Simon on: Facing the Facts

Facial recognition is going to take the events world by storm and the humble barcode will soon be a relegated to the past. So say the people selling it, but seriously?

Even Apple couldn’t get it to unlock the new iPhone as promised and that was demonstrated rather embarrassingly to over 1000 people, including the worlds press.

The failed demo had an immediate impact on Apple’s shares, but they have already bounced back because they are Apple and the new iPhone has a lot of other great features (that probably do work). Let’s look at the facts about facial recognition.

The tech debate

One of the companies selling facial recognition systems for exhibition registration has recently said that it is a faster way to produce a badge than simply scanning a barcode.

They may say this, but where’s the proof? The perfect answer to the naysayers like me would be a video on their website showing a real time demonstration of the system in use. It would be very simple to demonstrate and film, but they don’t have one – which hardly exudes confidence.

I don’t believe it for one minute and I challenge any company that’s peddling facial recognition exhibition registration systems to a time challenge against our trusty barcode scanners.

The barcode is an amazing invention and one that has stood the test of time because it’s easy, cheap, fast and effective. With one little bleep of the scanner, the barcode is read, the information is matched to the registration data and a badge is printed.

The facial recognition systems I have seen so far are dramatically slower, or simply don’t work. Have you ever been processed by a passport system in the time a barcode scanner would take to make one little bleep? Or, like me, have you stood there for 30 seconds or more? I’m pretty confident that the technology used at airports is state of the art so why would facial recognition exhibition registration systems be faster? There is a slim chance that the system I mention above is utterly amazing but I’ve not seen it yet.

Facial recognition also relies on you having accurate and security checked facial data to match the facial scan to, so you will need up-to-date photographs of all of your visitors – all logged, confirmed and stored.

If security is of the upmost importance then you will still need to confirm that the person in the photo is the person that they say they are. Unless you are going to run identity checks against legal photo ID, you only have that person’s word for it and you cannot guarantee that they are who they say they are.

Biometric data

There have also recently been news stories about AI facial recognition being able to learn to recognise a person’s political stance, their sexuality and their propensity for crime. If this technology does gain traction, we will see human rights laws and conditions being applied to its use to ensure it can’t be used for discrimination. It’s a rather scary proposition and we may end up with a public backlash against facial recognition being used at all.

Additionally, the storing of biometric data will take your data into a special category when the GDPR comes into force next May. Biometric data is particularly sensitive personal data with increased conditions to control its storage and usage.

GDPR is causing enough confusion without these extra conditions to consider. On one provider’s website they say that the data is encoded and would never be able to be turned back into a picture but that doesn’t actually matter. Under GDPR – any biometric data that can uniquely identify or confirm the identity of a person is special category data which will require much higher levels of consent and protection.

This website also suggests that their data is stored securely on their servers on the internet. Does that mean they need an internet connection for it to work? What happens if the connection drops during a busy period – presumably check-in would just stop? During a recent exhibition, we were experiencing a connection speed of 300kbps which could cripple a registration system that relies on internet connection and that was central London!

Police trialled a state-of-the-art facial recognition system at this year’s Notting Hill Carnival and it couldn’t even tell the difference between a young woman and a balding man, according to a rights group worker invited to view it in action. They said it proved worse than useless: it prompted 35 false matches and one wrongful arrest of somebody incorrectly tagged as being wanted on a warrant for a rioting offense.

High-level security

Facial recognition could be useful for an extremely high level security event – such as the G8 summit, but these events are few and far between.

A bog-standard exhibition will never need that level of security – or be able to justify paying for it. It would be far easier for organisers to verify identities by checking the delegate’s photo ID. At some events we then take a photo of the delegate while they stand there and print it on their badge so staff on the doors can double check when they enter the event.

People are accustomed to using barcodes and use them for everything from event tickets to airport boarding passes. They have been around a long time because they work and they work quickly. Look at the speed in which a cashier scans the items at the supermarket check out. It’s fast – faster than you can pack your damned groceries! That’s a barcode at work.

Do you really think it would be quicker if the supermarket barcode scanner was replaced by a product recognition scanner that had to match its physical form to a database? It would be a step backwards in speed and a step forwards in cost.

So don’t write off the barcode – it’s cheap, reliable, fast and effective. It will never be replaced by a technology that’s slower, less accurate and expensive (and may not always work). If it ain’t broke why try to fix it?

Simon on: Life is Simple

We like tech, we like gadgets and we have come to expect that as technology marches on, our everyday items will include more tech features, have more functionality and be able to do even more whizzy things for us that will make our lives easier. Cars can now have all sorts of gizmos and gadgetry, from radar cruise control and heads up displays to apps which allow you to put the back seats down remotely and even use your phone to lock and unlock your car from miles away (as long as both my phone and the car have an internet connection).

As the years progress, we have come to expect more bells and whistles, we get excited by them and they definitely influence our purchasing decisions.

I think there’s some interesting psychology at work here. The sales and marketing departments have brainwashed us into thinking that we really do need that upgrade because although our current model works well, the shiny new features of the latest version will enable us to have more time, be better people or be better at attracting the opposite sex (or whatever the latest marketing message is). Quite simply, more tech is good. But is it?

The Samsung Galaxy Note smart phones come with a pen to use with the touch screen. I’ve had several of these phone and the only time I ever used the pen was to show people that it had a pen! Everyone gathers round to stare and coo but then the pen gets put away and is never seen again, because for me it was always completely useless.

An app can put the back seats of your car down remotely, but what happens if you’ve left anything – such as a bottle of water – on the seat? My own car has electrically folding rear seats but when raising the seats back up, the seatbelts get trapped behind the seats and you have to manually fix that anyway. It was easier when you did it all manually!

There is a thin line between useful technology and over complication. And it’s a line that often gets crossed as the marketing department pushes for more and more seemingly important features, because they want them in order to convince Joe Public that they *need* this new shiny gadgetry.

We launched an event app last month. It is simple and uncomplicated and it was written to combat the common problems that delegates have whilst at events; seeing which sessions and speakers are on next, managing appointments and helping them to find their way around an exhibition hall. At first a few people were a little cautious – they looked and thought it was a bit basic, a bit simple. That it wasn’t as bursting with “features” as some of the other apps they have seen or used. But then they actually tried it. They used it and it was easy, uncomplicated and just worked. It didn’t have the bells and whistles that they initially thought were missing. But then they realised that our approach gave a better user experience because the other stuff didn’t get in the way.

Over complicated doesn’t equal better. As Confucius said “Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”

RefTech to Launch Mobile App

RefTech will be launching the EventReference mobile app at The Meetings Show 2017.

The app is part of the EventReference by RefTech cloud based event management platform that is used to handle the diary system and registration for the show and comes with a host of features and benefits:

• Fast, simple and easy to use.
• Very lightweight – taking up very little of a phone’s resources.
• Hosted buyers and exhibitors can use the app to access their diaries.
• Information is available off line – even without Wi-Fi.
• Check seminar sessions – filter by speaker name, track or location.
• Search for speakers and see their biogs and sessions.
• Easy to read floorplan to better show navigation.

Simon Clayton, chief ideas officer, RefTech said: “I’ve been very critical of event apps in the past because so many of them are simply not fit for purpose; events are short so an event app has to be very quick to grasp and simple to use but so many of them are slow, clunky and hard to navigate.

 “We thought it was time to create something very different. The EventReference app is simple to use but works – it gives you all the information you need whilst at an event in a straightforward format. EventReference is a really powerful event management tool – it’s simple enough for a breakfast meeting, but powerful enough for The Meetings Show.”

 Steve Knight, event director, The Meetings Show said: “The EventReference app gives attendees all of the essential Show information in one easy to use place. It is part of the event management system that we already use, so it connects seamlessly with the hosted buyer and exhibitor diaries.”

Simon on: The Anti Cyber Attack Checklist

Simon Clayton, chief ideas officer, RefTech said: “Last week’s cyber attack hit on a global scale, and is set to escalate as more companies discover that they have also been affected. 

The repercussions of the attack are likely to continue for some time; it is a massive demonstration of what can happen if you are not security conscious and highlights that even the biggest organisations are vulnerable. Our checklist below sets out simple steps that will help individuals and companies reduce the risk of future attacks of this nature.”
On your personal computer:

1. Make sure you install operating system updates when they’re made available
2. Make sure you have good anti-virus software installed and it’s regularly updated
3. Backup all the data on your computer regularly
4. Never open an email attachment that you’re not expecting even if it seems to be from a reliable source such as tax authorities, banks, delivery companies and so on
5. Never click on a web link in an email from an unknown contact
6. Make sure your passwords are strong*
7. Use a different password for each online system you use
8. If you’re offered two factor authentication for using an online system, use it
9. 
   

If you run a company your IT system is almost certainly too important for you to be able to say ‘We have an IT manager – all this stuff is their responsibility’. You need to be as involved in this as you are in other activities that the business depends on for its survival. Specifically, you need to:

1. Take IT security seriously. Imagine what would happen to your company if your computer network was knocked out for a couple days. Worse still, what would happen if you lost all of the company data and couldn’t recover it?
2. Make sure a named individual in the company has the clear responsibility for backing up your systems at least every night
3. Make sure they are doing it
4. Make sure they test the backups regularly to prove that the backups can be used if the worst happens
5. Make sure a named individual in the company has the clear responsibility for updating your PC and servers’ operating systems
6. Make sure they’re doing it
7. Make sure that every computer that’s linked to your network (including computers not owned by the company) has the latest security patches installed
8. Make sure all those computers have good anti-virus software installed and that it’s kept up to date
9. Make sure everybody in the company follows point 4 to 8 above
10. 
    

For more information on how to create a strong password, please download RefTech’s free white paper:
www.reftech.com/passwords.php

For more information on data protection, please download RefTech’s white paper titled: ‘Data Protection in the Events Industry: what you need to know to stay within the law’
www.eventreference.com/promo-www/datasafety/download.php

Simon on: Apps - What are they good for?

Exhibition apps are about as useful as a chocolate teapot, says Reftech’s Simon Clayton.

Exhibition apps are about as useful as a chocolate teapot – I’ve made this statement before, but recent experience has prompted me to discuss the subject again.

The vast majority of exhibition apps are simply awful – they are clunky, slow to use or just don’t enhance the visitor experience. Many of them seem to have been designed for a conference rather than an exhibition – and anyone in the industry knows that they are not the same thing. Some apps are ‘ok’, but is ‘ok’ enough to warrant the time and spend?

Exhibition apps are only used for a few days at most (for the duration of the event), so the user has to get to grips with the app very, very quickly. This means that the user experience needs to be as slick, fast, uncomplicated and as pain-free as possible. The gain has to outweigh the pain because people are busy, attention spans are short, and even just a few extra seconds load time can be make or break the experience.

I’ve recently witnessed exhibition organisers pay huge sums of money for an app that on the day turns out to be as useful as a one legged man in an arse kicking contest. But enough of the sarcastic comparisons, I’d like to look at why this happens.

I think it could be down to smoke and mirrors; the spec is discussed and exhibition organisers are promised the world but in reality they don’t have the technical expertise in-house to see that the product spec is fundamentally flawed and could never deliver.

The organiser trusts the app provider to deliver on their word, but when they don’t, the development is too far down the line, the show is almost upon them and the app budget is spent. They end up with a less that perfect app that cost them a small fortune.

I keep reading articles about app fatigue – how ‘we’ are getting fed up with apps and often view them as simply more crap that we just don’t need. I personally get rather frustrated by the daily requests to update my apps – I don’t have many of them, but I still seem to be updating five per day, which means that I delete many of them anyway. They can also eat up phone battery – even whilst not in use – which is one of the reasons why so many people carry back up power devices.

What’s the solution? First you should question whether your exhibition actually needs an app in the first place, and if you do, then plan out its functionality and more importantly, the key visitor benefits. Consider yourself as a customer – what are the apps that you regularly use and why do you use them? If you were in your visitor’s shoes, will the app appeal to you?

Get the basics right – think about the visitor and what they really want from the show experience and build the app around them. Get your techies involved from the start and ask lots and lots of questions. And then ask more questions and ask for proof that the app will deliver.

How hard can it be to create a fast loading and truly useful exhibition app? I think I’ll go and find out…

Simon on: Don't Knock It

The recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas has just prompted a whole range of reactions from the press – ranging from the ‘wow’ to the fairly sarcastic. One article highlighted the array of technology created, ‘to solve a problem that just isn’t there’. It criticised the tech industry’s current obsession with sensors to record pretty much everything we do from sleep patterns to the fitness of our pets (I kid you not).

People who read my columns may think that I would echo this sentiment, but I don’t. Sometimes what’s not relevant for one person is actually very useful to another. For example, one journalist was rather scathing about a device designed to monitor sleep patterns – ‘How do I manage to go to sleep at night without knowing my bed is monitoring my heart rate?’ – but that device could prove very useful to someone with life threatening sleep apnoea.

There’s also a lot to be said for pushing the boundaries and experimenting even if the return on investment isn’t immediate. As the president of 3M once said, you can’t stumble unless you are moving.

The barcode was invented 20 years before the technology to read it. The Apple iPhone was only possible due to the advancement of individual components coming together at the same time. But it has to be fit for purpose.

A beauty manufacturer has recently come under fire for creating a hairbrush that reads your hair, telling you how dry it is, how tangled etc. It sounds plausible until the $200 price tag is revealed, and then it could sound ridiculous, unless of course it’s bought by a salon that can use the brush to analyse clients’ hair and then recommend further treatments. This way it becomes a tool to sell more treatments or products – which totally changes the value proposition.

There’s some great technology being used right now to track Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals in all sorts of public places – from shopping centres to airports and even the London Underground.

Dublin airport is a prime example where they are tracking passengers’ mobile device’s Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals to measure the length of time it takes to go through security.

The issue of privacy has been raised though. Dublin airport claim they are only listening to the addresses of the devices which wouldn’t reveal any personal information. This data is also in the public domain and you can easily stop this data collection by turning off Bluetooth and Wi-Fi on your devices.

 The problem is that our phones can also leak all sorts of private information if companies listening to these signals are less scrupulous. There is a huge lack of awareness around this issue – most people simply don’t realise that their phones are leaking data this way. Once they have tackled the privacy concerns, this could be a great use of technology, but only because it’s a regular day-to-day issue. They can constantly review variances from their baseline data and judge how things are trending over a long period of time.

So often technology like this sounds amazing, but just isn’t applicable for events. When you are holding one or two relatively short events per year there isn’t time to get baseline data to make variances meaningful. Even if you had enough data, what are you going to do with it? Visitors take different paths around the show but the hotspots within a show are always going to be where the most interesting stands are (or where there is free food and drink!).

While interesting, I can’t see this type of technology being used in events yet. Despite the hype, ibeacons haven’t made any tangible impact on events, but I’m keeping a careful eye on all of this stuff. I’m a gadget freak and I love technology, but I am totally against tech being used with no proven justification or ROI.

RefTech Research: 62% of Exhibitors Not Following Up Leads

Independent research conducted by event technology provider RefTech has found that 62 per cent of exhibitors do not follow up on leads collected at a show.

The research was conducted at a major international business tourism exhibition. RefTech created a fake event management company – complete with website, business cards and a request for proposal (RFP) for an international event – then visited 106 stands belonging to a range of suppliers, destinations and venues.

The visitor approached the exhibiting personnel, explained the event brief, left a business card, asked for their badge to be scanned and requested more information after the exhibition.

Of the 38 per cent of exhibitors who did follow up on the interaction, 19 per cent responded with a personalised email and 19 per cent simply added the visitor’s details to a mailing list.

Seven stands completely ignored the visitor, despite them standing waiting for around five minutes.

Having a scanner helped; of the companies that scanned the visitor’s badge, 50 per cent followed up post-show.

Simon Clayton, chief ideas officer, RefTech, commented: “Our research shows that exhibitors still aren’t getting the basics right. There are so many tech products being promoted to help exhibition organisers and exhibitors, but they need to concentrate on the basics – simply to follow up on leads generated from attending. This research is not in isolation; it echoes results from past research we have conducted at events and personal experience too.

“Recently I visited a stand at a tech exhibition and was genuinely interested in placing an order for an expensive piece of tech, but the sales person didn’t follow up so I ended up purchasing it from a competitor instead.

“I’m saddened by this but not surprised. Why would a company pay thousands to exhibit and then not react to the leads generated from the activity? It’s madness.”