Technology providers galore offer solutions that aid in attendee tracking, audience response, and lead management during events. For quite some time, many different devices have allowed us to press a button in lieu of a business card exchange. But many do not transmit much more than contact information about the individuals involved in that exchange.

Oftentimes, after returning from meeting dozens or hundreds of new people in a whirlwind few days at an event, names lose familiarity, faces become blurry, and details of conversations get lost.

Contact information alone cannot always supply instant recall, and printed brochures cannot always convey why it was one “clicked” with a potential business partner. Sometimes, participants need more than a quickly jotted note or a follow-up URL to maximize new connections.

Who: BusyEvent
What: Event Bookmarking and BeLinker technology.
Where: www.busyevent.com

“What is the Event Bookmarking platform?” says David Schenberg, CEO of BusyEvent, who took time out to introduce me to the concept. “It's essentially a three-legged stool. There is the audience response polling and surveying capabilities… there is the expo lead management aspects… and there is the more modern connectivity to social networking. Event Bookmarking was designed to condense all three of those requirements for a typical show into one system and one piece of hardware, called the BeLinker.”

The BeLinker is a small, wearable device that ties it all together, integrating real-life encounters and experiences with web-based capabilities to provide an ongoing, updated repository of event-related data and content for each participant. Supported by wireless infrastructure and resembling a mini TV remote control, the BeLinker allows event participants to store data online, within their own personalized webpages, in real time.

By entering pre-programmed codes into their BeLinker devices, participants essentially upload contacts and content into their “PURL” (personal URL) pages, and these pages act as individual, online storage units for any information people might want to refer to later. When participants want to retrieve that information, they just log in to their PURL pages, where all their desired content is ready and waiting to be viewed or downloaded.

“One of the supreme requests we've heard for years is ‘I don't want all this paper and notes and whatever; I want to just very quickly get to what I want to get to,’” Schenberg says. “More importantly, the event producer wants reporting to show the kinds of connections that were made at the show. That's not something you can tell when people are handing bits of paper around. We're not really looking to change the way people meet at an event; we're not even looking to augment the fact that that occurs or when it occurs. All we're looking to do is make it easier.”

Getting Started

Like many other event technologies that contain a social networking aspect, Event Bookmarking begins before participants arrive onsite. With Event Bookmarking, when individuals enter their registration information, that information is used to generate unique PURL pages for each person. Participants then receive email notifications that invite them to log in and customize their pages.

“If they wanted to put in the link to their Facebook or their LinkedIn or their corporate website, they can fill in a couple of fields, and the system pretty much takes care of the rest,” Schenberg says.

By customizing PURL pages prior to the event, participants can view each other’s profiles, make connections via social networking platforms, and get to know one another before they ever meet face to face. Attendees can see who else is attending, preview vendor products, download speaker materials, or visit company websites and online resources.

“There are technologies currently available that focus strictly on tagging and connecting and linking and helping aim you at who you should be meeting with when you come to an event,” Schenberg says. “We're doing a fair amount of what those technologies can do in terms of helping people get ready to get connected. [Our] goal is, if I did meet 20 or 30 people, then I don't have a stack of business cards I need to tend to when I get back from the show.”

Experiencing Event Bookmarking

On event day, when participants arrive at registration, they receive name badges, just like any other event. With Event Bookmarking, each badge displays a unique identifying number for each participant.

“The person comes up [and gets their badge],” Schenberg says. “The person who is assembling that for them will pluck one of our devices out of a box. They'll key in the number from the front of that person's badge, and their badge and their device are now linked together for the course of the event.”

Once an individual has his or her BeLinker device in hand, he or she can quickly and easily obtain information about other participants. By pressing the “smiley face” button and entering an individual’s badge number, a participant instantaneously transmits that individual’s information into his or her PURL page.

“I can poke in your five-digit code into my device, and that would be like you handing me your business card,” Schenberg explains. “If there's a set of tables with products, any number of people can walk up to those tables, and, rather than dropping a card in a bowl or getting cards scanned, they're actually expressing specific interest in products or people or materials, which are getting added to their PURL page in real time.”

A participant can keep track of people he or she meets, make conversation notes, rate contacts on a star system, send private messages to others, or share contact information with outside team members, all from within the PURL page. “Unlinking” capabilities allow participants to remove people with whom they do not wish to interact, so no one has to receive unwanted information or solicitation as a result of using the system.

Vendors can view live reports that show how many clicks their products or services have received, or they can view clicks by person to identify individuals who, through their activity within the system, have demonstrated interest. This allows vendors to sort out qualified leads based on participants’ real-time interaction with their offerings.

Presenters can view a list of attendees as they enter the room and check in by entering the session ID number into their BeLinkers. Presenters can also customize their sessions through their PURL pages by creating polls or surveys that can be displayed in real time, and attendees can participate live by responding via their BeLinker devices. The system’s ease of use even allows presenters to create such interactive elements on the fly, while a session is in progress. Before, during, or after the session, attendees can access speaker information, session handouts, or additional materials from the presenter’s PURL page.

“[Typically], when you get to the end of a presentation, the speaker says, ‘If you want a copy of my PowerPoint, come up to the front and give me your card, and I'll email it to you,’” Schenberg says. “We're doing away with that. Take out your device, hit the session [number], and send. Great, you're all checked in. There's nobody having to stand at the doorway to scan in attendance to know who was there.”

In addition, attendee evaluations of sessions can also be facilitated through the Event Bookmarking platform, so event organizers and stakeholders can view real-time reports regarding attendee reactions to topics and presenters.

“If the results were horrible, the producer can do something about those survey results before that person goes on stage [again],” Schenberg says. “The results of those kinds of surveys are really useful.”

Moving Forward

In the near future, the BeLinker device will not be a required element of the Event Bookmarking platform. Developers are currently working to roll out new capabilities that will allow participants to access their PURL pages and interact with the system from their mobile phones. A beta test of these functions will begin this month.

“We've developed the software separate from the input device,” Schenberg says. “We recognize that technology is going to continue to evolve what that input device of choice might be. The data, and the collection of that data, and the presentation and reporting of that data, and, eventually the monetization of that data… really, that's the gold.”

Costs for integrating the Event Bookmarking platform depend upon the size of the event and include online and onsite training, as well as onsite staff support. A selection of add-on options is also available.

“In the case of an event for 300 people, it will push toward $30 per attendee to get all of the benefits,” Schenberg says. “As you approach up to 5,000 people, the price drops down to around $17 per attendee and includes up to three staff members to support an event.”

Overall, I have yet to see a similar solution with the versatility of the Event Bookmarking platform. The ability for attendees, vendors, presenters, organizers, and other stakeholders to all control and interact with so many different aspects of the event experience from the same, simple little remote control provides a powerful “wow” factor. Event organizers who want to send participants home with more than a list of names or a stack of business cards might find that the Event Bookmarking option delivers a lot more for a lot less than other providers.

Serenity J. Knutson is the Editor in Chief of PlannerWire.com, the News, Information and Community website for meeting and event planners. Contact her at Serenity@PlannerWire.com.

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