Skift Take
measure the success of events
It would be great, wouldn’t it? Analyse the emotions of attendees to .
Fedback Forms Stink
Don’t try to sell me the story that feedback forms are reliable. Tweets from your attendees are, but not feedback forms.
Feedback forms ask questions you devised. Not much serendipity there! We all know feedback forms are a great way to show your boss you’ve done great. That is quite about it.
Harvesting Emotions
On the other hand, sneaking into attendees’ minds to extract the raw feedback for the event you carefully planned sounds like captivating.
Controversial, but captivating.
Computer World reports about two companies working together to develop ’emotion harvesting’.
Machine Vision Lab’s Dr Abdul Farooq told PhysOrg, “We plan to build on the capabilities of current technology used in cinemas to detect criminals making pirate copies of films with video cameras.
We want to devise instruments that will be capable of collecting data that can be used by cinemas to monitor audience reactions to films and adverts and also to gather data about attention and audience movement. …
It is envisaged that once the technology has been fine tuned it could be used by market researchers in all kinds of settings, including monitoring reactions to shop window displays.”
I feel like I am writing Machine Vision Lab’s business plan, but such technology could be well indeed adopted to measure the performance of events.Think about live response for panels, seminars and conferences. Behavioural indicators for exhibitions.
Events are not about Canapes
The event industry is not about flowers and canapes. Large event organisations drive monstrous revenues and invest millions to measure how event performs. I have witnessed 2 hour long conversations on when it is the best time to send a fax to promote a $5,000 per delegate conference. By time I mean specific hour and day of the week.
Quick TweetThis is to say that the depth of research and tools used to assess event success goes beyond our perception. These are not tricks of the trade, there is a powerful sales machine in place.
The Future Ahead
I foresee a strong adoption of such tools as it stands true that marketing agendas need facts. Whatever makes the intangible touchable, it is definitely worth keeping an eye on.
What’s your take? Opportunity or concern?
Photo by laurinkofler
