Event Industry News: One of the perks of my job is to travel frequently around Europe and further afield, mainly visiting clients and exploring cities. Despite all the excitement a trade show can bring, there is always one little question that troubles me: how easy will it be for me to orientate myself on the ground and make the most of my visit?
2 comments:
I have good feelings and "meh" feelings about this idea. The proposal of a 3D map for large events is, of course, huge, and I think would do a great deal to help with one of the most difficult parts of launching a large event like a trade show: communication with those who attend the event. My most recent encounter when this would have been very helpful was at the Pittsburgh Irish Festival. It was back in September and a VERY cool event, but it was extremely difficult to tell from the pamphlets we were given (part because of their simplicity/lack of information and part because it was raining and part because there weren't even enough of them) where certain bands were performing, who was signing CDs where, where exactly the food was, and that there was actually a whole other area of tents with different activities. I think for clarity's sake, as well as a guarantee that everyone knows where everything is/what is going on, a mobile program is a great idea. I especially like the idea of a notification that goes off when a band is about to start performing, or if there's a special food sale, or something like those things, taking you to the place where it is happening. The part where I feel sort of "meh" about it, is I can picture hundreds of people looking at their phones instead of exploring for themselves. While it was a little frustrating that we almost missed a performance we came to see after not being able to find it, we had such a fun time exploring the place and getting excited to find new things. No one there was on their phones. It was a real, bustling community of people excited to find things together and point new places out to each other. Half the things we saw and did were because other people sent us there, and we showed other people cool things too. I'm not saying it would be a bad thing to have an app like this, I think it would make the management of the event much easier. But in other ways, I really love the rainsoaked map I have from my weekend at the Irish Festival, and the people I met there I think I might not have if we'd been on our phones.
While I appreciate the overall excitement in this post, I don't really see what is so revolutionary about what is going on here. If your trade show provides you with a map, you'll know how to get around. While a 3D interpretation is nice, possibly slightly more easy to understand, etc, it just doesn't seem all that necessary for the work that would have to go into creating one. Not to mention the fact that I don't really see the usefulness to the level that the author was talking about. Yes, you probably don't really know the venue that well unless you literally picked out the layout of the booths. But from this author's perspective, it seemed like their job involved arriving and attending the trade show after things had already been set up. How long can it really take to "orient" yourself when the booths are already set up for you to walk through?
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