It will probably come as little surprise that Apple sold its millionth iPhone (combination mobile phone and iPod) just 74 days after they hit the market. People love new technology, especially young people.
When I purchased a new computer recently the first thing my nine-year-old asked me was whether it had PowerPoint. After admitting that I didn’t know he told me that they were doing some school assignments on PowerPoint. And that was third grade. Heaven help us when he’s in high school.
By its very nature, the meetings industry is high tech. The majority of hotels are now wi-fi (wireless), and their conference rooms probably have more technological gismos in them than the first spaceship that took Neil Armstrong and his buddies to the moon.
Those involved in presentations, special events, product launches and similar, must not only know what the latest devices are but how to use them to ensure that the aims of the event organisers are met.
According to the head of technology at Staging Connections Group Ltd, Andrew Maccoll, being part of a world-class staging business is about keeping up with the latest that technology has to offer. To that end, he and a number of his staff recently travelled to InfoComm 2007, an event he describes as the international AV “toy-fest” held in Anaheim in California.
“The sheer scale of this event is hard to comprehend,” he says.
“It takes every square metre of the huge Anaheim Convention Centre’s exhibition and event space. Thirty-one thousand AV dealers, independent reps, design consultants, systems integrators, rental and staging companies, AV buyers, corporate end users and general AV geeks from 80 countries converge on InfoComm as an annual pilgrimage in the search for the latest and greatest gear the AV industry has to offer.”
And offer it does! More than 800 exhibitors fill the huge hall with plenty of new technology.
“We’re looking at trends most of the time; at smarter ways of doing things and making sure the gear that we offer our clients makes their events the best they can be,” he says.
“This year’s hot items were HD projection systems and the digital signal gear that makes that possible. Other items we see fitting into our business include new more reliable radio mic technology from Shure Brothers, some great new products from Meyer Sound and new RFI (radio frequency interference) suppression technology which cuts mobile phone interference with microphones. A lot of analogue technology is on the way out. The trend to DVI and digital reticulation of audio and video is big.”
Andrew says that because Australia is no longer an isolated nation business, both locally and visiting from afar, expects world-class as the standard in their service providers.
“Being an international event services group gives us the critical mass and the perspective to be best of breed. Our people, our expertise and our vision now span the globe. We know more, do more and have much greater capacity than many of our competitors. And we continue to work hard on integrating and maximising the benefits right across the group.
“AV is all about trust. Event organisers all understand that when the CEO or the GM steps up to present it HAS to go well. Failure is not an option. And so the people you choose and the technology they use all need to be absolutely bulletproof at that moment.
“The technology is there to carry, and if possible enhance the key messaging. And so the enhancement comes from the event design and flows through to the use of the appropriate technology.
“If the event needs highly detailed graphics and HD video - make sure the vision system will give you that. If you have presenters who are in remote locations, make sure the video conferencing gives all of the audience a great experience of that presenter. If you have material with surround sound, check the capability of the PA system. But most of all deal with people you trust.”
Message on song
While Andrew says that technology is a key enabler of a great event experience it’s far from the only one.
“We discuss messaging and what event planners want their show to deliver and what they want delegates to take away. Then we look at what technology we can employ to do that most effectively. That’s where experience and expertise comes into play.
“You can get lost in how the gear works and in so doing, lose sight of what you want to achieve. More and more event organisers understand that delegate experience is a big part of what it’s all about. The best events are designed with that in mind and the choice of technology should always follow on from that.
“Having the latest new toys is great but being unable to resist showing them off, no matter what, rarely works. In fact often people notice the technology more when it doesn’t work properly. If you can’t hear well or the sightlines are poorly thought out at a show you will be unlikely to have a great time, let alone be receptive to any key messaging. At the coalface it’s the experience that counts, not what you did behind the scenes to make it happen.”
As a PCO we deal with lots of different hotels, venues and suppliers and the way we all communicate with each other strikes me as vastly inefficient.
For example, to obtain a supplier quote we prepare a written brief, usually by pulling together information from disparate sources about the event. That information is then emailed to the supplier who diligently copies, cuts and pastes or massages the information into some other format that suits their quoting mechanism. But just like Chinese whispers the end result can be different from what is expected. We then get the quote back and massage it back into EVENTS software, excel spreadsheets, project software, accounting software and word documents.
The problem gets worse down the track as we learn more about the event’s exact requirements and we issue updated information to the supplier, which is again manually transcribed into their system. Apart from inducing errors it is also time-consuming in the extreme. How many people hours are wasted in this manner?
The lack of universally acceptable standards in producing briefs, quotes and event running sheets is causing this. You would think in this technological age we could move closer to “do it once - do it right” instead of this inefficient process we have now.
Enter the attempts to introduce APEX (Accepted Practices Exchange) by the US Convention Industry Council www.conventionindustry.org - a federation of 32 organisations representing the meetings, conventions and exhibitions industries. They claim the adoption of these standards may save as much as 50 per cent of the time now wasted in duplication, not to mention the reduction in errors and misunderstandings.
The first step was to identify terminology used in the meeting and events industry. The CIC guide contains nearly 4000 commonly used terms and acronyms. For example, the word exhibition could mean a consumer exhibition (with the associated costs of ticket selling and security), a “prosumer” show (qualified consumers), a trade show (attendance by those in the trade only), conference related show (for delegates only), etc.
The word PAX is creeping into the vocabulary but does it mean paying guests, invited guests, exhibitors and their staff, associates or spouses, family and the pet dog? All of which have a different meaning to the venue that may need to know how many PAX (covers) for catering purposes, which will be different to how many PAX can safely use the venue and meet fire regulations.
At last I won’t have to explain, as I did recently to a Melbourne hotel that I would drop my port off before the meeting – their response was that the hotel did not allow BYO alcohol. Alas port (Queensland speak for luggage) is not in the CIC guide. But it did help when I was requested to provide tuxedo tables (AKA cocktail rounds) and a hurty gurdy (AKA cherry picker). Point taken?
The next step is to develop a universal briefing format called the Event Specification Guide (ESG) that provides a consistent format for planners and suppliers to share information on the details of the event. Ultimately ESG will be a stand-alone program/database that we can all use to prepare and spit out consistent briefs, quotes or event sheets. Smart software companies will then make their registration, project management, hotel management and quoting software ESG compatible to allow for seamless import and export – no more retyping and a quote in minutes.
My message is that it is time you all spent a few hours on the CIC website, download the ESG and other forms and try to implement these sooner rather than later.
Within the next few years you will be receiving ESG’s and RFP’s in APEX format and you will need to know what to do with them.
Ray Shaw is an accredited meeting manager (AMM), original author of Events software (now developed by Amlink) and an IT journalist. To contact him, email ray@im.com.au or visit www.rayshaw.com.au.
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