Technology continues to make in-roads into events and conferences and change some of the ways event and meeting professionals interact and communicate with attendees. Here are three examples of current technology innovations showing up in meetings and events.
Augmented Reality
Recently my European meeting professional friend and social media event planner extraordinaire, Julius Solaris, had a provocative blog post What Augmented Reality Means for Events that included a video. He listed six ways he sees events integrating online with offline through augmented reality. Take some time to read his post before you proceed.
Elite Meetings Alliance Four Winds Interactive Kiosk
Interactive Touchscreen Kiosks
During the June 18, 2009, #eventprofs Twitter Chat, event professional Brad Pirman (tweeting while flying 36K in the air) mentioned his experience with Four Winds Interactive touchscreen kiosks used recently at Elite Meetings Alliance. Brad said Four Winds provided four kiosks that attendees could use to find their next appointment, maps and event schedule. According to Brad, the kiosks were placed at different areas of the venue and were a great success.
TouchWall (RFID & Multitouch Integration)
On that same day, my co-worker, Joe Flowers, sent me the following video of design haus Schematic new Touchwall project with a multitouch panel that debuted at an advertising festival in Cannes. Multitouch is everywhere these days, our mobile devices, ATMs, retail, desktops, hotels, airports. For Touchwall, attendees swipe a name badge embedded with RFID and then multiple attendees can interact simultaneously with the conference schedule, event layout, attendees, exhibitor’s floor plan, and more. This is really cool and I can think of a multitude of uses for conferences and events. Watch for yourself and I can here the “ooos and ahhs already.”
Touchwall Demo from Joel on Vimeo.
These three technology innovations will definitely change the way some meetings and events’ organizers interact with attendees. It will be interesting to watch these developments and others.
What new technology tools have you integrated with meetings and events lately?
