| This blog will discuss new technologies and constantly evolving technologies changing the face of meeting planning. What is hot and what will have the greatest impact on the meetings industry. |
| This blog will discuss new technologies and constantly evolving technologies changing the face of meeting planning. What is hot and what will have the greatest impact on the meetings industry. |
Filed under: Uncategorized Corbin Ball @ 1:52 pm on 15/12/07
Greetings. The course note for the Emerging Techology Landscape presentation can be found at:
http://www.corbinball.com/assets/IAEE-eMERGE-notes-CorbinBall.pdf
Filed under: Uncategorized Corbin Ball @ 7:48 am on 20/11/07
I was recently interviewed by European press regarding Web 2.0. Here are some of the questions and responses.
Q. One of the key challenges of technology is take-up, which seems at times slow in our industry (web 2.0 is very developped in the business world, but not that much yet in events and meetings). Is it slow indeed? Why?
A. There are many components that make up the broad range of applications and services lumped under the somewhat ambiguous term “ Web 2.0” including blogs, podcasts, mash-ups, web services, wikis, rich internet applications, RSS syndication, social networking and more. Generally, the meetings industry and business as a whole in still early in the adoption curve (the term “Web 2.0” was just coined in 2004). There are several sites, especially in the social networking area such as MySpace, that have had significant visibility and impact, but these are still working their way into the business setting including meetings. Other components including web services (the ability to for web sites to more easily share data) and rich internet applications (refinements on how website display data) are well on the way to becoming standard.
I think the MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conventions, Expositions) industry is about average in its adoption rate compared to other industry segments.
Q. What are the keys to fostering a faster take-up?
A. Education is the key to broader use.
There are two components that pose a type of “chicken or the egg” dilemma, however:
Technology developers and providers need to be convinced there is a viable market to develop these specific applications for the comparatively narrow MICE industry business sector.
Meeting planners and event stakeholders need to become aware of the possibilities to create the demand. This is where education come in.
- Web 2.0 promises to be a perfect complement of meetings, facilitating networking, learning, community, before and after the event.
Q. Would you say web 2.0 will have a very strong impact on our industry /change the way we think of our events?
A. Yes, I believe that there will be very significant impact in a few ways:
1. When you reduce meetings to their essential element, it is about bringing people together. This is precisely what social networking sites do as well. Business networking is a short step away.
2. The user generated content component of Web 2.0 will give attendees a greater say in creating their meetings and meeting planners a better way to collaborate.
3. The mobile component of Web 2.0 will be huge – most meetings and tradeshows are by definition “mobile events.”
4. The biggest impact will be on a very fundamental level. Web services and XML are enabling meeting industry standards initiatives (such as APEX – see www.conventionindustry.org/apex) to move forward. In my opinion, the adoption of standards on how meeting professional share data will have the greatest technology impact in the history of the industry, with potential efficiency increases of 40-50%!
Q. Which are the best web 2.0 applications for our industry?
A. I don’t publicly endorse any technology product and have never accepted a cent of commission on a technology sale. However, the areas that I see great potential are:
Meeting industry standards using web services.
Mobile phone technology applications for audience polling, voting, lead retrieval, way finding, networking, agendas, group announcements and more
Mash-up sites combining data from multiple data sources
Networking applications to bring people of like interests together at meetings
Online meeting planner ratings of meeting facilities and services (like eBay seller ratings)
The use of podcasts and blogs to promote meetings
The use of wikis and other web-collaboration enabling meeting professionals to work better together
The use of user-generated content to give attendees a greater voice in event program content, design and speakers.
Q. Mobile phone (logon, jambo…) or proprietary (ntag, spotme…) solutions: each has its pros and cons. What is your view on this: do you think the future belongs to solutions based on devices attendees already have, or on one type of device which the organiser controls?
A. I think that proprietary devices such as SpotMe and nTAG are great tools – they work extremely well, do many things, and have been custom designed for the events industry. The challenge is that they are expensive (20-40 Euros/day/person), which is well out of the price range of many meetings.
I believe the future will be in non-proprietary applications and, specifically, in web-based mobile phone applications. It will be a few years, however, before they will come close to doing everything that SpotMe or nTAG can do.
Filed under: Uncategorized admin @ 7:10 am on 09/11/07
With 106 million registered users, if MySpace were a country, it would be the 11th largest in the world between Japan and Mexico. MySpace exemplifies the revolution sweeping the web enabling people to connect, rendezvous and collaborate via web-based tools. Social software will have many applications for meeting professionals:
When events are reduced to their most essential element, they are about bringing people together. Online social software to develop communities is a natural adjunct to face-to-face meetings. The events industry is a highly social one. Many meeting professionals, especially those entering this industry, will be open running with Web 2.0 social applications.
Additionally, meeting professionals often work in collaborative work teams and often in disparate locations. The collaboration tools common to these social software products can perform some tasks more efficiently than older ways of working together.
Although some elements of social software have been around for years (instant messaging and electronic bulletin boards are examples), the new set of applications provide a richer, easier and very different experience including MySpace, Second Life, YouTube, Google Docs, and others. They will be increasingly used for event/tradeshow managers, exhibitors and attendees to bring people together.
Filed under: Wireless Corbin Ball @ 12:15 pm on 09/11/07
There are over three billion mobile phone subscribers globally. This is more than the number of flush-toilets and
Mobile phones increasingly are being used for far more than making calls. At a minimum, nearly every phone sold these days has basic text message and web functionality. Increasingly they are becoming mini-computers more powerful than desktop computers of just a few years ago. Advanced web browsing, geo-positioning, video, and contact management capabilities are just the beginning. The recently released iPhone (www.apple.com/iphone) is a sign of changes to come with very advanced web browsing, and audio/video playback capabilities. Other smart phone competitors are close behind. Each year will provide more powerful processing capabilities in smaller, more convenient packages.
The web is becoming the principal delivery vehicle for software. The days of specialized, platform-specific software purchased, installed, maintained and updated on your computer are rapidly drawing to a close. Google and other major players are investing in web-based mobile tools, most of them at little or no cost to the user.
The wireless networks are also evolving to provide broadband (high speed internet) capabilities through many channels (EV-DO, Edge, 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi, Wi-Max and others to name a few from the alphabet soup of acronyms). Everywhere you go, broadband internet, the carrier for the mobile web software tools mentioned above, will be available.
Every phone sold since the start of 2006 is GPS enabled – calls can be triangulated from receiving antennae to determine where the caller is. However, full GPS mapping capabilities, already available in some phones, will become common cell-phone feature in the next few years.
NFC (near-field communication - www.nfc-forum.org, a short-range wireless technology is widely used in Japan with trials in the United States, Germany, Finland, Netherlands and a few other countries) will turn cell phones into a secure credit or debit cards. A chip embedded in a phone will allow you to make a payment by using a touch-sensitive interface or by bringing the phone within a few centimeters of an NFC reader. Your credit card account or bank account is then charged accordingly. This technology has great potential for e-ticketing and lead exchange as well as will be mentioned below.
Applications for meeting planners and those that attend meetings will be very significant including:
More details can be found regarding these applications at my website: http://www.corbinball.com/articles_technology/index.cfm?fuseaction=cor_av&artID=5313
These are just a few of the many ways that mobile phone will likely change the events industry. Mobile phones are already the most ubiquitous technology product on earth. The next generations of mobile phone will revolutionize meetings management and the business process in general in very significant ways.
Filed under: Uncategorized admin @ 9:06 am on 09/11/07
September 20, 2007 was an interesting experience:
I was the first person to present a seminar to the meetings industry using Second Life. Having given more than 100 virtual web-conference and web casting seminars, I can say that this was by far the most like a face-to-face meeting than any web conference or webcast I have participated in.
The event occured at the MeCo Mansion (MeCo for Meetings Community). Before the presentation I was able to walk around and speak with the attendees as they came in; on the stage, I could see attendees as they moved around; during the presentation I could walk around and make gestures; questions and answers were voice instead of text; during the Q&A, I hopped off the stage to walk among the participants to answer the questions; after the event, I talked individually with the participants who stayed after.
Standing on the stage as the attendees came in, the feeling was far more like a face-to-face meeting than any other virtual meeting I have participated in (where, typically, the speaker simply pumps PowerPoint slides, and looks at a text list of participants). To quote one of the participants, Andrea Gold from Gold Stars Speakers Bureau, on the event: “Many thanks to Dan Parks, Gloria Nelson and Corbin Ball for a GREAT experience in Second Life, listening to Corbin and watching his PowerPoint. I wouldn’t have missed that for anything; new technology, real information and new applications, with REAL PEOPLE. Thanks for helping to make this a reality within virtual reality.”
This is an example of how technology can bring people together for virtual events — increasingly simulating face-to-face events.
Screen shots can be seen at:
http://www.corbinball.com/articles_technology/index.cfm?fuseaction=cor_av&artID=4439
