Simon on: Periscope - friend or foe for meetings?

Twitter’s acquisition of the live video streaming app, Periscope earlier this year seems to have caused quite a fuss within the industry – so I thought I should explore the facts.

I recently attended a presentation on the subject, where the speaker was adamant that the industry ‘must take the step with hybrid meetings.’ 

Hybrid events have been with us since the 1970s. The vast majority of events are now using video to engage a virtual audience and so should therefore be described as ‘hybrid’. The practise is in fact so commonplace that we need to lose the term ‘hybrid’ and start calling these events, simply, ‘events’.

Rant over, Periscope and its live streaming capabilities is a gimmick that I haven’t yet fathomed a tangible use for - especially when you consider that YouTube launched its own live streaming channel back in 2008, and look at the impact that had on the industry.

There are two possible avenues to take; the official route whereby organisers use it to stream live footage of their event, and the non-official use by members of the audience. 

Savvy organisers will not spend money on anything unless it enhances their event and I can’t see how live streaming will do that. It’s too late to use it to attract more delegates and it’s a fair-sized investment in time and money just to ‘create a social buzz’. 

Some people may bemoan that delegate use will flout privacy and copyright issues but the tools to film an event have been in audiences’ hands since the first smartphone was launched in 2005, yet we don’t see many delegates filming then posting conference content on YouTube. 

There are other drawbacks too. Periscope is currently only viewable on a smartphone – so is a delegate really going to watch an entire conference (or even one whole session) on a tiny screen? And videos created via Periscope disappear after 24 hours, so anyone who misses the original broadcast may miss out on the meeting entirely.

For those championing the idea of driving awareness through the app – if you saw a snippet of a meeting’s content online, would you really remember it and be inspired to attend the following year? Probably not. 

But if the organisers filmed the event, posted it on YouTube and used all their channels to promote it throughout the year, then maybe it may influence you.

Before we all get excited about this new shiny tool, let’s use the tools we already have to much better effect.

Originally published in M&IT

Simon on: Indoor GPS

Indoor GPS seems to be a topic that keeps cropping up in the industry but personally, I can’t see what benefits it could bring.

I’ve been to a lot of events but I don’t recall thinking that the floorplan was too complicated to navigate. Most exhibitions are laid out on a grid which makes it relatively easy to find your way around.

I honestly wouldn’t bother using an event app’s version of sat-nav to get me from one stand to another – even if it knew where I was supposed to be next because of an appointment schedule.

Should an organiser really be encouraging visitors to their event to stare mindlessly at their devices rather than wandering around, seeing other exhibitors and potentially networking? There are already enough distractions on mobile devices anyway.

To me it feels just like TV manufacturers attitudes. Over the past 5-10 years we’ve seen more and more gimmicks that don’t necessarily add anything, but sound good when you’re looking at them in the shop. Then you purchase and when you get home you find that actually you don’t really use any of the new features.

My opinion is that indoor GPS is another pointless feature that will cost a lot to implement and provide no genuine benefits. Maybe someone will prove me wrong one day but I can’t see it yet.

Originally published in Conference News

Simon on: Tech for tech's sake

Despite various claims from the experts that wearables will be a game-changer in the meetings industry, it would seem the tech continues to struggle to make an impact.

We’ve seen Google Glass be taken back to the drawing board after mankind refused to become a nation of glassholes, and now, even the mighty Apple has fallen foul in the smartwatch stakes. Its new wrist wearable fails to work on tattooed skin – sorry inked delegates, looks like you’ll have to get your notifications the old fashioned way on your phone.

Smartbands like the Myo which controls a presenter’s slides with a series of arm swipes and gestures is only going to unnerve a speaker, as well as leave room for more technical issues to arise.

So why are experts hell-bent on hailing wearables as the next big thing? Well, to me it is simply a case of tech for tech’s sake.

There still hasn’t been any real proof that wearable tech benefits the industry. Why? Because deep down in the realms of common sense we know that all the industry actually needs is great content and great speakers.

Originally published in Conference News

Simon on: Technology and presentations

Since the start of another new year, we’ve seen industry experts give their opinions on what will be the tech trends to watch out for. However, some just seem to be throwing the latest gadgets into the events space for fun.

For example, the comment from the Jan/Feb issue regarding the Myo wearable armband, which will give presenters the opportunity to control slides, sound effects and visual effects with the sweep of an arm, simply struck me as misguided to say the least.

The average company bod making a presentation often struggles to press the right button to move their PowerPoint on one frame. Ask them to use slides, sound effects and visual effects, and they’ll be in real trouble – tell them they must control it all by waving their arms and some of them will freak out completely.

This is what’s becoming a classic case of tech for tech’s sake. To me, it seems totally pointless – there is nothing wrong with the wireless tools which are pressed once per slide, especially when you consider outstanding presenters like Hans Rosling use said standard clickers.

Some presenters would even go as far as to say that computers are temperamental enough. I imagine Martin Lewis (managing editor of this magazine) would agree with me, given that the last time I saw him presenting, his computer aide wasn’t playing properly – so adding another technological risk into the mix with a wearable seems just plain daft.

According to Myo creators, ThalmicLabs, the armband is claimed to let your content shine and leaves your anxiety behind knowing that you are in control thanks to its intuitive gesture controls. Waving left takes the presenter to the previous slide, a wave to the right jumps to the next.

But even Oliver Richardson of DB Systems who made the original comment, stated that with the Myo, ‘perfecting the right movements takes getting used to.’ When you pair that with the findings from a recent study conducted by human behaviour research lab, Science of People, the Myo seems even more of a ridiculous addition.

The study looked into the science behind TED talks, or more specifically, what makes them so popular. Half of the participants watched the videos with sound, half watched them muted before rating each speaker.

A correlation was found between the number of views on a TED talk and the number of hand gestures – the most popular videos had an average of 7 million views with speakers using an average of 465 hand gestures. The least popular talks had an average of 124,000 views with speakers on average using 272 hand gestures.

These natural hand gestures would surely include swiping side to side, so if the TED speakers incorporated the Myo into their presentations, they’d run the risk of jumping through their slides – not exactly the way to win over an audience.

The findings also showed that speakers who use their hands to illustrate and reinforce ideas came across as relaxed, confident and authoritative – something that would surely be lost if the speaker had to focus using gestures to control their presentation.

Originally published in M&IT

Simon on: M&IT - iBeacons

With so many gizmos and gadgets continuously hailed as the latest game-changer, it's hard to know what is useful and what is useless.

The most recent piece of tech to be crowned the golden egg of the meetings industry is iBeacons - but what's the truth? And more importantly, what are the benefits?

Find out by reading the whole article featured on M&IT, by clicking here.