Article courtesy of Dubai World Trade Centre (DWTC)
When it comes to using clever technology to create unforgettable live experiences, the music industry has long been at the cutting edge. In many practical aspects, experiments that work for concerts promoters can add value to events of all descriptions.
Long gone are the days when artists such as Sting or The Kinks simply performed their sets on stage; audiences today expect live music to be an experience for all their senses.
Since the 1970s, innovators such as Jean Michel Jarre have been showing how a concert could be much more than a musical performance, with his laser spectaculars lighting up skylines of major cities around the world.
What was innovation becomes expectation and the pressure to embrace change has grown more serious. Headlines querying whether technology could keep the music business alive, or was the end of the world as we know it, have been commonplace for at least the last decade.
But, while the record industry bends under the weight of digital downloads, performers of all stripes have enthusiastically adopted technological innovation. Even the 87-year-old crooner Tony Bennett, who recently declared: “songs that are written today, most of them are terrible,” maintains a regularly updated website with links to Twitter, Google+, Facebook and YouTube.
Of course, there cannot be a conference or trade show that lacks such an online presence today, but event organisers can still learn much more from the music business.
As the analyst Travis Reedy put it in a report for Meeting Professionals International (MPI): “Technology considered cutting-edge for corporate events has often been considered commonplace on the concert circuit for some time. Tours by popular artists and musicians are the proving grounds for testing and deploying emerging technologies that have broad applications to the corporate event world.” Many of these are easily transferrable.
Share the experience: downloads and streaming
Earlier this year, Bruce Springsteen — who 30 years ago was the first performer to release an album on Compact Disc in the United States — announced that fans would be able to download videos of his concerts within two to three days afterwards, offering raw and mostly unedited footage by an artist who has been very conservative about what he has released in terms of live material.
For musicians, giving fans free digital content reflects a seismic shift in their business model. Whereas once a concert tour would promote an album release, today concerts are a revenue growth area while record sales are in decline. By giving away recorded material for free, musicians are promoting their brands as live performers. Industry magazine Billboard ranked Springsteen as the fourth most successful touring artist of 2013 in terms of concert revenue.
This model has clear applications for non-musical events. Just as fans appreciate free concert videos, being able to download recordings of discussions and speeches at conferences offers an obvious benefit to attendees.
This applies to those who may have missed the relevant events, and to those who wish to revisit them and draw on them in the future. In the case of annual conferences, as full an archive as is desired can be posted online before the event in order to attract interest from potential attendees and build anticipatory enthusiasm in those already planning to go.
The TED conferences and website are an excellent example of free content distribution, and provide a model for using digital media to build a powerful live events brand. Originally a forum to discuss ‘Technology, Entertainment and Design’, TED stretches back far enough that its first gathering in 1984 included demonstrations of the Compact Disc and the original Macintosh computer.
In 2006 the organisers embraced the emerging technology of video streaming, posting talks online via its website TED.com.
According to TED’s own figures, video viewings crossed the 50 million mark early in 2009, passed 500 million in mid-2011, and hit one billion in November, 2012. By successfully harnessing the power of the internet, and being willing to share content, what had been a niche conference became a well-known global name in thought-leadership.
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Putting a band on it: wearable technology
In 2012, the UK band Coldplay introduced a new element to their touring shows — Xylobands. These radio-controlled LED wristbands to be worn by concert-goers added such a compelling visual element to their performances that the New Musical Express called them “the best thing anyone has come up with in the context of stadium gigs.” The devices have caught on with other performers, including Jay Z, who collaborated with UAE telecoms company du to feature them in his 2013 Abu Dhabi show.
While filling a room with an array of glowing lights emanating from attendees’ persons may not appear to have immediate practical relevance for a conference or trade show, Xyloband has in fact already moved beyond music to develop a model to be used in corporate team-building exercises – with direct relevance to the incentives sector – and other smaller events.
The firm’s technology was a feature of Cisco Live London last year, where the bands were given out during a keynote presentation and for a party on the final evening. More recently, at the computer gaming industry’s Electronics Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles, companies including Microsoft and Ubisoft included similar devices in their corporate events.
Of more immediate use is the latest version of the wristbands used by music festivals as a way of controlling access to and within their venue. Humble plastic or paper strips are rapidly being supplanted by RFID-enabled bands, which are able to streamline all sorts of procedures.
As well as making entry to a venue faster and more secure, they can be loaded with credit to be used at F&B outlets throughout the venue, programmed to be hotel keys and to provide access to car parking, and be further personalised to include age verification and VIP access clearance. All of which reduces transition friction and the need to have an array of separate passes, cards, and other forms of identification.
Beyond access and payments, ‘smartbands’ provide a host of real-time reporting data, such as links to mapping software to improve venue management and help attendees navigate the site.
They can also integrate with users’ social media profiles to promote an event to their online contacts, and help automate customer profiling that would once have relied on questionnaires, opening up new opportunities for relationship management and targeted marketing campaigns.
There is currently a new wave of ever-smarter devices flooding onto the market, partly driven by fitness monitoring gadgets, which will push the boundaries further in the very near future. However, wearable tech can be difficult to retrieve and reuse — an important factor when cost is an issue — although the technology can be incorporated into, for example, visitor lanyards.
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Virtual meets reality: the hybrid event
In April 2012 a familiar, yet surprising, figure appeared on stage during a concert by Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg — Tupac Shakur. The late rapper was, naturally, not actually there in person, but the hologram of him was so lifelike that many fans expressed amazement at the spectacle.
In another experiment with visual experience, the Latin American leg of U2’s Vertigo tour was recorded in 3D as long ago as 2006, and later given a limited release in American cinemas. The first example may be of limited application — although rather than playing a video of someone speaking at a conference, there would be a real ‘wow’ factor to having a hologram of, say, Steve Jobs, appearing to give a presentation.
Both of the above could feed into what 60 percent of respondents in an MPI survey said they would recommend — virtual or ‘hybrid’ meetings and conferences.
While the capability for groups of people or individuals to be in different places, but still participate in the same event, has increased enormously in recent years, the more realistic, and the less like a Skype call, we can make that participation, the more effective it will be.
Taking the next step forward to 3D simulcasting would provide an extraordinary level of interpersonal experience and help any hybrid conference stand out. As with so many things, what was a short time ago extremely expensive is now being made affordable by the escalating power of digital production equipment.
Another advancement that may not have quite reached the concert arena yet will be the use of augmented reality glasses such as Google Glass, which will allow the music fan to do everything from zeroing in on a particular band member to ordering merchandise during the concert and picking it up from an onsite store on the way out.
In an exhibition or trade show setting, such glasses could give visitors access to an unlimited degree of information of their choice, showing comments by previous attendees, announcing what is coming up when it enters the field of vision, and, just as at concerts, allowing purchasing choices. They could also give speakers prompting notes and real-time feedback within their field of vision, without referring to a screen.
Let it go: put the audience in control
From audiences texting to choose the set list during a concert to expecting to be able to watch a live event at another place or time, the lesson for organisers of conferences, exhibitions and trade shows is that attendees will appreciate their wishes being met and their experience being made as smooth as possible, rather than their having to bend to inflexible timetables, endless physical materials and passes, and inconveniently located outlets. The technology exists, it only needs to be used to raise events of all types to new levels of excellence.
