CloserStill and Nineteen Group chairman Phil Soar declares himself a fan of AI. He explains why.
No, this is not what you are expecting to read.
This is not about how we are using AI to analyse our visitor data and making connections with the right exhibitors. It is not about how more than a quarter of Britons now use AI to help with their shopping – by asking ChatGPT where they can find the best red sweater for grandpa etc. It is not about how our marketing departments use AI to write their “come to the show” emails.
It is about something completely different.
I had a brief Facetime call from a friend last week. It was an invite to a dinner. It lasted 40 seconds. It took me around 20 seconds to realise that it was an avatar speaking. I called him and asked what he had done. Turns out it was a simple piece of software which recorded his face for a minute or so, and then added the text of whatever he wanted to say by matching expressions and the position of his mouth.
It was detectable. It probably wouldn’t have persuaded you to transfer £10,000 to an unknown bank account. But these are very, very early days. It only took 10 years for SimCity to be turned from a good children’s game to an extremely credible CGI (computer-generated imagery) world.
I am not Elon Musk or Sergey Brin, but I can predict that in a very short space of time—two or three years—my friend’s software will be everywhere, and we will no longer be able to tell the difference between “fake” and “real” people and even family members.
Why is this so good for trade shows?
It was Lori Hoinkes, of Manchester Central, in conversation with Alison Jackson, who (to my knowledge) first posited what follows here – and my sincere thanks to her for a rare insight into the future of our business.
Trade shows have always been about face-to-face. That is their core proposition and what distinguishes them from other kinds of “media” (not that we are really a medium) and will distinguish us even further from the ever-expanding IT-driven means of “communication”.
We will soon no longer be able to trust anything we see on our iPhone or iPad screens (I mean anything at all – we don’t trust a lot already). We will not know whether what appears to be real is real and whether what is being said can in any way be trusted. The same might increasingly be said about face calls on Zoom and Teams.
Our secret sauce is face-to-face
If we meet someone face to face, then they are real. Here is the secret sauce of trade shows and one reason why so many people still like them and go to them. You know who you are talking to, you know that what is coming out of their mouths is real (it may not be true, but it is real).
So, in a nutshell, the tidal wave of AI is going to be very, very good for face-to-face meetings and very good for trade shows.
It will be where TRUST is the watchword.
“How will AI help trade shows?”
I typed this phrase into ChatGPT. Here (much précised for sanity) is what came up in three seconds. I have tried to reduce Chat GPT’s response to 10 specific “benefits”.
- AI-powered recommendations: AI can analyse attendee data to provide personalised schedules, suggesting sessions, exhibitors, or products that match their interests and needs.
- Chatbots and Virtual Assistants: AI-driven chatbots can assist attendees with real-time information, help navigate the event, and answer frequently asked questions. These virtual assistants can also schedule meetings or provide updates on sessions and speaker timings.
- AI matchmaking: AI can analyse attendee profiles, interests, and previous event data to suggest relevant networking opportunities.
- Business card scanning and follow-ups: AI tools can scan business cards or digital profiles, automatically inputting contact information and helping both parties follow up after the event.
- Smart kiosks and sensors: AI can track and analyse attendee movements through the event space. Exhibitors can get data on which booths had the most foot traffic, which products were most popular, and which attendees showed genuine interest.
- Lead scoring: AI can help exhibitors prioritise leads based on attendee behaviour and interactions. For instance, AI might determine which leads are more likely to convert.
- Interactive displays: AI-powered screens or kiosks can engage attendees with personalised product information based on their inputs or preferences, creating an interactive and immersive experience.
- Content personalisation: AI can tailor event marketing materials to specific audiences, increasing engagement and attendance. Personalised emails, social media ads, or app notifications can be sent to potential attendees based on their behaviour and preferences.
- Data Insights: AI can generate detailed reports on attendee engagement, booth performance, and session popularity. Exhibitors can use these insights to fine-tune their strategies and improve ROI.
- Facial recognition: AI-powered facial recognition can streamline attendee check-ins, enhancing security and reducing wait times. It can also ensure that only registered individuals are accessing specific areas.
I don’t know what every other company is doing, but my companies are already working on most of these ideas.
The dog that didn’t bark on ChatGPT
What interested me most is that ChatGPT appears to have completely missed the single most important (to my mind) benefit. That face-to-face means real interactions, and real people and takes away the danger of being fooled by technology.
And pursuing the theme of FaceTime conversations no longer being reliable, how do we know we are not living in some kind of SimCity creation anyway?
This is something we all quietly mused about when we were teenagers sitting in school assemblies. Were we the only real person there etc? But it is only in the past few years that technology has developed enough to allow us to imagine that the world may be an artifice – a sort of massive Truman Show.
Are we living in some kind of SimCity creation?
Really? What’s the argument in favour?
Well, we know that there are billions of stars in the universe and, hence, probably billions of planets. There are only two viable hypotheses – that Earth is the only place on which life as we know it developed. Or, that out of those billions of planets, there must be a very large number (let’s say one million) which have also developed “intelligent” life.
And let’s say that they all, at some point, discovered nuclear power. And let’s say that, as a result, 99% of that intelligent life destroyed their planet via nuclear wars (as we are quite likely to do at some point).
That still leaves 10,000 planets which happen to have survived. We have no idea how long intelligent life has existed on those 10,000 planets. But given that the universe is 13 billion years old and that intelligent life on Earth only developed in the last billion years, then simple probability suggests that life on some of these planets is likely to be at least two billion years old.
Consider the development of technology on our planet. It was only in the 1970s that we saw Bill Gates and Steve Jobs develop the first useful PCs. Men landed on the Moon in 1969 with far less computing power than you have in your iPhone.
It was in the 1990s that we saw the first simulations of “worlds” (really villages) with the likes of SimCity. And look where we are just three decades later.
It must be entirely conceivable, with the technology that we can observe today, that a “global” SimCity and all the beings in it could be created by a far more advanced society than we cannot imagine.
So why might we not simply be a simulated creation of one of those 10,000 planets – which, of course, creates for us our perception of the universe (and which itself, therefore, may also be simply a sophisticated computer model)?
Maybe we are just a game some civilisation is playing for fun. (If you are intrigued, read The Anomaly by Herve Le Tellier).
But, just for the moment…..
I think Lori is almost certainly right. A brilliant insight into our future. In the next few years, we will be promoting trade shows more and more as FACE TO FACE, WHERE YOU KNOW THE PEOPLE ARE REAL AND YOU CAN TRUST YOUR MEETINGS AND WHAT YOU SEE
I like it. And that’s not what you expected, is it?
The post Why AI will boost trade shows appeared first on EN.