Joining the dots:the future of event registration

Events can generate and collect lots of data – that’s a pretty obvious statement. Most people know that data can be very useful, and increasingly event owners are now collecting that data via multiple platforms and storing it in lots of different places.

Most organisers will have an online registration system and this might be part of their onsite badging system or might be separate. They’ll probably also have a CRM system to manage sales, exhibition stand holders, sponsorship contacts etc including all the potentially interested contacts. They could also have a content management platform to collect and store information about speakers and exhibitors in order to populate and organise the event’s website content and printed guides. This means that the average organiser has got several different databases in several disparate systems. Bringing all that data together in a single place in order to conduct better reporting on it, would be a very useful step.

If an organiser is storing lots of data in lots of different places, then it can be beneficial to bring all of the data together to create a ‘Single Point Of Truth’ (SPOT). SPOT is a principle used to ensure that everyone in an organisation is using the same data and that there is only one place that is guaranteed to have the correct data.

Manually bringing data together from active systems doesn’t work because there will be periods where the data is outdated meaning there is no SPOT. Luckily these days, many systems have APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that allow data to be pushed into or pulled from different platforms. For example, EventReference, our event management system can be configured to push data into CRM systems so that when a delegate registers, the CRM system is updated immediately. 

Pushing data is the better option because the system only pushes data when it changes so the receiving end is only getting the changes. The alternative – pulling data is often a lot less elegant as it means you have to process a whole set of data every time and work out what has changed. There is also a period where your SPOT is out of date as you may well only update it every hour and that’s before you start trying to consider how to handle deleted records which won’t normally exist in a data set and that complicates matters considerably.

I believe a lot of organisers will have disparate systems simply because there aren’t many systems that can do absolutely everything you want in the way that you want it. By the very nature of our industry, organisers end up with a bunch of different systems that are not connected and it might be advantageous to have them connected. 

Is this the future of event registration? Well, maybe but beware that these kinds of systems and integrations are anything but free even if the APIs are available at no extra cost. Integrating with APIs is not necessarily a straightforward task and requires upfront investment and ongoing management. You should make sure that you know exactly what you’re going to get for your money and the best idea possible of the costs involved (then double them to be safe). Ultimately, if you are going to invest in these technologies you need to make sure you are going to get enough benefit for your money before you embark on this route.

Comment: How to protect your event from scammers

Simon Clayton, chief ideas officer, at RefTech looks at how exhibition organisers can protect their events from scammers. 

You may, like me, be one of a lot of people who have seen the video showing YouTuber Max Fosh “breaking into” the International Security Expo at Olympia.

The video has gone viral, and it’s not hard to see why; it’s entertaining for someone that doesn’t understand our industry. But is it an example of how easy it is to have lax security at an event or is it someone just trying to be sensationalist?

Most events encourage visitors to pre-register but it’s often possible to register online or onsite on the day of the event. With most exhibitions, visitors are issued a badge to try and ensure only registered people can get into the event – they aren’t closed events, the organisers just like to know who is there and to collect their data for lead retrieval/etc, and everyone likes to know how many people were there. The International Security Expo is not a closed event, they don’t have a vetting process for their visitors because it’s a general trade show for security products and there’s thousands of industry professionals who might want to attend to see what the latest offerings are from suppliers. So our intrepid “hacker” could have just registered on the event website and walked in anyway but that’s not “exciting” for his YouTube audience.

Instead, he fakes a badge with a jokey name and makes a big deal about gaining entry.  Now the interesting bit for us in the events industry is that he faked a badge by going onto social media and looking for people who had posted photos from the event with their badges visible. In some events, this could be a serious problem but, in this case, the repercussions are pretty much non-existent.

If your event does vet the attendees or charges for entry then this should set alarm bells ringing because his approach could lead to people attending who you don’t want to be there for whatever reason, or haven’t paid for entry.

It was easy for Max to just go to social media and find people who were taking photos of themselves with their badges to see what the badge looked like. It was also easy for him to mock up a roughly right looking badge by grabbing the event logo (and sponsors logos) from the website and adding some barcodes in the right places. He then picked up a lanyard on his way in.

If he’d known a little bit about our industry, he would have realised that creating an exhibitor badge would have been just as easy and would have allowed him to just walk round pretty much anywhere – and could even have allowed him entry before the bag searches were in operation, and there’s a lot of valuable equipment sitting around on empty stands too…

In the video, Max gets very nervous when he presents his badge to the person who needs to scan him in, but he needn’t have worried; a standard scanner just records the barcodes and then the information is downloaded later. Max’s badge has two barcodes – he has faked these up  with easily available online tools – the first barcode says 12345 whilst the second barcode ‘Rick Rolls’ you with a YouTube link. The scanner doesn’t react to a fake barcode, it is simply recorded. I suspect most registration companies will, like we do, get people standing around scanning cans of Coke and all sorts of rubbish. So, if you get a barcode that doesn’t follow format or isn’t valid, it’s probably just discarded. We could report on that stuff, but what’s the point?  We could tell you when they were scanned and where, but we wouldn’t have an image of them, so it doesn’t help.

So, if this could impact your events, what can you do?

Ask your registration company for ‘real time verification scanning’ for your event. These are scanners that link back to a database and will verify (in real time) that the badge scanned is real, the visitor is registered and, if applicable, the admission fee has been paid. This type of scanning can also ensure that only the latest version of an attendee’s badge is allowed in so someone going to the desk having “lost” their badge doesn’t end up with a duplicate which at expensive conferences is definitely a thing.

If you have different levels of visitors who have access to different areas you can even have these scanners at the entry points of each conference room to ensure delegates can only attend the parts that they have paid for or only get one visit to lunch each day.

We also have found people turn up to events with last year’s badge or email and they often look similar but present a data protection issue if the barcode on that email now relates to someone else. To negate this, you could also ask your registration company if they can create event-based barcodes; which contain a short code that changes every year.

We have a responsibility to our visitors and exhibitors to know exactly who is entering our events. Let’s not allow Max and his cohorts to scam the scanners.

Gaming the system

Simon Clayton, chief ideas officer at RefTech, on why the gamification of exhibition stands may not encourage useful interaction.

Gamification has become quite a common way for companies to create specific human behaviour, to encourage participation and create habits. Games are not just for kids or geeks anymore – we only have to look at the number of fully grown adults still walking around trying to catch a Pokémon. We have all embraced gaming in some shape or form, even if it’s simply paying Sudoku on your smartphone, or doing a jigsaw on your iPad. Many of us also have a competitive streak and so we are seeing the use of leagues and rankings as a way of pitching ourselves against other anonymous users. These leagues are used to further motivate and to build FOD (Fear of Demotion) with warnings alerting you that your inactivity is going to lead to relegation to a lower league. No one wants to be demoted, so we do what we have to do to stay up.

Unfortunately, it’s widely documented that with any system, it’s only a matter of time before users learn how to cheat and find ways of achieving their goals or even higher positions in the ‘game’ without necessarily doing the behaviour it is trying to encourage.

Take Duolingo – everyone’s favourite language app with over 300m users worldwide. It boomed during lockdown as everyone strove to do something useful with their furlough time and endeavoured to create better versions of themselves. At the time of writing, I’m on a 1690 day streak, which means that I’ve been using it to learn German for over four and half years. It’s based on a principle of repetition and ‘little and often’ – and so they encourage you to spend time on it every day – hence the build-up of ‘streaks’.

A year or two ago, Duolingo introduced leagues; depending on when you first use the app on a Monday, you are then placed with a small group of people who also used the app at same time as you, and you compete with those people. Human nature (and my own experience) showed that the people that used Duolingo at 8am on a Monday morning were very different to the people using it at 11pm that night. The 8am-ers were keen – far too keen for my liking. They were very enthusiastic, competitive and high achievers who then went on to complete lots of the app and make it harder for me to compete.  On the other hand, the 11pm-ers were the ones who had maybe forgotten to do it during the day, but had rushed and just about squeezed in ‘under the door’ to get their work done before the nightly cut off. Getting into a league with the 11pm-ers was far better for me as they offered little in the way of competition and so my chances of demotion were lower. I played the system because that’s human nature.

This is very ably demonstrated in the book ‘Freakonomics’. One of the authors, the economist Steven D Levitt took over the potty training of his daughter, Amanda, and created an incentive scheme where she was rewarded with sweets every time she used her potty. Within two days she was happy to use the potty and he was one proud father. But on day three she’d cracked the incentive system and was able to go the potty and release a few drops of urine in order to get the reward, only to be able to repeat this over and over again for multiple rewards. As Steven says: “In three days, a three year old had come up with a way to beat the incentive scheme that I, an economist, had developed. So, what hope do we have of incentivising the whole country.” That’s the thing with incentives – you don’t really know what works. Many things will make sense on paper and have sound reasoning to say that they should work, and they may actually work with some people but not with others.

It’s really hard to create a reward system that isn’t open to cheating and only encourages the right behaviour. We have all been to industry events where visitors are encouraged to visit certain stands to collect stamps in a passport and then submit it into a draw or to win a small prize. But all this is just another thing for the salespeople to sell. It may encourage visitors to come on to your stand, but they are only there to get the stamp. I’ve been on a stand, chatting to the exhibitor about my genuine business requirement only to have our conversation interrupted by another visitor looking for a stamp for his card. The weary exhibitor simply stamped the card and shooed them away – and to think, the exhibiting company had paid more to be part of a tiresome ‘game’ that could have jeopardised a genuine sales enquiry. I know that serendipity could lead a stamp collecting visitor to uncover an exhibitor that they didn’t know that they needed, but I think this is few and far between…

Activities such as these are more often than not incentivising irrelevant behaviour rather than the behaviour that is intended – humans are human and they will find a way to game the system.

The metaverse: is it worth it?

 Simon Clayton, chief ideas officer, RefTech, details how the metaverse needs development before it can truly impact the events industry.

The pace that technology changes is staggering. The metaverse is one of the latest things that eventprofs are talking about and some companies are spending millions on it – but will it be worth it?

Well, possibly for some, but not yet and it won’t impact live events in the foreseeable future. Some elements of virtual meetings work well, like video meetings. But this is now considered 'normal', so much so, that I’m seeing requests for a video call, when a phone call would have sufficed. But just because people have got used to using something, doesn’t mean that they like it.

Virtual events were necessary through lockdown, but now that lockdown has lifted, we are seeing a huge resurgence of real-life events, because people want to meet face to face. I’ve still not seen a virtual tradeshow that can compete with a real tradeshow, and the socialising parts of any virtual event were either non-existent or clunky at best.

YouTube has taught us that people like to watch good content, but that they don’t need to see it live. The live element of any virtual conference seemed only to serve in creating a Q&A which doesn’t need to be live at all. On YouTube, content creators are constantly trying to encourage interaction and engagement with their audience by asking people to ‘comment below’ and it really works.

The metaverse

So, let’s bring the metaverse into this. Just as we are starting to experience life again, along comes the metaverse with the promise that you can experience everything the world has to offer from the comfort of your own home.

At the moment, the perceived problem with virtual events is that they simply aren’t the same as gathering everyone round a meeting table. Therefore, the events industry has looked for some more technology to fix this problem and jumped onto the metaverse as the solution.

Our industry talks about the power of immersion. Whilst wearing my VR headset I am immersed; it also means that I can’t even pick up my coffee. My keyboard is pretty state of the art, but it’s not one of the three supported by Oculus, which allows the keyboard to appear in the virtual world so I could type whilst I’m ‘submerged’. Will we see more integration between the metaverse and real-life objects?

Factors to consider

As with most new technology, there are problems. New technology isn’t always better than the existing solutions. Take 3D TV, this was something we didn’t need, or it turns out, want. If a film came out in 3D, people would go to see it, but directors had to create storylines that emphasised the 3D-ness of the film, which detracted from the story. People didn’t like wearing the glasses either. It was fun for a while, but where is it now? It turns out that TV wasn’t actually broken.

Culturally, we are a small island and it's not too hard to see people in real life. Where I live, I can get to a large part of the country in two hours, so virtual meetings aren’t really that crucial to me. The rise in fuel prices and the growing concern for the environment may have an impact too – but I think that will simply drive more video calls.

The cost of joining the metaverse (or one of the competitors) is a factor too; entry level headsets are around £300 but go up to around £1,000. Will companies be rushing out to equip their teams with expensive kit that will effectively just imprison them at their desk?

Another major stumbling block will be interoperability. Jumping between Zoom, Microsoft Teams or any of the other video call platforms on a laptop is easy enough, but what if the big client you want to meet with is using one of the VR platforms you don’t have a headset for?

At the moment, the metaverse is too primitive, too buggy and too flawed in plenty of ways. In its current state I don’t think it’s fit for purpose as an events solution, but we will of course see some organisers try to shoehorn it into their events.

As with all technology, there has to be serious benefits to drive both change and acceptance.

RefTech see 400% increase in enquiries month on month

RefTech, a provider of event registration and event management systems, has reported a 400% rise in business enquiries in the last month since the government’s roadmap out of lockdown was announced.

RefTech said the enquiries have been a combination of new and returning clients and mainly for Covid-secure registration and badging services for events in the autumn, winter 2021 and into 2022 – although a few summer events have been quoted for too.

Simon Clayton, chief ideas officer at RefTech said: “Our sales team has seen a marked rise in enquiries, and lots of interest in the covid-secure registration options that we have. Our Autonomous Scanning Pods (ASPods) are proving to be very popular with organisers who want to remove as much human contact as possible from the registration process.

“We are also seeing requests from clients asking us to print badges and send them with lanyards and a lateral flow test to delegates – because they want the delegate to have everything they need to hand to test first and then get into the event as quickly and safely as possible.”

Clayton added: “Our badging on-demand service has also proved popular – because we can spread stations out throughout a registration area and avoid gatherings of people in one place. Ensuring that the registration area of an event is covid secure is one of the most important factors for returning events. Clients are planning events again, but understandably they are being cautious and needing ways to limit contact and ensure social distancing.”

Other Covid-secure solutions that RefTech provide include timed entry systems, apps to enable delegate communication, delegate diary systems and matching software – to avoid registration bottlenecks and to ensure safe access to an event.

RefTech launches new membership management software

Event software company RefTech has announced the launch of MemberReference, a new piece of software that aims to simplify membership management.

The system is specifically designed for membership organisations and includes reporting tools and administration functions, and is based on the EventReference event management software.

The system allows administrators to access lists of members who have not yet renewed, who have lapsed or who are coming up to renewal, and allows them to send them reminder emails. In addition, admins can import an existing membership list from a spreadsheet while details of members who don't want to use online systems can also be added and managed. All forms can be adapted to the specific needs of the organisation.

MemberReference also aims to enable organisations to improve member retention by providing multiple routes to increased member engagement.

Simon Clayton, chief ideas officer of RefTech, said: “Membership engagement is a vital part of the management of any membership organisation, especially at present: without being able to hold live events, it is necessary to find alternative ways of creating and monitoring it. In our experience, member retention is far harder than member recruitment so having a system that helps engagement with members and an easy to use, real time online renewal process further increases member retention.”

MemberReference aims to increase member engagement by: simplifying member communication, allowing bespoke communication including newsletters with trackable links, and the setup and automation of transactional emails; creating targeted communications designed for different membership types; monitoring member contact and flagging members who are not engaging and are therefore more likely to leave; enabling membership organisations to create a ‘members only’ zone for members to access exclusive information and content; simplifying payment options to enable easier renewals and for members to add and pay for optional extras; providing a safe and secure platform for members' personal information; and reporting accurately and efficiently on membership numbers and interactions.

RefTech’s new product to help raise exhibitor confidence

Event technology provider RefTech has launched the Autonomous Scanning Pod (ASPod) to allow visitors and delegates to self-scan their badges on entry to an event, and at key check points such as entry to seminars. The ASPod has been designed to help remove human contact and thus reduce the risk of Covid transmission.

Simon Clayton, chief ideas officer, RefTech said it was an important move in accordance with how people feel about their personal safety. He said: “As exhibitions and larger events return in 2021, organisers will be looking to harness technology to create a safer environment and to build trust with their audiences. The ASPod will remove some of the peripheral human interaction traditionally associated with events, and focus the interaction on the exhibitors, and therefore go some way to helping the delegates and visitors to feel more Covid-secure as they enter and move around an event.”

He added: “We all know how critical it is to collect visitor data and this is an effective way to ensure that data is collected with the minimum of human contact. Much of the confidence we need to build to bring people back to events will come from us embracing new and safer ways of interacting.”

The ASPod allows visitors to be incentivised to scan badges – ie ‘Scan your badge and get a copy of the slides sent to your email address / made available on the event app etc.’ with the organiser able to manage and co-ordinate all of this in the system.

The ASPod can also be used by exhibitors to collect data and is part of EventReference, RefTech’s powerful event management system and event app.