working smarter Barbara Palmer

They Had Us at Hello

Conference badges are getting smarter. Some of them can buy an attendee a cup of coffee or even a ride back to the hotel.

I

t used to be enough that a confer- ence badge had an attendee’s name spelled right — with bonus points

if it was in type large enough so that people didn’t have to squint to read it. Now, thanks to the development of

technology like NFC (near-field com- munication), which enables conference organizers to embed badges with tags that wirelessly transmit data, badges are becoming digital workhorses. In conjunction with readers, “smart” NFC-enabled badges can collect data about session attendance, keep track of attendee CEUs, and transfer a variety of information and content between attendees, show organizers, and exhibi- tors and sponsors. Since we last reported on NFC (see

convn.org/tap-tell), more meeting pro- fessionals have begun to think beyond metrics, using NFC to streamline func- tions such as food-and-beverage service. In April, organizers of WIMA NFC Monaco, an international conference for the NFC industry held annually at the Grimaldi Forum Monaco, used the technology to embed badges with cred- its that could be used at coffee breaks within the convention center, and with tags that allowed access to a conference luncheon. Because attendees could reg- ister for a single conference program or only for the exhibition, which did not include refreshments, the badges were a simple way to allow people registered at different levels access to luncheons and coffee breaks, said Joanna Merchie, WIMA NFC’s executive director. At the International Broadcast-

ing Convention (IBC), held at the Amsterdam RAI Exhibition and Con- vention Centre on Sept. 6–11, some of the 50,000 attendees’ badges were

36 PCMA CONVENE NOVEMBER 2012

embedded with tags that allowed access to local transit. The NFC-enabled badges were so well received that the program will be expanded to all IBC attendees in the future — eliminating the need to manually distribute thou- sands of metro passes, said Ivan Laza- rev, CEO of ITN International, which supplied technology for NFC apps at the shows in Monaco and Amsterdam. “NFC is getting to be multiuse,”

Lazarev said, “and that’s where it gets fun.” Lazarev is betting that, as useful as smart badges are, in the future digital credentialing will shift to NFC-enabled smartphones and other devices. In Monaco, for example, NFC-enabled smartphones already could download the daily conference schedule, which was updated in real time, as well as an interactive map of the exhibition floor. Attendees with NFC-enabled phones also could check in — à la Foursquare

— at several locations at the conference and exhibition, as well as at confer- ence hotels, allowing other checked-in attendees to know where they were as they moved around the conference. The application also allowed them to send notes to an electronic message wall. Bob James, ITN’s marketing direc-

tor, has estimated that it will be at least three more years until NFC-enabled phones are ubiquitous. When that happens, conference badges will go back to serving primarily as identifica- tion — but Lazarev doesn’t think they’ll go away entirely. “We’re not going to take our own eyes out of the equation,” he said. “For branding purposes, for security and identification, [badges] are incredibly apt.”

. Barbara Palmer is senior editor of Convene. PCMA.ORG BREAKOUT

Paper or Plastic? The debut of NFC-enabled paper

badges at WIMA NFC Monaco — a first for a B2B event, according to badge supplier Ivan Lazarev, of ITN International — gives conference organizers new flexibility. The paper badges can be printed twice as quickly as NFC-enabled plastic badges, Lazarev said, and aren’t as limited in size. That means badges have more room for extras such as bilingual identification of attendees and sponsorship messages. An added bonus: they’re recyclable.

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ON THE WEB For a look at the future of NFC from the point of view of consumer bank and credit cards, visit convn.org/nfc-atm.

Working Smarter is sponsored by PSAV Presentation Services, psav.com.

ILLUSTRATION BY BECI ORPIN / THE JACKY WINTER GROUP