The use of social video platform Vorb

By LI Kaixian and WANG Yutong

In Oracle’s Modern Business Experience Summit in February, the social video platform Vorb was applied as a key visual part of the summit by equipping a live and interactive ball-shaped screen at the center of the exhibition venue, where over 4000 business delegates could upload and watch live videos through it.

What is a VORB?

Based on the definition of Vorb’s website, a vorb is a live, interactive ball-shaped screen for playing videos in order to bring people together. The platform is based on the cloud service technology.

(Picture Resource: Event Industry News)

How it is applied in the summit?

By creating the hashtag #OracleMBX, all the visitors in this summit can post live videos, ideas or advertisement with this hashtag to social media. Vorb will screen those videos with this hashtag. All the screened videos would be shown on a 2.5m diameter’s orb hung from the ceiling. Participants who were around the Vorb stand could use an iPad, an iPhone or a computer to choose a video for the Vorb to play. The Vorb then played the video people choose and people could listen to it by headphones.

Why this technology is important?

First, compared to a traditional social media platform, it provides visitors with visual and acoustical experience. Second, as the importance of social video sharing is gradually showing up, the Vorb provide a new solution for communication problem. Eyes of the visitors can be caught effectively, immediately and directly. Third, the platform is easily handled. What’s more, it allows participants to invite their friends and co-workers to watch videos together and engage in the communities and conversations.

Resource: Fractal Systems

Comparing with social media live wall:

The live wall is another kind of live social media sharing platform which motivates people to interactive via hashtags, and it is now in common use all over the world. Compared to the live wall, the Vorb has the following advantages:

l   Geographical advantage: The Vorb provide a 360-degree view of videos for visitors so it can be set at the center of the venue, while the live wall can just be set on the wall.

l   Visual and acoustical experience: The social live wall can share words, pictures, and videos, but it doesn’t allow people to watch the videos immediately “at that time and at that place”.

l   Effectiveness for promotion via videos.

Resources:

https://www.eventindustrynews.com/news/event-technology-news/vorb-connects-videos-sparks-conversation-oracle-mbx/

https://vorb.me/

Keep Calm and Travel : technology tools for business travelers

The number of business travels are increasing and provide good occasions for companies to develop their business worldwide. Yet, for the traveler, a business trip can be very stressful, he needs to be efficient and most of the time has to close deals on a very short time out of his comfort zone, in an unknown place with unknown people… Terrifying! In addition to his work concerns he may also have to take care of his trip, deal with all the details and travel inconveniences. Fortunately, technology is here to help once again! Let’s take a quick look to some new tools amazing tools you can use to stay relaxed.

Claire : An artificially intelligence travel assistant

The company 30SecondsToFly develop an artificially intelligence travel assistant that manage all steps for travelling to take out your stress. Manager can use “Claire” to book trips of all their team members: she show you analytics, handle your travel policy, manager your travelers and give you control. This new assistant is a real transformation of the travel booking system for manager. All you had to do is to speak with “Claire” and you have all information necessary for planning your trip and it is the same for the team members. 

Moreover, thanks to “Claire”, you can reduce your travel expenses by benefiting from loyalty programs and discounted fares, save your team time (in one minute, all your team can book their trips), increase safety by knowing always where your travelers are and improve your policy compliance by keeping track of your travel expenses and optimize spend over time. All you have to do is to speak with her by messenger, skype... Try it and adopt it to manager your time !No more dining alone and pitiful in your hotel restaurant when business travelling! DineHero gives you the solution to keep networking and eating in good company. The app is a kind of dating site but only for professionals. The application algorithm finds you the best match possible to dine with according to your job and your interests.

Dinehero : Find your partner to avoid loneliness

No more dining alone and pitiful in your hotel restaurant when business travelling! DineHero gives you the solution to keep networking and eating in good company. The app is a kind of dating site but only for professionals. The application algorithm finds you the best match possible to dine with according to your job and your interests.

Concur: Tracking your expenses

Concur is the best way to manage your expenses while you are on a business trip. You can take pictures of your receipts so that you don’t need to carry every single paper with you and eventually lose some… The app also allows your manager to have a visibility on all your expenses and to directly approve and reimburse you at the end of the trip. Indeed, financial connectors integrate the data of the application that comes from your employees with data from ERP, CRM and human resources by giving you a picture of all the expenses on live.  

Sarah ALTMAYER and Lena BENOIST

References:

• https://www.dinehero.com/features.html
• https://www.30secondstofly.com
• http://www.bbc.com/news/business-39139958
• https://www.concur.com/

7 Ways Event Tech Can Improve the Onsite Experience

7 Ways Event Tech Can Improve the Onsite Experience

Gongting WANG Xianqing DONG

The writer of the article McNeel Keenan introduces how the new technologies and applications for check in help to improve onsite experience based on the example of software OnArrival.

Summary of the article:

-Check-in attendees: OnArrival is a self-service app, which not only helps to check in attendees but also collects information needed.

-Self-service registration: by using Kiosk Mode of OnArrival, attendees can check in their guest, print event badge and pay fees without help.

-Print badge wirelessly: on-site print and modern badge technologies like QR code or RFID have replaced the old and trouble way of pre-printing name badges

-Track the journey: technology captures information of attendees throughout the whole event activities that will help you to get improvement.

-Get real-time registration numbers: monitor peak hour of check in and check out.

-Reduced staff hours needed for check-in

-Integrate onsite tech with rest of the event tech: knowing every step of attendees in the event is no longer difficult with modern technologies. Event owner can get better ROI with all this useful information.

Our thoughts:

We cannot deny the fact that modern technologies and new applications indeed bring lots of advantages no matter in our daily life or event industry. The trend of applying more and more of high-techs and applications in event industry is inevitable. However, every coin has two sides, so what is the other side of applying high-techs and applications? I will be listing some disadvantages in the following based on my point of view and what we can to avoid them.

-Information provided by machine is limited: for example, when attendees check in by a kiosk, the information that they can get from the machine is limited and it doesn’t function like human-being who are able to give them extra information like transport or travel.

-Feeling of isolation: with increasing numbers of high-techs and kiosk being employed, there will be less and less human being working on a site, that will directly result at short of human interaction, which is very important for attendees to feel welcome.

To avoid the disadvantages brought by high-techs and applications, the event organizer can consider deploying both kiosk and traditional check-in counters for the event attendees. In this way, those who prefer fast and self-service would go for kiosk and those who want to have conversations and interactions with people then can go for traditional check-in counters.

To sum up, technology has its advantages and will change people’s life inevitably, but people need time to adapt the change. We should try to keep the pace of this change in an acceptable rate, otherwise it will do more harm than good and cause unsatisfaction.

https://blog.cvent.com/events/7-ways-event-tech-can-improve-onsite-experience/

Memotrips: your digital travel diary!

Nowadays, sharing trips on the Internet has become very easy thanks to multiple applications and websites. Indeed, thanks to the Web 2.0, everyone can now participate and update the Web. The rise of social media has made it very easy to find advice about travelling, write reviews, post pictures and interact with other Internet users. Today’s article will deal with “Memotrips”,  a start up that has decided to reinvent travel diary by making it mobile, social and fun!

Memotrips is a mobile application and a website, launched in 2015, which enables travellers to design their digital travel diary in order to keep in mind their journeys and share them in real time with relatives and family.

How does it work ?

First, you need to download the application on the Apple Store or Google Play.

Then, you can create your travel diary: you have to add some information such as the countries you visit, the description of your trips. It is possible then, to customize the level of confidentiality. When you are traveling, you can develop your travel diary by adding a visit, a restaurant, a hotel… and you can complete it with pictures, locations, descriptions and reviews. An important advantage of this application is that you don’t need an Internet access to feed your travel diary. Indeed, the application saves your contents on your smartphone and synchronises them automatically when you are connected to the Wifi.

Eventually, Memotrips offers you the possibility to order a customized photo album created from your travel diary, thanks to a partnership with the printer Fujifilm.

Moreover, you can also decide how you want to share it: on Facebook, Whatsapp, by email or by inviting your relatives on Memotrips. It enables your friends, family to ”travel” by procuration, following your adventures by reading your travel diary, seeing your pictures and interacting with you. It is very useful for worried sick parents who will be reassured to see that everything is going smoothly on their kids’ trip, by checking their latest posts on Memotrips .

An useful option enables followers to subscribe to receive notifications when their friends are updating contents.

What are the impacts for the tourism industry ?

First, Memotrips has an influence on tourism consumers: it is a good way for them to remember and share older trips. If your brother ask you for a good italian restaurant in Roma, you can easily find good adresses you experienced during a previous journey and send him the notes you wrote about the places. Some travel diaries are public and you can have access to them. So you can find ideas for a future trip, have more recent and reliable information about an accommodation, a place to eat, an attraction, compared to other websites. It can help to promote a destination.

Then, Memotrips can  also be used by travel agencies. Indeed, nowadays,they are looking for new ideas to digitalize, innovate and create customers loyalty. That’s why the company created a B2B offer in 2016. Memotrips provides its technological knowledge to the travel agencies in order to offer a digital travel diary tool to their customers. It can facilitate the creation of itineraries by digitalizing it. Once the roadmap is designed, the travel agency can send to customers the login and password to have access to it on the Internet or on their mobile.

Moreover, the travel agency can easily be in touch with their customers during their journeys thanks to the private messaging service and notifications. It can also see the customer opinions concerning the different parts of the trip.  

The travel agencies can use Memotrips as a communication tool. According to the company website, when a travel agency uses Memotrips for its customers, its brand  appears on the application/website.

In that sense, people who follow the customer travel diaries will see which agency their friends have used. Furthermore, the logo of the travel agency will appear on the photo album service.

Eventually, Memotrips is counting with 15 000 people customers on its application and website. The next step for the company should be to give the possibility to tourism firms, to advertise on the application and  website thanks to targeted campaigns.

Written by Hugo DUMURGIER & Lucile GARIN


References:

-http://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/auvergne-rhone-alpes/carnets-voyage-connectes-globe-trotters-sont-blog-trotters-1193457.html -http://www.journaldunet.com/ebusiness/internet-mobile/1159675-l-appli-de-la-semaine-memotrips-le-carnet-de-voyage-connecte/

-http://www.lefigaro.fr/secteur/high-tech/start-up/2016/07/01/32004-20160701ARTFIG00147-les-20applications-indispensables-sur-la-route-des-vacances.php

-https://www.memotrips.com/

-http://www.tourmag.com/Memotrips-le-carnet-de-voyage-digital-pour-les-agences-de-voyages_a85915.html

Does technology change the experience of events?

As the development of new technology, the way of plan and experience events have been changed step by step. Old model has are replacing by new technology and theory, which give both planners and participants an opportunities to hold and immersive。

Let's look at some of the new roles technology is playing in the events landscape — key fronts where it's changing the planning and experience we've come to expect.

1. Social media as a shared planning tool

Event participants already share their in-event experiences in real time via Twitter, Facebook and the like. With that as a given, now comes a newer drive on the planner's side: To place more control of events in their audience's hands. Except the traditional social media application, the owner of conference could launch a new app to connect every participant.

2. Data personalization

Big data is allowing planners and on-site personnel to respond to participants on the micro level. For example, already key to the personalized experience is the advent of beacon technology within the event space. In essence, beacons detect attendees' mobile devices and then push relevant information to those screens. Perhaps the registration desk has moved, and a map will show the attendee where it's gone.

3. Wearable tech

From on-site wristbands that allow participants to capture moments and information — say you like a sample of a dish at a food event and the wristband can send the recipe to you — to BYOD opportunities surrounding devices such as Google Glass, we're at the front end of a potentially profound shift toward hands-free tech at events. Wearable technology may well add yet another layer to the event ecosystem.

Music festivals have been at the forefront of this trend: Lollapalooza offers festival attendees wearable technology that links to their credit card information, and through the use of radio frequency identification, the bracelets let people pay for food and drink by tapping their bracelets.

Nowadays, VR device has helped every participants to experiences the real world. 

Reference:

http://mashable.com/2014/11/21/event-planning-technology/#p5QxJmg7rOq9

http://www.midwestmeetings.com/technologysolutions/will-technology-replace-the-event-planner-role? platform=hootsuite

 Paying with your face

Rongjia Hu & Ke Zhao

A:Guys, time for boarding, hurry up!

B:Terrible,terrible, I can not find my boaring pass

A: Just show your electronic boading pass, you don’t need the paper one

B: OMG, where is my mobile phone? Did I leave it some where?

Have you ever experienced the same situation in your life? You may not find your passport for check-in, you may not find your ticket to enter a museum, you may worry about losing your train ticket…...It happens quite often for people who leave in a rapid pace of living environment, and it is even worse for the careless people, in fact, it’s suffering for them. Anyway, just imagine that in the future, you do not need to worry all those stuffs happening to you as long as you keep your face? what a good news! Because the technology from Face ++ will remove your annoyance, it is definitely your gospel.

Face++ is a facial recognition system can be applied in varied industry fields, for example, the accurate face recognition can be used in financial transaction. What’s more, now Baidu, the most widely used Chinese search engine is developing a system to let people get the train tickets by showing their faces. The company have worked with the government WUZHEN, a highly popular historic tourist attraction in China, to provide access to many tourists for its attractions without ticket. Therefore, to a large extent, the face recognition improves tourists’  visiting experience. We have to say that sometimes it is really annoyed to hold a entry ticket all the time as some scenic area is huge with different sections and you must show your ticket each time, but now you can just “take your face” with you.

We may not fully understand to what extent that the artificial intelligence(AI) has developed and how many things that can help human-beings, but we can not ignore its definite advantages. From the perspective of tourism industry and payment in financial sector, which can benefit a lot from the AI, specifically  for the facial recognition. As globalization moves faster, there are increasing number of people are becoming nomads especially the businessman. They travel a lot to different corners all over the world, but sometimes they are restricted to consume because of the limited payment, but a Face ++ can solve this problem and facilitate more consumption. Turn on the camera and lock on the buyer’s face, done! A super simple procedure, no more credit card, no more password.

However, every coin has two sides, we also need to talk about the weaknesses of facial recognition technology. Firstly, it is very difficult to collect all the identity photos from all citizens in a country. The technology initially sets off in China is because of the nation’s attitudes toward surveillance and privacy,  moreover, the Chinese government has a large centralized database of ID photos. The collecting system of ID photos would be totally different in another country. Secondly, as time goes by or for some special situation, people’s face is changing somehow, which could be a technical challenge in terms of the accuracy.

In brief, we deserve the benefits of AI, but also need to consider the hardships we may face. No more long queue when we go to WUZHEN scenic area is a very exciting thing, since long queue is a annoying thing for a country with the population of closely 1.4 billion. Nevertheless, like I mentioned above, there are always some problems in front of you when you start to do something new, but once we find the problem then we may solve it eventually.

Article: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603494/10-breakthrough-technologies-2017-paying-with-your-face/