Patent Application
20070198324
This description relates to enabling connections between and events attended by people.
Several years ago, nTAG Interactive Corporation developed an interactive tag to be worn around the neck of an attendee at a convention. This tag is able to electronically communicate with tags worn by other attendees, for example, when the attendees face each other. The tags (also sometimes called badges) can exchange data electronically even before the two attendees have a chance to talk to each other. The data can carry information about what the two attendees have in common. The tags also can communicate wirelessly with readers, such as RFID readers or WiFi or WiMax transceivers. These tags are described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/396,064, filed Mar. 24, 2003, and Ser. No. 10/729,696, filed Dec. 5, 2003, both entitled Apparatus and Method for Enhancing Face-to-Face Communication, incorporated here by reference. They are also described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/069,716, filed Feb. 28, 2005, entitled Method of Scoring the Performance of Attendees at a Meeting, also incorporated here by reference.
In general, in one aspect, through a user interface on a computer, a user is enabled to define questions to be answered by attendees of an event, the answers to the questions being indicative of connections corresponding to pairs of attendees, a computer receives answers to the questions from the attendees through a user interface, and based on the answers, provides information to attendees through a computer to facilitate face-to-face interaction between the pairs of attendees.
In general, in one aspect, through a user interface on a computer, an attendee of an event is enabled to provide answers to questions, the answers being indicative of connections of attendees to other attendees of the event, and the attendee is enabled to view, through the user interface, connections of the attendee to other attendees who have been selected based on connections indicated by answers of the attendees to the questions.
In general, in one aspect, through a user interface on a computer, a user is enabled to define a putative connection between attendees of an event, the putative connection corresponding to an objective of the event, and a computer determines actual connections between attendees of the event corresponding to the putative connection based on information provided by the attendees.
In general, in one aspect, a user is enabled, through a user interface on a computer, to define connections between attendees of an event that will enhance a measure of success of the event, and based on the defined connections, cause electronic badges worn by the attendees at the event to facilitate the defined connections.
In general, in one aspect, through a user interface on a computer, a user is enabled to view a graphical device that is representative of a current satisfaction of attendees of an event based on two or more factors associated with satisfaction while the event is occurring.
Implementations may include the feature that the graphical device illustrates performance against the two or more factors in a single integrated graphical representation.
In general, in one aspect, a computer receives an identification of a relationship between values, receives an identification of an attribute, determines that a person is associated with a value of the attribute having the identified relationship, and on the basis of the determination, identifies the person as belonging to a group.
Implementations may include one or more of the following features. Determining includes determining that the person is associated with the same value of the attribute as another person. Determining includes determining that the person is associated with a different value of the attribute than another person. Determining includes determining that the person is associated with a specific value of the attribute. The specific value of the attribute is based on a value of the attribute associated with another person.
In general, in one aspect, a computer, provides a user interface that allows a user to identify a relationship between values, and identify a relationship.
In general, in one aspect, a computer provides a user interface that allows a user to associate values of attributes with the user, and displays to the user other users based on the values of attributes and on values of attributes associated with the other users.
In general, in one aspect, a computer receives first information about behavior of people, receives second information about a correlation of behavior of people to a first measurement, based on the first information and the second information, predicts a value of the first measurement, and displays the first information, the predicted value, and a relationship between the first information and the predicted value.
Implementations may include one or more of the following features. The first information includes at least two second measurements, the second information includes an indication that at least one of the second measurements is correlated to the first measurement, and displaying the relationship includes indicating which of the second measurements is correlated to the first measurement. The second information includes an indication that on prior occasions, groups of people were associated with at least two different values of the first measurement, and the groups of people associated with different values of the first measurement were associated with different values of at least one of the second measurements.
Other features and advantages will be apparent from the following description and the claims.
A convention is one example of a wide variety of events at which effective fact-to-face interactions among people can be important. Such events can includes meetings, parties, training sessions, cruises, conferences, shows, educational forums, and governmental sessions, to name a few. Events often have hosts, organizers, or operators who have certain goals or objectives in terms of human interactions that they aim to foster. For example, a sponsor of an electronics show may want to maximize the number of visits by attendees to vendor booths. A sponsor of a sales meeting may want to facilitate interactions of salesmen with prospects. In the case of a large party, the host may measure the success of the event simply on an average overall satisfaction of people who attended.
The badges mentioned above can be used to provide information to attendees of an event, allow the attendees to exchange information, for example, virtual business cards, and enable an event organizer to monitor interactions between attendees. The badges also enable the event organizer to poll the attendees and collect information about their satisfaction with the event. Specific features include attendance tracking, surveys, networking activity, lead capture, and audience response.
In analyzing data collected at events using the badges, it has been found that certain activities, behaviors, and attitudes correlate with very high satisfaction by event attendees. An event organizer can obtain information about some of these factors by analyzing the interactions among attendees recorded by the badges. Five such factors are described in Table 1. Other factors, such as those listed in Table 2, can be derived from attendee participation in conference sessions, workshops, or similar activities that can be run independently or as part of events.
The data used to assign values to each of these factors are collected by the badges in several ways. When two attendees are facing each other, and presumably interacting, their respective badges sense each other and each record the identity of the other party, as reported by his badge, and the duration of their interaction. This information is used to compute factors such as those in Table 1. For example, Face Time is computed from the total time of all interactions, divided by the number of attendees. Depth is based on the same total, divided by the number of interactions. Breadth is based on the number of different attendees' badges each badge reports interacting with. Card Exchanges and Card Exchange Yield are based on how much attendees use a feature of the badges that allows them to exchange virtual business cards.
Factors related to attendance at sessions, such as those in Table 2, are based on features of the badges that allow attendance to be taken and feedback received through the badges. After attending a session, attendees may be asked to complete a survey about the session on their badge. Net Positive Impressions and Average Score are based on the substance of the responses, while Response Rate and Data Volume are based on how manu attendees actually complete their surveys. Although many of the factors are expressed “per day,” other periods could be used for the measurement.
As shown in
The information provided by the interface can be valuable to event organizers, because it enables them to respond rapidly in real time, and in particular during the event itself, to anything that might diminish attendee satisfaction with the event. An example of the information collected over five events is shown in
As shown in
Analysis of past events, for which an overall attendee satisfaction rating or other measurement is available, such as the “% Overall Excellent” factor in
For example, as shown in
A similar analysis of attendance at sessions or workshops might indicate, for example, that the highly satisfied attendees had a higher “net positive” rating than the others, while both groups had a high attendance rate. This would imply that actual attendance rate is not as important as making sure that at least some sessions produce a very positive experience.
Once this analysis has been performed for past events and important factors identified, a display is tailored to the specific measurements that an event organizer want to maximize. As shown in
These graphs 402 and 404 show the organizers that while three of the factors that correlate to high satisfaction are well above average, one, Card Exchanges, is only slightly above the median. At the same time, two less important factors, that is, factors that don't correlate to high satisfaction, are also well above average, session attendance and average score. This might suggest to the event organizer that they need to introduce some incentive for attendees to not only meet (which Face Time and Breadth indicate they are doing), but to actually exchange cards, and that they can do so at the expense of session attendance, since keeping high won't do as much to improve satisfaction as improving the number of card exchanges.
In other examples, as shown in
In
In
Another feature of the event management system is connections. One way that has been identified to improve attendee satisfaction is to encourage attendees to interact with each other. All of the factors in the Table 1 above relate to interactions between attendees. Based on the analysis of the correlation between the various factors and satisfaction or other overall measurements, an event organizer may want to specifically encourage interactions that are likely to produce longer conversations and more follow-up, rather than simply encouraging interactions in general. The connections feature facilitates this by identifying characteristics of the attendees and presenting the organizer with a user interface that allows him to query the attendees answers and to take actions to encourage attendees having certain characteristics to meet.
The user interface of the event management system can be presented to the event administrator, which may be the event organizer, through a web site as shown in
As a first step in using the connections function, the event administrator creates profile questions by selecting the corresponding option (654b) from the menu 654. Profile questions identify attributes for each attendee, tailored to the specific event. In the example of
If the administrator follows the edit link 606, they are taken to a screen like that shown in the example of
Once profile questions have been defined for the event, the administrator can use the connections feature to define connections between attendees by selecting that option (654c). A connection is a set of rules that result in recommendations for attendees to meet other attendees or types of attendees at the event. Multiple potential connections can be created to encourage effective networking. In
The administrator can add additional criteria to the connection using the “edit” link 704. For example, the administrator could specify that in addition to using the same database, at least one of the attendees must have answered that he expects to upgrade his database within the next three months in response to the “Purchase Timeframe” profile question 604b. Other possible relations 710 include that the attendees have differing values for a field, or specific values, for example, both using Oracle, or one using Oracle and one using Sybase.
The “save” and “cancel” links 716 and 718 allow the administrator to save the connection they have created or cancel without creating or modifying the connection. The “add a connection to make” link 714 allows the administrator to create additional connections. Multiple connections can be created for an event to maximize networking recommendations for the attendees.
The event management system provides a personalized web site for each attendee to provide the attendee with information, tools, and resources pertaining to the event. Portions of this interface are shown in
Before the connections defined by the event administrator can function with respect to an attendee, the attendee must answer his profile questions, as shown in
Once connections are defined and attendees have entered profile information, connections that apply to an attendee appear in the attendee's search screen, as shown in
Clicking on the advanced search link 908 takes an attendee to the advanced search interface 960 shown in
This technology is not limited to organized events, but could be applied to any number of situations, for example, tracking and optimizing the activities of students in a school or the interactions of workers in an office environment. Similarly, this technology is not limited to use with badges as the medium for collecting information and effecting the connections, for example, electronic devices such as cellular telephones and personal digital assistants may be used. Other embodiments are within the scope of the following claims.
