Place one in the center of your booth. Hire 2-4 drummers to sit there with laptops or iPhones, appearing to check email. Then, have them spontaneously start a beat together. Call it the “Rhythm of the (fill in your industry or segment here).” Then have them stop and return to email as if nothing happened. Reminds me of dinner at my house, except we call it “fidgeting.”
For as long as I have been involved with events, there have been requests to emulate an effect seen in a movie, TV show, or advertisement in front of a real live audience. In almost all cases, the original effect was carefully crafted using all sorts of technological slight-of-hand. Computer animation, compositing, modeling, airbrushing, retouching, motion tracking, and many other techniques were used to create an otherwise impossible or wildly impractical scenario (note the use of the words “impossible” and “impractical”.) The creators of these visual effects could also rely on limited screen size, two-dimensionality, and a limited viewing angle within which to fool their audiences. It’s a lot easier to make a plane disappear on a 27″ color TV than in front of 15,000 people.
For one large touring show, I recreated visual effects from Star Wars - huge laser gun and light saber battles complete with high power lasers, fire, explosions, death, and destruction. The audience was on three sides and numbered about 65,000 people. This was the impossible made real before their eyes. At another event, we created an illusion that an executive was firing a laser beam from his finger, sparking a small explosion overhead and triggering a massive curtain drop to reveal a new automobile. He did this next to a robot that looked a lot like Number 5 in the movie Short Circuit, and this whole gag was based on the movie. And for a trade show exhibit our Engineering VEEP created an effect from the movie Videodrome where a face on a video screen literally extruded out from the screen in 3D. No glasses required- the screen was really stretching into the shape of a face!
One of the most common requests I have received is the “R2-D2 Princess Leia hologram” effect from Star Wars episode 4 (the first one, circa 1977). Specifically, they want a 3D animated visual, in mid-air, with no need for special glasses. People have tried everything - smoke, mirrors, mist, spinning helical things, lenticular 3D TV’s, and all sorts of variations, with moderate success.
The latest example of “I want that in my show” is the “Minority Report” effect. In the movie, Tom Cruise’s character manipulates images of the not-too-distant future on a transparent screen simply by waving his hands in mid air. Why people want to replicate this is frankly beyond me - I think it’s cool, but how many people even saw the movie? And how many people have performed tasks that require holding their arms up for any length of time? There are probably better ways to manipulate data and illustrate stories. Despite the aerobic silliness of all this arm waving, the allure of manipulating data with your bare hands makes perfects sense - even if the movie reference is a bit flawed. This is the principle behind the iPhone, iTouch, and countless copycats about the flood the mobile device market. It is also the principle behind which Microsoft has developed their Surface product. Bill Gates even used Surface to control part of his final CES keynote two months ago. Recently, CNN has been making headlines for it’s unique use of Perceptive Pixel’s multitouch display screen during their primary election coverage. And these high-profile demonstrations are why the requests for multitouch presentations and speaker support have been picking up briskly.
The good news is there are a bunch of ways to create this effect on stage at a live event. The bad news is it doesn’t come cheap. If you recall the start of this post, I mentioned the words “impossible” and “impractical”. This is a good example of an effect that made sense in the budgetary context of a blockbuster movie and the top news studio in the world, but may not make sense for a sales meeting or user conference or trade show booth. But the necessary technology exists today. On the high-end, you can buy the system CNN is using for $100,000 through Neiman-Marcus. More reasonably, Gesturetek and Reactrix offer rental systems that let you control software using mid-air gestures or multi-touch input like Microsoft Surface. You may be able to score an actual Surface device soon, too. And at the low end, some enterprising geeks have made their own gesture-based systems using Nintendo Wiimotes.
One thing to keep in mind: With the exception of the Perceptive Pixel system, which comes with some software development, all of these solutions require custom software. This is where the rubber meets the road. It’s the software that creates the experience - not the screen or the sensor. To turn a cool piece of multi-touch or gesture-based technology into a stage presentation that effectively tells a story is not as easy as it sounds. Thinking of how much work goes into simplifying the life of a typical presenter, it may not be in their best interest to have to choreograph a story with their hands in real time. It looks super-simple in a TV commercial after careful planning, 50 takes, and a lot of post production compositing (Think: UPS Whiteboard ad), but a live keynote is a whole different animal.
I would say this technology makes sense for a high tech event with a presenter dedicated to the planning and execution of a complex hands-on presentation, or a trade show exhibit stage presentation that can be carefully rehearsed and repeated frequently. For everyone else, you’re probably better off “faking it” with brief flourishes of clever stagecraft. As multi-touch starts to take hold in every day computing, this sort of presentation style may become easier to adopt.
I suppose I have two messages in this post: Stagecraft, like TV and film, can create the illusion of the impossible. If you really want it, we’ll make it happen. But, if something had to be “faked” in order to shoot a film because shooting the real deal would have been impossible or impractical, then reproducing that effect in front of a real live audience will be no less impossible or impractical. At least until a decade or two later when someone actually invents the thing.
An interview-style keynote at the SXSW (South by Southwest) tech conference featuring Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg with Business Week journalist Sarah Lacy got rather out of hand this week. Why? For several interesting reasons. First and foremost, the content was poorly prepared - neither the guest nor the interviewer had a clear sense of what the keynote would discuss and actually ran out of stuff to talk about. Also, according to some who were there, Lacy, having written a book about this guy, seemed to spend a disproportionate amount of time talking about herself and her personal experiences with the one she calls “Zuck.”
But what’s really interesting is what happened when the crowd sensed that they weren’t going to get what they came for. They took over. Fueled by Twitter, the mobile phone networked community of people constantly twittering (text messaging meets a chat room) about what they’re doing at any given time, the crowd started to build up a hearty amount of disdain over the content on stage. Soon all of Twitter was dominated with conversations about this train wreck of an interview. Then, the worst of social media took over - the crowd simply started shouting out questions and took over the interview. It finally devolved into an unconference. Twitter and unconferences - two very south-by-southwest regional phenomena.
What made a crowd of people suddenly feel they had the right to hijack the conference? Perhaps it was mob mentality. Perhaps it was social media and user-generated content spilling over into the real time real world. Perhaps the same internal controls that prevent most people from acting out violent video games don’t apply to being rude and disruptive at a conference?
And perhaps this one of many disruptive events to come that will remind us that, increasingly, the audience wants to be part of the conversation and if don’t give them a voice they may raise their own.
Yesterday Apple held a town hall press conference to announce the release of their software development kit (SDK) that provides third party developers the opportunity to create and publish their own applications for the iPhone and iTouch devices. This conference turned out to be another major game-changer in the mobile phone industry and there were lots of big surprises. Since many of these announcements will greatly affect the business community, especially sales and marketing professionals, I felt it was worth reviewing the highlights for our readers.
At the top of the conference Steve Jobs announced enterprise support for the iPhone, enabling synchronization between iPhones and Microsoft Exchange. In fact, they appear to have integrated with Exchange more directly and fluidly than any other smart phone platform. Email, contacts, tasks, calendar will be very easy to handle on your iPhone, and all of the data can be remotely wiped for security protection. This makes the iPhone, with all of it’s multimedia presentation capabilities and it’s chic design prestige arguably the most desirable and most productive mobile work tool that you can fit in your shirt pocket.
And for sales professionals it gets even better: They demonstrated a Salesforce.com SFA application for iPhone. It apparently also links to the phone’s GPS-like mapping capabilities.
What exactly is the SDK? The SDK is a set of tools that allows developers to make applications for the iPhone. It costs $99 and if the examples in the press conference were any indicator, then they have made developing on this platform crazy simple. They demonstrated examples of what could be done in 2 hours, 2 days, and 2 weeks. None of the examples were ready-to-market apps, but they showed two very important things: First, the platform is powerful - more powerful than developers anticipated. It seemed to have no trouble rendering 3D games and animations. Second, the development kit is robust, making it possible to make the iPhone do just about anything.
Making it easy to develop applications is only part of their strategy. They also made it easy to publish those applications, easy to make money with them, and they even made it possible to obtain funding for their development. A new feature called the App Store allows iPhone users to download applications through their phone directly over wireless or sideways through iTunes. They share revenue with developers 70/30 - 30% goes to Apple and there are no additional fees. Developers set their own prices including, if they want, free, and if they choose to distribute free software, Apple won’t charge them or the end user a dime. What was not clear is what the developer will have to go through to get their content certified and on the store for users to download. Many people will be critical of this distribution method because it is far less open than the Windows Mobile platform which allows you to download applications from any mobile website. This is a mixed blessing - while Apple can control the applications this way, keeping buggy and malicious code from their platform, end users really want more control over where and how they buy content and applications for computing platforms. Regardless, they have made developing for the platform even more appealing by announcing a $100 million developer fund that should stimulate the creation of a good amount of quality software for the platform.
It didn’t take long for other software announcements for the iPhone to make waves, such as this one from Epocrates that provides doctors ready access to drug information.
Apple is clearly betting that mobiles phones represent the next generation computing platform (a common belief) and they want to own it. Decades ago computers evolved from room-filling monstrosities into desktop personal computers and for around 25 years we have watched them infiltrate every desk and home in the industrialized world. Apple may have had a chance to own that massive market 25 years ago, but many believe they handed it to Microsoft. Now Apple has stepped in with an absolutely stunning solution to the smart phone space. If they are correct, and if mobile phones are, in fact, the next mass market computing platform, then we may see their technology trickle down to the average consumer, much the way PC’s started in business and education and gradually made their way into homes. Then we, as marketers, will have a consistent small screen to work with instead of the wildly fragmented and closed systems currently offered to consumers through carriers like Verizon Wireless.
When you look at these announcements and compare them to their competition, they have suddenly made most of the major smartphone players irrelevant including Microsoft who watched their Windows Mobile platform drop behind the iPhone in the US market. Fake Steve Jobs said it well when he basically ranted that this announcement has killed, or re-killed, the rest of the smartphone players. While I disagree that this has killed Nokia, the rest should consider new day jobs. Seriously - who wants Windows Mobile now?
Is it enough for me to put up with the questionable AT&T network and the lousy track record they have for customer service dating back to Cellular One? No… But when the new iPhone comes out in the June time frame with 3G network support (fast data) and more storage space (32GB), then I may be sold, price depending. I fear the price will be astronomical. For the record - I still think the iPhone needs a keyboard like almost every other smart phone in the world including the probably-too-late Sony Xperia. It also needs more memory, a memory expansion slot, voice dialing, and 3G support. Let’s see how many of these things Apple addresses in June. I can live without physical buttons if they add decent voice control - an area into which Microsoft is clearly investing heavily. Sigh… I guess I have to admit that I really really really want one of these now.
Motion Computing, maker of the impressive C5 medical tablet computer, has released a new rugged mobile tablet PC, the F5, an impressive field sales device. We have been fans of tablet computers for field sales and exhibit applications for many years. We find them to be excellent for one-to-one or one-to-few presentations and they make great tools to put in the hands of customers for impromptu interactive experiences.
The F5 is even better than your typical tablet because it was designed with this application in mind. For starters, they ruggedized it and made it fairly light (actually, it weights the same as the MacBook Air.) They added a handle to make it easier to carry and to hold. And they added extra features such as wireless internet connectivity, a camera, RFID and barcode readers, speech recognition, and even theft prevention to make it an outstanding device for the field.
Some applications for this are somewhat obvious: field presentations, data gathering, site surveys, and real time estimates with access to full CRM data. But I also see this as a great exhibit gadget.
Let’s imagine that you have a large trade show exhibit with many product groups. You can hand one of these devices to everyone who registers at the reception desk. They bring it with them as they tour the booth. After filling out some basic information, the device plots a tour through the booth and guides the visitor along. As they tour the booth, the tablet senses RFID tags and displays information about nearby products and how they relate to the specific needs of the visitor, based on the information they provided. Interactive activities may include video demos, 3D pen-based walk-through experiences of products or solutions, games, scavenger hunts, and augmented reality visuals (more on that on one of my next posts). At any point the visitor can opt to have product information sent to their office email or downloaded to a memory stick on their way out. The custom guided tour would provide great value to the visitor by tailoring the presentations to meet their needs, while providing tremendous measurement data for the exhibitor. Also, exhibitors may gather feedback and even content from visitors such as comments, ratings, photos, and videos, then share them on the show floor and online.
I will be writing more about this device as soon as we put it through its paces. In the meantime, you can get a chuckle at Engadget, where they compare the handle-held device to that other bit of hardware brilliance, the infamous Speak N’ Spell.
(2 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5)
Loading ...
(3 votes, average: 3.67 out of 5)
