Artificial Intelligence meets the Exhibition+Event Industry

Considering how fast the w orld is moving, adapting and innovating and how the competitive gaps are bec oming smaller and smaller due to this digital e volution, as members of the exhibition industry, we need to make proactive effort to ensure that we keep abreast of all the new w ays the digital w orld is and will influence the w ay we conduct business.

I t is understandable however, that although a good majorit y are fascinated by the prospect of fusing digital with the exhibition w orld, it is comprehensible tha t there may be some apprehensions by many c olleagues, who are not convinced that the door o f Artificial Intelligence should be opened into an indus try so embedded in human interaction.

However, it is up to us, as professionals in the exhibition industry, t o decide which digital services will enhance and promote the purpo se of exhibitions and to ensure that there are guidelines on how we can remain customer f ocused and at the same time respecting the boundaries of e thical behaviour to ensure the credibility of the industry remains in tact.

To show wha t is in place today and as an example of effective AI, the World-of-Watson, is a “mus t see”.

For those not ye t familiar with Watson; named after IBM’s first CE O, Watson started life as a ques tion-answer computer s ystem, initially developed by IBM’ s DeepQA team to answer ques tions on the TV quiz show Jeopardy. In 2011, Watson c ompeted in Jeopardy, against legendary champions Brad R utter and Ken Jennings, winning the first-place prize of $1 million. In 2014 IBM created IBM Watson Group, a business unit focused on deploying Watson across three divisions, Watson Discovery Advisor, Watson Engagement Advisor, and Watson Explorer. The intention to allow enterprises to integrate and use Watson’s capabilities to develop business and commercial products.

Trade show management with WOW

The objective of WOW w as t o attract a projected 50% of c onference attendees to a priv ate trade show, to generate sales leads and increase sponsor ship revenue. IBM’s s trategy involved creating a priv ate trade show as part of a c onference that illustrated the wide-r ange of data-mining applica tions the Watson Artificial Intelligence is capable of.

The tactics they used w as t o divide the trade show into individual zones focusing on differen t examples of how Watson has been used by genuine companies to cut costs, increase sales and/or improve products. They employed

A ugmented Reality and multiple live examples in the zones to c onvey the overwhelming range o f industries, from airlines to choc olatiers, that Watson has success fully helped.

To give you an example of wha t w as on offer at the trade show, the Watson Welc ome Immer sion area teased visit ors with the sheer da Vinci-like sc ope of Watson’s Renaissance-man talents, the visit ors fl owed from that section onto a 400- square-foot responsive-tile w alkway. When they stepped on the flooring, weigh t-triggered sensor s beneath the 24-by-24inch tiles activated a media server, which then triggered a projector to flash marketing messages onto the fabric s tructures such as “You Envision/Watson Discovers“.

Ano ther show service and product display w as the shuttle service – br anded “Olli”.

Designed as an on-demand tr ansportation device that passenger s can order with a mobile app just as they would an Uber, the electric- powered Olli gave up to eight attendees a t a time a brief ride around the show floor.

Attendees could take a spin around the concourse in Olli, an autonomous, 3-D-printed minibus partly designed by Watson. O nce they boarded, they could chat with Olli about an ything from its technical specs t o its tourist recommendations. O nce guests boarded Olli, the minibus acted like a souped-up J ohnny Cab from the movie

“Total Recall,” using 30 sensors and a natural-language interface t o chattily field questions on the fly, including, “How does this bus work?” and “Which res taurants nearby would you rec ommend?“ so ftware developers from Inno360 Inc., Watson assisted in designing a white tulle gown embellished with 150 LEDconnected fabric flowers. c ontributed to 37% increase in sponsorship!

After a short five-minute jaunt, passenger s disembarked the driverless shuttle and then extended the experience at an in teractive digital kiosk upon which rested a scale model of Olli. Here, guests learned how Olli can be printed and put t ogether in about 10 hours and will first be used on campuses and at airports before, perhaps, being rolled out for city-wide tr ansportation.

D uring the event Watson monit ored tweets using the #Me tGala and #CognitiveDress hash tags, then painted the dress in kaleidoscopic hues via the LED s, which glowed rose when Watson detected joy and aqua when it sensed excitement.

A final example is the chat room area, where resting on acrylic bubble chairs, attendees tried out the Virtual Immersive D ata Analytics (ViDA) project, where they could converse with Watson in natural language on v arious topics. Watson uncovered unorthodox information and insigh ts for the participants, then graphically depicted them with both 3-D and 2-D objects in the virtual world.

This is a solid case-study of where digital innovation can no t only enhance the customer experience but increase the re venue potential for both exhibitors and organizers.

A Final Word

Face-to-face business can and will remain a necessary and effective tool in so far as we prepare for, embrace and influence wha t the future holds f or the benefit, evolution and sus tainability of our industry. Per sonally, I am looking forward to a future of an integrated digital and exhibition world, with endless possibilities of crea tive formats and customer cen tricity.

LED Cognitive Dress

In a separate area, on display w as the Cognitive Dress that Watson helped create for the Me t Gala, New York’s extravagant annual fashion event. Collaborating with fashion designers from Marchesa Holdings LLC and

The success of this trade show supported by Artificial Intelligence features are in the results where of the 20,000 visit ors in vited to attend the annual c onference, 85% i.e. 17,000 converted into attendees of which 90% visited the trade show ( 40% above target). The show gener ated 15,000 leads and

AUTHOR MATTHIAS “TESI” BAUER, MBB-C ONSULTING GROUP WITH OVER 18 YEARS’ EXPERIENCE W ORKING FOR THE W ORLD’S LARGE ST SHOW ORGANIZERS SUCH A S REED EXHIBITIONS, MESSE

FR ANKFURT, UBM AND MANY MORE, THE TEAM OF MBB-MEDIA IS WELL EQUIPPED T O SUPPORT CLIENTS OF THE TR ADE SHOW INDUSTRY.