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WHITE PAPERS TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION FOR EVENTS

Concert to conferenceWhat the meetings industry can learn from live music

August 2014

Long gone are the days when artists such as Sting or the Kinks simply performed their sets on stage; au-diences 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 expec-tation 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 en-thusiastically adopted technological innovation. Even the 87-year-old crooner Tony Bennett, who recently de-clared, “songs that are written today, most of them are terrible,” maintains a regularly updated website with links to Twitter, Google+, Facebook and YouTube. Of

INTRODUCTION

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.

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LIVE NATION ENTERTAINMENT CONCERT REVENUE

2008 USD 3.68 billion2013 USD 4.52 billion

Source: Statista.com

course, there cannot be a conference or trade show that lacks such an online presence today, but events organis-ers can still learn far more from the music business.

As the analyst Travis Reedy put it in a report for Meet-ing 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 corpo-rate 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 unedit-ed 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 speech-es 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 be-fore the event in order to attract interest from potential

attendees and build anticipatory enthusiasm in those al-ready planning to go.

The TED conferences and website are an excellent ex-ample 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, Enter-tainment and Design’, TED stretches back far enough that its first gathering in 1984 included demonstrations of the Compact Disc and the original Macintosh comput-er. In 2006 the organisers embraced the emerging tech-nology of video streaming, posting talks online via its website TED.com. According to TED’s own figures, vid-eo 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 glob-al name in thought-leadership.

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TED TALK VIDEOS

Launched June 2006

50 million views January 2009

500 million views June 2011

1 billion views November 2012

1700+ Videos available

26 million views: most popular videoSource: TED.com

TOP 5 TOURING ARTISTS BY REVENUE

1 Bon Jovi USD 205,158,370

2 Michael Jackson* USD 157,299,100

3 Pink USD 147,947,543

4 Bruce Springsteen USD 147,608,938

5 Rihanna USD 137,982,530

*Michael Jackson The Immortal World Tour, by Cirque Du Soleil

Source: Billboard magazine

VIDEO STREAMING VIA YOUTUBE

Over 6 billion Hours watched per month

Over 1 billion Unique users per month

100 hours Video uploaded every minuteSource: YouTube

EVENT ORGANISERS USING YOUTUBE

42%Source: XING Social Media and Events Report 2013

Putting a band on it: wearable technology

In 2012, the UK band Coldplay introduced a new el-ement to their touring shows – Xylobands. These ra-dio-controlled LED wristbands to be worn by con-cert-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 collaborat-ed 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 be-yond music to develop a model to be used in corporate team-building excercises – 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 pres-entation and for a party on the final evening. More re-cently, at the computer gaming industry’s Electronics Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles, companies including Microsoft and Ubisoft included similar devic-es 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 pa-per strips are rapidly being supplanted by RFID-ena-bled bands, which are able to streamline all sorts of pro-cedures. 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 map-ping 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 mon-itoring 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.

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 actual-ly 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 Lat-in 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, ap-pearing to give a presentation.

Both of the above could feed into what 60 percent of re-spondents 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 dif-ferent places, but still participate in the same event, has in-creased 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 advance that may not have quite reached the concert arena yet, but is sure to do so soon, will be the use of augmented reality glasses such as Google Glass, which will allow the music fan to do everything from focussing on a particular singer on stage in real-time, to zeroing in on a particular instrument, learning of its history and how long that player has been using it and why, and even ordering one 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 de-gree of information of their choice, showing comments by

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2014 8 million2015 23 million2017 45 million

2014 19 million

2018 112 million

17 million Forecast 2014 sales of all wearable bands, including fitness devices

SMART WEARABLE BAND SHIPMENTS (FORECAST)

WEARABLE TECH SHIPMENTS (FORECAST)

Source: Canalys

Source: IDC

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 prompt-ing notes and real-time feedback within their field of vi-sion, without referring to a screen.

Let it go: putting the audience in control

In August 2013, the actor Kevin Spacey delivered the James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture at the Edinburgh Television Festival. “The audience wants the control,” he said. “Give people what they want, when they want it, in the form they want it in, and they’ll more likely pay for it.” He was talking about the success of the Netflix model of television, but it is a commercial rule the music business has already taken on board.

From audiences texting to choose the set list during a con-cert, to expecting to be able to watch a live event at another place or at a different time – ‘if you can’t be there, be here’, as Sony markets its live-screening cinema events – 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.

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IN THE NEAR FUTURE EVENT ORGANISERS EXPECT

66% Increased attendance for virtual events

53% Increased attendance for live events

51%

Source: MPI Meetings Outlook, Spring 2014

Already use virtual or hybrid technologies to enhance meetings