Showing posts with label #event. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #event. Show all posts

Tuesday, 31 January 2017

Team Building 2.0 – Why is Technology essential?

Corporates Events have become necessary in Companies, and Team Building Activities are one of the different sections gathering the employees of a company.

The main objectives of Team Building are:
-        -         To Break-Ice between co-workers
-        To communicate and share information within a team 
-        To create and enhance cohesion and team-work between the company’s stakeholders
-        To create and enhance interaction and network between co-workers
-        To motivate and improve the team’s productivity
-        To celebrate and reward employees
And most of all, have fun!

Gathering and Interaction between all Attendees
Technology changed the way to interact in Corporate Events. 
The creation of Technological Platforms allows teams to interact with each other (via photos, videos, livestreaming scores, etc.), instead of communicating only within your team. This enhances challenges among teams and gets employees to network with more people.
Moreover, the new generation is more committed in activities involving technologies they grew up with.

Novelty & Creativity
Teams’ interaction is facilitated with the access to new technologies.
Attendees are all steered to participate, they learn from these new devices, but also get inspired, creative and competitive.

A Tailor-Made Event which can be used as a Template for Future Events.
Technological Platforms make possible the creation of “customised” activities. Events can then be tailor-made by the organiser according to its needs and wants, and the events’ specificities (length, location, targeted attendees).
Organising previous events on platforms also allows the organiser to keep all details on the software, to create new ones from core information and make it a valuable investment. It then represents the main structure for future use, improving organisation, expenses and time allocation.

Gamification & Competition
Team-Building 2.0 leads attendees to participate with their own devices, that all can interact and get the feedbacks in real-time. Competition is encouraged and all employees want to do their best for the team.

Ease of Data Collection and Analysis
As all data are stored on software and platforms, organisers have an easy-access to it. Everything is organised and can easily be found, extracted and analysed by the Event Planners in order to get Live Streaming scores and feedbacks.

Examples of Team-Building Activities:
Photos and Videos Contests (Selfie, Creation of a Movie); Use of New Technological devices (AR, VR, IoT, Robots, Drones); Races & Geo-Localisation (Tech Escape Game, Geo-Trek); Challenges on Tablets; …

References: 



Saturday, 30 April 2016

French Cocorico !

Wearable technology, the Cricet bracelet
Innovative answer to tech-savvy business and event individuals looking for enhanced experience !
What is it ?
To use a wearable technology, first of all, you need a wearable mobile device, such as glasses, lences, a watch...
A wearable device is an electronic device that can be worn and that is capable to connect to the internet. Thus, the device can be connected to networks and interact thanks to data exchanges between the environment and the user.
Wearable technologies are different as they offer the user to make a really personnal use of hardware sensors and software apps.
Wearable technology get developed fastly thanks to the  fast expansion and growing popularity of mobile networks, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi hot spots, applications, and hyper connectivity of users.
All these factors drove the creation of smart watches, web-enabled glasses, intelligent clothes, enhanced-contact lenses..
But, the Google Glasses or the iWatch are already outdated ! Among all the wearable device, one is more interesting than the others.. Your skin ! Yes, in few years, you skin will be your new touchscreen with the Cicret Bracelet !


(Nota: projected images seen are mocked up)
What does it mean for the industry?


In our paper-free system, the Cicret bracelet does not aim to control your heartbeat or your sleeping time but to thrown your smartphone on your forearm.
A French company to change from American big innovators on the market !
At the end of December 2014, this project needed €850.000 to a million to create a prototype to show beginning 2016, for a price varying between  €199 and €399.
-      First of all, it means that the event industry is among the major industries that will encourage innovations in technology. Service related businesses are willing to introduce advanced technology in order to enhance the journey of visitors. But, it also means that our industry has to be proactive more than reactive in front of these evolutions. We think that wearable technologies are meaninfull for event organizers but they have to really understand how it works to make an efficient use of these “magic” tools. Moreover, the idea is not for event organizers  to wait for the technology to be developped but instead, to express their needs and make propositions to technologic corporations in order to develop the technological tools that will help them work more efficiently and provide a better experience to their clients.

As waterproof as your skin can be, it will represent opportunity to be connected at all time (when you wear the device, of course). Under the shower, during your thinking time, you will now be able to use this time efficiently to plan your future event, your future attendance to a venue, manage your guest list etc.

       For the event industry, this new interface is seen as a useful tool to enhance the visitor’s stay. It also improves the capability of event agencies and corporations to gather information about visitors, thus helping them connecting to the visitors and sending them direct and real-time relevant information about their stands, the coming conferences..
      
Wearable technologies are « hands free » technologies. This conveniency they provide to the user is a huge and powerfull argument. Visitors of a trade show or conference organisers need dematerialized information available easily and fastly, everywhere.

The device is also no longer a hinder of operations and natural social interactions. The conference organiser can follow the GPS on his arm and reach fastly and more easily the stand that called him because they did not received their flyers. The visitor can check information about the company he is visiting the stand, or receive push notifications to remind him his planned meetings with exibitors.



 
Wearable technology, hype or opportunity ?

Wearable technologies are not able to offer the same wide range of services as smart phones or tablets. If the visitors already carry one of these two mobile devices, will he be willing to wear another third one ? Not sure

  • Hairs, sleeve tatoos, sleeve in clothes... How the device will handle the natural or added skin options ?
  • Light bulb will have to be strong as hell to project under the sunlight but then skinburnt and cancer would have to be handled correctly
  • How they will handle shadows ? When moving your fingers will avoid see the rest of the screen as the light is projected from one direction
  • Can’t project black light
  • Brace yourself, skin irritation is coming...
  • People fear the company is using the donation to develop only the Cicret application (a safer Whatsapp), an independent app supposed to work with the bracelet but depend on the same donation funding.
  • One person only to develop the product, one year to develop it whereas Google and Apple need several people and many years to work on it. The team is composed by a father and a son, Misters Pommier and Fabien Noblet, the supposed developer who has a music diploma
  • Scam: with very little percentage of commitment in donation (you can only donate on the official website and not the usual crowdfunding platforms) and can’t stop saying it’s only a prototype lowering the trust of potential consumers

In overall, this Cicret is a very blurred project: financial aspect (donation), “it will comes out soon”, the very small team, the Musician developper, announced suppliers who claim not being part of the project... Let's see what the future holds !



References

Friday, 22 April 2016

iBeacon, new technology for event management and trade show?


iBeacon is one type of Location aware technology, it is Apple Trademark for implementation of Low-power Bluetooth technology (BLE), as known as Bluetooth Smart to notify nearby iOS 7 devices of their presence. BLE can also be find Bluetooth 4.0 devices that compatible with dual-mode, including Android and Windows devices.


How Event Marketers and can put beacons to use:

Gamification
Nowadays, gamnification plans a crucial role in creating brand awareness while offering enhanced visitor interaction. Enabled by the location awareness of the application, the user can influence their devices to receive entertainment massage signal with every visit to the application. Each status will have its own real-world version. For example, at Consume Electronics (CES) 2014, the iBeacon application encourage delegates to explore the important exhibits at the trade show, and attendees can collect badges from each beacon to won the prize.

Improved networking
Networking is one of the important reasons for people attend events. iBeacon have benefit for event to improve the networking services. The application can provide visitor self-tagging or LinkedIn integration to receive notifications, they can also offer guided tour of the event arena based on the interests of the user. For instance, if attendees want to know more about the mobile commerce or relevant stalls at the event, they can easily get the information on iBeacon and help them connect and exchange contact details.

Frictionless Registration
During the trade show, convention or a concerts, one of the most annoying things for attendees is the extensive registration queues, which would have a great impact on attendees’ overall experience and event’s image. However, today, iBeacon is used by many an organizers to accelerate the registration process of the event, they just need to install a small pieces of hardware at the entrance which is to send greeting notification with check-in information like QR code to their attendees’ electronic devices for a fast-speed check-in. This kind of check-in ways also support the new electronic devices like Apple watch.

Navigation and Heat Mapping
Another most confusing thing for attendees is to find the direction, which makes floor maps become one of the best uses of smartphone applications. However, iBeacons is always the best partner of floor map, in the venue of the event, iBeacon can tell the attendees their highly accurate location (including the floor) and indicate them to the place they want to go via application even though there is no Wi-Fi coverage and the GPS is inaccessible on-site. 
Moreover, it would be a great way to enhance the engagement during the event because users can set the notification when attendees walk by the session.
As iBeacon is connecting to the real-time statistics, it also could be used to monitor overcrowded or security issues by recognizing hotspots and alerts organizers.
  
To sum up, with various function of communication, data solving, iBeacons would be an essential part of any event’s and bring a great change to improving attendees’ experience.


If you have any other effective ideas about iBeacon, feel free to comment below!

Written by Pulin CHEN & Huishan LI