I heard today that nTag emerged out of its December 2008 bankruptcy in the arms of Alliance Tech. While I admired the nTag technology and founders, I was never fully convinced of its value relative to some of the pricy products and services offered. In general, I think that Social Networking as applied to face-to-face meetings is in its infancy, and we are seeing some products over-priced and some over-hyped. But in the long run I think that someone like Alliance Tech is going to hit the right value proposition and finally put Social Networking into the professional event planners' standard toolkit, along with online registration, Web sites, site selection, and email marketing.
Press Release
AUSTIN, Texas – March 23, 2009 – Alliance Tech http://www.alliancetech.com/, the leader in RFID enabled event measurement, announced today the company has acquired the technology and assets of nTAG, a pioneer in face-to-face social networking technology and the creator of the world’s first interactive name badge.
The acquisition of nTag’s technology further strengthens Alliance Tech’s position as the leader in event marketing intelligence, and will add significant value to the company’s overall portfolio of offerings.
“We are excited to offer our clients more value by incorporating the nTAG solution,” states Art Borrego, CEO of Alliance Tech. “nTAG’s on-site social networking system, combined with Alliance Tech’s intelligent event solutions—lead management, surveys, RFID attendee reporting and marketing business intelligence—provides event planners with the industry’s most comprehensive suite of technology to measure events in real time, ensure meeting objectives are achieved and increase return on investment.”
A cornerstone feature of nTAG’s solution is real-time monitoring that provides event directors with dashboard views on session, exhibitor, and event evaluation, interaction levels among attendees, as well as networking connections shared between attendees. Evaluating these activities allows planners to make necessary adjustments onsite and for future events. Additionally, conference managers are able to effectively engage and communicate with attendees, as well as have the ability to view information on what attendees are doing during the conference.
Event attendees who use the wearable technology benefit from targeted networking opportunities via networking contests, real-time audience feedback and increased satisfaction from better connections. The nTAG technology has been used at events for IBM, Procter and Gamble, Alcatel-Lucent, WellPoint, MasterCard, General Electric, Freescale Semiconductor, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pfizer, and many others.
Mike Taylor, a former Vice President of Sales at nTAG, now working at Alliance Tech states, “nTAG’s solutions are complementary to Alliance Tech’s current offerings which focus on marketing intelligence for events. nTAG clients will be able to seamlessly transition to Alliance Tech for implementation at their future conferences.”
Alliance Tech will assume nTAG’s assets, and will retain key staff to ensure a smooth transition and consistent implementation of each solution. nTAG is now on solid financial ground, as Alliance Tech is rated 1A1 which is the best credit rating of Dunn & Bradstreet’s business appraisal system.
For more news about Alliance Tech visit: http://www.alliancetech.com/
About Alliance Tech
Alliance Tech enables companies to increase their return on investment (ROI) of tradeshows, conferences and events through an industry leading marketing intelligence platform. Alliance Tech is the leader in intelligent events that utilize radio frequency identification (RFID) to track attendee interests and preferences. Alliance Tech solutions include RFID attendee reporting, lead management, surveys and social networking. Alliance Tech is a two time winner of Corporate Event Marketing Association’s (CEMA) technology shootout award, and the 2008 Top Technology Supplier by Meeting Tech Online. To learn more, visit http://www.alliancetech.com/.
Contact: Alliance Tech
Allyson Albertson, 512.320-5774
aalbertson@alliancetech.com
Showing posts with label On-Site. Show all posts
Showing posts with label On-Site. Show all posts
Monday, March 23, 2009
Monday, April 30, 2007
Neat Technology
I've spent a few hours recently with Maged Mohamed, CEO of TechNeat. They created an interesting twist on the barcode / mag stripe / RFID badge readers that are common in trade shows and larger events. TechNeat builds their products on top of the Blackberry wireless platform, so data captured on-site at an event is available online immediately. Compare that to the normal method of capturing data on a local network or hand-held device (or on paper, heaven forbid!) and you discover many advantages and some potential new applications.
A Brief Background on Badge Readers
If you've attended a trade show in the past 20 years, then you are familiar with badge readers. Attendees get a name badge printed with their name and a bar code, magnetic stripe, or (more recently) RFID chip. They walk around the show, look at exhibits, and if they find a product of interest then a sales rep scans their name badge with a hand-held or table-top device. Each scan tells the exhibiting company who you are, and after the show the exhibitors either print out your information or take a memory card to the services counter in order to download the data in an electronic format.
Due to technology limitations, a name badge that is 3-4 inches wide can store about 20 characters with "1D" (one dimension) bar codes, about 225 characters (3 tracks with 76 characters each) with a magnetic stripe, 12 characters in an RFID chip, and practically any amount of data in a "2D" (two dimension) bar code (although the bar code will increase in size with the amount of data printed). Thus, except for with 2D bar codes, name badges usually only store a unique identifier for each person, and the full contact information is stored in a registration database with a link to that unique ID.
TechNeat Products
TechNeat supports all of these badge formats, but their products are scanners built upon the same wireless Blackberry devices that currently addict so many techies. When an exhibitor scans your badge at a show, your unique Id or contact information is immediately and securely transmitted via the Blackberry's wireless carrier to TechNeat's Internet servers. There, they record the details of the interaction (date-time, scanner id, etc.) and link the registrant's unique ID to their full contact information. Thus employees who are not at the show can sit at their browser anywhere (with an Internet connection) and watch the leads come in from their colleagues who are exhibiting. When the show ends, the exhibitors simply drop off their scanners and head home, which sure beats standing in line for an hour waiting to pick up a 3.5-inch floppy disk.
Integration Opportunities
While I'm a fan of Techneat, I don't get paid to sell their products, and so the chance to interact with their systems (and customers!) is most exciting to me. For example, registration workers at the front desk in a location without ethernet or Wifi Internet access could welcome attendees, scan their badge, and instantly transmit a signal to our registration database that the attendee has checked in for the show.
Or, if you need to know who is going to each of your sessions at a large event, then you can put TechNeat's RFID scanners or floor-mounted bar code readers at the doors to your meeting rooms. As attendees walk through the door, the scanner reads their registration ID and transmits it and the scanner's ID to their online database. By connecting a scanner ID to a specific room and the registration ID to a person, we can record who went to each session and when they entered and left the session.
Future Potential
I love working with companies, like TechNeat, who find better ways to collect information at an event while we work on producing better ways to organize and manage that information before, during, and after the event.
A Brief Background on Badge Readers
If you've attended a trade show in the past 20 years, then you are familiar with badge readers. Attendees get a name badge printed with their name and a bar code, magnetic stripe, or (more recently) RFID chip. They walk around the show, look at exhibits, and if they find a product of interest then a sales rep scans their name badge with a hand-held or table-top device. Each scan tells the exhibiting company who you are, and after the show the exhibitors either print out your information or take a memory card to the services counter in order to download the data in an electronic format.
Due to technology limitations, a name badge that is 3-4 inches wide can store about 20 characters with "1D" (one dimension) bar codes, about 225 characters (3 tracks with 76 characters each) with a magnetic stripe, 12 characters in an RFID chip, and practically any amount of data in a "2D" (two dimension) bar code (although the bar code will increase in size with the amount of data printed). Thus, except for with 2D bar codes, name badges usually only store a unique identifier for each person, and the full contact information is stored in a registration database with a link to that unique ID.
TechNeat Products
TechNeat supports all of these badge formats, but their products are scanners built upon the same wireless Blackberry devices that currently addict so many techies. When an exhibitor scans your badge at a show, your unique Id or contact information is immediately and securely transmitted via the Blackberry's wireless carrier to TechNeat's Internet servers. There, they record the details of the interaction (date-time, scanner id, etc.) and link the registrant's unique ID to their full contact information. Thus employees who are not at the show can sit at their browser anywhere (with an Internet connection) and watch the leads come in from their colleagues who are exhibiting. When the show ends, the exhibitors simply drop off their scanners and head home, which sure beats standing in line for an hour waiting to pick up a 3.5-inch floppy disk.
Integration Opportunities
While I'm a fan of Techneat, I don't get paid to sell their products, and so the chance to interact with their systems (and customers!) is most exciting to me. For example, registration workers at the front desk in a location without ethernet or Wifi Internet access could welcome attendees, scan their badge, and instantly transmit a signal to our registration database that the attendee has checked in for the show.
Or, if you need to know who is going to each of your sessions at a large event, then you can put TechNeat's RFID scanners or floor-mounted bar code readers at the doors to your meeting rooms. As attendees walk through the door, the scanner reads their registration ID and transmits it and the scanner's ID to their online database. By connecting a scanner ID to a specific room and the registration ID to a person, we can record who went to each session and when they entered and left the session.
Future Potential
I love working with companies, like TechNeat, who find better ways to collect information at an event while we work on producing better ways to organize and manage that information before, during, and after the event.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
