Gran Via and Fira Montjuïc. Like previous congresses, this year, with almost two thousands of exhibitors showcasing their new products and technologies on site, experts and analysts in the mobile industry reported the present of the industry and discussed the future trend of mobile application technology. One of the event highlights this year was the NFC experience on the congress.

Near field communication (NFC) technology is no longer stranger to people nowadays with their smart phones in daily life. This technology is embedded in millions of mobile phones and helps realize the instant and wireless connection and file sharing easily. To this year’s MWC, NFC technology is used during the event for attendees to experience the high-efficient transferring process. It is SIM-based NFC service, offering attendees the event information by them using their handsets to place near the ‘Tap-n-Go’ points set on the venues. What’s more, attendees could use this NFC service to pay for their meal at the venues and even share contact details with each other.

Few months before the congress, there was a NFC challenge set by the GSMA to discover the best ideas of NFC future applying. People can submit their ideas to the committee on how they would use NFC on mobile to interact with people and improve the business. All the submissions are posted online on the website of MWC 2014 and people who won the grand prize got a gold pass of the congress.

For people who has a view even further, NFC is not only a mobile thing. Mikko Nikkanen, the segment development director of SMARTRAC technology group said that it’s a promising future for NFC, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi team together to “form a technology trio of power forwards”. Based on the fact that NFC technology has already embedded in millions of smart phones and there are a huge amount of consumers using different electronic devices, combined with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, NFC will achieve a more efficient and connected system which for example, will include many of devices possessed by everyone in a family. More detailed, people will use this advanced NFC technology to enable rapid, seamless paring, access Wi-Fi networks in public and private locations, switch on devices, transfer content, authenticate products, provide instructions, etc. On another word, it will make your life and work smarter.

In this year’s WMC, we have taken a look at how the NFC technology apply into a big event. With further exploitation of NFC technology and more application integrated with it, event organizers will have plenty of high-tech tools available for smoothing an event. The key to benefit from this is to keep up with constantly updated peak information and apply those that fit the customers’ desire and real needs.

Sources: 

http://mday.mobileworldlive.com/MobileWorldDaily/2014/Preview/index.html

http://www.mobileworldcongress.com/2014-event-highlights/

http://www.mobileworldcongress.com/2014-exhibitors/

Picture1:  http://mobileworldcapital.com/en/article/152

Picture2:  http://mday.mobileworldlive.com/MobileWorldDaily/2014/Preview/index.html

Posted bySang ZHAOandSiqi ZHANG

How new technology revolutionizes the MICE industry 2: BlackBerry to overcome the deficit?

A short follow- up to our last month´s blog about the usefulness of the iPad for the event industry...

Despite the crisis RIM (BlackBerry manufacturer) has been facing in the last year it came up with a new tablet computer- the BlackBerry PlayBook. It is the company´s equivalent to the iPad but offers some additional features which could make it a serious competitor for the iPad in the Event industry.

You can not only create and edit presentations on your PlayBook but you can also plug it in to a monitor and remote control it from your Blackberry phone. This allows you to add slides to the presentation directly from your phone. In the same way you can change the colour and the theme of the presentation… and everything within only a few minutes, but find out yourself:

BlackBerry also developed an innovative concept to share documents in meetings. The PlayBook is able to sense where other PlayBooks are in the room and makes it possible to share files between different PlayBooks. With the PlayBook paper hand-outs will be a thing of the past. Check it out:

Another feature that could be very useful to event planners is the PlayBook calendar. It gives users a very clear overview of their day. It shows them when they have a meeting and with whom. As event planners are usually quite busy people who meet a lot of other people they tend to forget what they once knew about these people. Therefore the BlackBerry PlayBook does not only show the contact details of the person you are meeting with but also links you to the person´s latest updates on twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Check it out:

As others have already blogged about the opportunities coming up with the Near Field communication (NFC) we only want to say that BlackBerry has already integrated several functions into their devices. You can for example hold your phone to a touch point or advert and it will link you directly to a website or a voucher for a free coffee. It could be used for conventions and exhibitions for example. RIM (Blackberry) is developing it further every day so it is worth keeping up with the news.

And here comes the best thing about it:

It is a lot cheaper than the iPhone. In our opinion iPads are more a fashion device that everyone wants and it probably offers more applications (including games etc.) than the Playbook, but for a business person or a company a Playbook can make more sense concerning both price and functionality. What is your opinion on that?

We think it´s worth signing up for a YouTube account and keeping an eye on the further development…

Source: http://uk.blackberry.com/playbook-tablet/features-work.jsp

http://tydwy.wordpress.com/2012/03/02/playbook-concepts-presentations-on-the-go/

http://tydwy.wordpress.com/2012/03/02/playbook-concepts-document-sharing-in-meetings/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7jQmhzEsTk&feature=youtu.be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTb0niSSGDI&feature=youtu.be