We were truly flattered to receive the Communications Company of the Year 2012 award at last Wednesdays (1st Feb) Event Production Awards at the Hilton Hotel, Park Lane, London.

Any recognition of our company is fantastic but to be judged by a group of peers is an excellent testament for the team at Etherlive who consistently go above ad beyond to keep our customers working through day and night.

The thanks would not be complete without mentioning our customers who choose to use Etherlive at their events. We understand the amount of trust which customers place in us to deliver their critical communications at their events so we back up our delivery with a continuous focus on improving existing services and bringing new services to the market through innovation.

Here’s to a successful and busy 2012 event season for organisers, production teams and suppliers alike. Article from Event Industry News here

Etherlive pickup Best Communications Company award (photo from eventindustrynews.co.uk

The statement above is the headline of an Inquirer story published on Monday 6th Feb based on information taken from a PDF distributed by London 2012 to help businesses prepare for the Olympics. The headline may be a bit sensationalist – ‘may cause internet access to be slow for some’ isn’t quite as eye-catching – but there are some valid points to take on board:

1. The main issue is the expected increase in volume of usage of the internet by locals and visitors alike. The problem though is not the internet itself (or more correctly the ‘backbone’ of high capacity links that form the network), it is the local broadband access via services like ADSL and cable which may become overloaded at exchanges and concentration points. Many of these services are based on a ‘contention ratio’, sometimes as high as 50:1, which relies on not everyone using their internet connection at the same time for good performance to be maintained. Business ADSL/SDSL services typically have a much lower contention ratio (around 10:1 or lower) and if you are relying on internet access during the Games it would be wise to check this for your provider. At events we operate at we typically only use services which have a 1:1 contention ratio to eliminate this risk. Services such as optic fibre and leased lines in general should also have a 1:1 ratio.

2. Exchange congestion is another concern as many broadband ADSL providers use BT infrastructure to provide their service. Again it can be the case that there is element of contention across the services leading to a slowdown. This area is harder to deal with but providers who are using an LLU (“Local Loop Unbundled”) service have more control over their capacity so should be able to manage performance better. Again at events we will always an LLU service wherever possible and in fact in many locations we do not traverse any BT infrastructure other than the ‘last mile’ copper pairs or fibre.

3. Site-to-Site internet links are a concern for businesses where they have multiple sites connected via a VPN (Virtual Private Network) which traverses the internet, as any general congestion will also impact their site to site links. This is a deeper technical discussion based on needs but one approach is what is known as an ‘MPLS network’ which routes data between sites without it going out onto the true public internet. This is generally only possible if the same connectivity provider is used at all locations (this is an approach we use for larger and more complex multi-site events) which can have significant benefits.

4. Home based or remote workers will be another challenge as it is expected that far more people will work from home during the Games and many companies do not have capacity for everyone to be connected remotely on a VPN at the same time. The issues above may apply to the home based or remote worker but in addition it is important that the central location has enough internet capacity and infrastructure to deal with all these additional users.

5. We all know what happens to mobile networks at a large event and the situation is expected to be similar during the Games. Yes lots of additional capacity will be put in place but there is only so much the mobile operators can do so it would be wise to assume there will be problems. In the events area it will be much safer to deploy a standalone phone system (VoIP/DECT) which will operate outside of the mobile network. Another aspect to consider is any ‘chip & pin’ payment terminals as many of these operate using the mobile GPRS network which may have issues during the Games. The alternative is Wi-Fi/IP based units which operate over an internet connection – assuming the issues above have been considered!

In summary, it is wise to examine internet provision at locations and at home if it is a critical service as there could well be impacts but with the right planning and service provision these issues can be minimised. For events organisers, especially those organising events in London during the Games period, it is very important that internet access is considered as soon as possible and the right level of provision is made – where in previous years a normal ADSL line has sufficed the risk this year may make it wise to change this to a businesss service which does not have contention issues.

If you are concerned about internet access provision and performance during the games then contact us at 2012@etherlive.co.uk

If you are attending the Event Production Show on Wednesday 1st and Thursday 2nd of February at Olympia you may be surprised to find Etherlive do not have a stand as in previous years. This year our approach to trade shows is different, evolving from feedback and activity undertaken during the last year.

In broad terms we are moving away from a traditional trade show approach (we will still be attending the Showman’s Show) to focus our efforts on more direct interaction with customers and potential customers – taking the form of involvement with forums and working groups such as the ESSA Wi-Fi Working Group, the HBAA Forum and the AIF. Alongside this we will continue to expand our own technology forum – The Gathering – to work with customers, suppliers and technology partners to understand, discuss and resolve the technology challenges important to event organisers, production managers and venues.

The reasoning behind this is simple, we strongly believe in partnering with customers and suppliers to deliver the best solutions for the industry and our investment in working directly and interactively with the industry delivers much more value to everyone involved rather than a simple ‘shop front’ approach at trade shows.

We will still be at the Event Production Show – we are chairing the Access Session ‘Plastic Passion’ around RFID/cashless payment technology and will be involved with the ESSA Wi-Fi forum. Etherlive people (Tom, Mike, Steve, Chris) will also be having a number of customer meetings at the show and if you would like to arrange an informal chat over coffee please do drop us an email at eps@etherlive.co.uk or send a tweet to @etherlive and we will arrange a time to meet up.

(l-r) WOMAD Festival Director Chris Smith discusses mobile coverage with O2's Richard Owens, Etherlive's Chris Green and Paul Pike from IVS

It’s been such a busy November that it’s only now that I have a had a chance to reflect on the Autumn Gathering. The day was split into two sessions with the morning focused on corporate events and conferences, and the afternoon structured around outdoor events and festivals. Below are some very brief notes covering a few of the topics discussed.

Connectivity & IT Support in Hotels & Venues

For conferences and product launches the IT needs are now typically a lot more than ‘a bit of Wi-Fi’. Quality Wi-Fi with appropriate capacity, dedicated streaming bandwidth, hook-ups for varying accreditation type systems and on-site technical support to deal with VPNs, bandwidth management and media support are all key aspects.

A concern raised by several attendees was the often inconsistent quality of connectivity in venues and their knowledge of how it works. This is an area we have been partnering with several venues on to deliver enhanced connectivity and the level of technical support that a conference or launch now needs. We have several case studies showing the cost of installing higher bandwidth and more robust infrastructure is rapidly recouped through increased revenue, this is particularly important for London venues hosting events in 2012. We are actively working with several groups to drive a better approach to conference & venue Wi-Fi, it is a more complex area though than it may look requiring extensive knowledge of how to deliver high density environments with the right equipment.

Information Security

Data security was a hot topic for corporate conferences, especially when people realised how insecure the often used short, simple passphrase approach is on Wi-Fi networks. The good news is that it’s an easy one to fix with a more complex passphrase or ideally a system which uses individual user names and passwords and enhanced encryption. Avoiding the use of the event or company name as the SSID/network name (or hiding it altogether) was also discussed as a way of avoiding unwanted attention.

It should now be the norm that networks are segregated into organiser, attendee, etc. and approaches such as client isolation are used to avoid unintentional sharing of information between connected users. A simple plain English guide to aspects such as the use of Https (secure websites), VPNs, encryption & authentication, solving typical problems with email when on a different network etc, was deemed a useful addition to the organisers toolkit and something that we are looking at producing.

Social Media

Social media split the room in two – those running internal conferences who were often frustrated that their IT department refused to sanction use of social media and those running product launches who used social media to the max. Lots was covered in this area, some of the key points were:

• Social media like any channel requires a strategy
• It takes time (1 hour per day was muted by several), you get out what you put in
• Needs structure and tools (hash tags, TweetReach, Yazmo Live, Socialoomph, Thinkwall and hootsuite all came up)
• Use live twitter feeds to ask questions to panel members and break down any barriers. Control and nurture back channels.
• Schedule general content releases prior to the event so you can concentrate on the here and now tweets and comms during the live period. Have a calendar of teasers to pull people into the event.
• Use of video is coming to the forefront and a general agreement that even low cost footage taken on a smart phone can achieve good results if it manages to capture a moment or a different angle.
• It requires a working infrastructure at the event to be successful!

Smartphone Apps

This session started with a discussion on the hype around apps and comments that this was coming to an end with people now having to really question why they need an app and understand what the purpose is, with agreement that often a poor app can be more damaging than no app at all!

From there the discussion moved into ‘native apps’ versus ‘web apps’, like with many things there is no straight forward answer but there are some key differentiators:

• Native apps can be designed to work without connectivity, with web apps this is nearly impossible
• Web apps can be made cross-platform more easily and cost effectively
• Web apps are on the whole easier to maintain
• Native apps are more feature rich and can utilise more smartphone functionality (and hence look more slick)

Alongside this there were common operational aspects:

• If you promote an app then the infrastructure needs to be able to support it
• Content needs to be managed before and during the event. And afterwards if you want to maintain usage.
• If the app is provided by someone else it will still be associated with your event so the quality is important

Mobile Phone Service

We’ve all been at events and got frustrated that the mobile phone service has collapsed under the sheer weight of users so not surprisingly this was a hotly discussed topic. Richard Owens from O2 did a great job in sharing examples of the scale of the challenges and explaining what O2 have been doing to try and address the problem. One great example came from the Royal Wedding where they actively moved capacity along the route of the Royal carriage to deal with the spike in photo uploads. Learnings from this are now being incorporated into a more automated approach across the O2 network.

For permanent venues additional capacity is a realistic option via adding more base stations around the venue, again an area O2 have already worked with several venues on. For temporary event sites the challenge is more complex due to the cost and complexity of temporary cell towers, however, options such as Wi-Fi offload and femtocells are becoming more practical.

The underlying message was one of the need for a partnership approach between events and mobile operators to deal with the issue as many events felt the bad experience of attendees did reflect to some degree on the event, and if nothing else made it difficult for organisers to run the event effectively.

Festival Comms & Public Wi-Fi

The change in expectations for festival comms over the last few years has been huge such that VoIP, internet, CCTV and Wi-Fi are the norm. The questions have moved onto how to deliver higher capacity connectivity and integrate services across a large site delivering coordinated gate scanning, real-time noise monitoring and PDQ ‘chip and pin’.

Public Wi-Fi access attracted a wide range of comment ranging from ‘festivals should be technology free’ to ‘how to monetise Wi-Fi’. Every event is different and it follows that approaches to public Wi-Fi will vary but it’s worth noting that the underlying thread is not really about public internet usage (although it is popular and has it’s uses for aspects such as travel, weather and news), it’s about the channel which is created between the event and the attendee providing an opportunity to deliver an extended festival experience. This may take the form of information updates, promotion of different events on site, access to exclusive content and the opportunity to enable social communities on site. It also provides a platform to deliver new services such as cashless payment, interactive apps and sponsor promotions.

As always the Gathering gave us a great opportunity to engage in discussion with those in the industry to really see what’s of interest and what the pain points are. The Gathering is a great focus point and hopefully leads to ongoing discussions to ensure the technology available meets the needs of organisers, promoters, production teams, suppliers and attendees.

This week sees our 4^th consecutive year exhibiting at the Showman’s Show. The show, at Newbury Showground on Wednesday 19th and Thursday 20th October, in a way marks a transition from the 2011 outdoor event season to the start of the 2012 season, although these days we see a variety of outdoor events year-round.

Etherlive prepares for its 4th Showmans Show

2012 in the UK is of course a bit of a one off with the Olympics and Paralympics occurring right at the peak of the outdoor event season. We are providing a number of services for Olympic related activity, such as all the IT, communications and broadcast provision for the London Media Centre, but we have been very careful to ensure this has no impact on our existing customers and their events.

What is important though is booking and planning for 2012, especially in London and other locations that will see Olympic activity. Provision of connectivity such as fibre and broadband services will see longer lead times due to sheer demand (we are ordering many services already so that they are provisioned very early next year). Transportation is another area which is impacted with requirements on suppliers to submit transport plans for London well in advance of events if they occur during the broad Olympic period. These aspects and others are all good topics for discussion at Showman’s if you are planning an event in 2012.

This year we are on Stand 71 of the indoor hall where we will be demonstrating a new generation of mobile VoIP handsets – allowing the freedom of a mobile phone with the cost advantages of VoIP. These units also couple up with an alarm and monitoring system providing a new level of integrated service for event organisers.

We will also be launching our latest innovation; Event Band, a suite of tools using RFID technology facilitating payment systems, loyalty services, accreditation and crew management. This technology will sit alongside the latest generation wireless chip & pin PDQs providing reliable payment methods for bars, merchants, exhibitors and ticketing.

The latest networked noise monitoring support offered by Etherlive will be on display, along with a demonstration of next generation satellite broadband, offering internet anywhere from the new KA band with higher internet speeds.

Alongside all the new products we will also have our core network, communications and CCTV technologies on display, solutions that have been used time and time again across a wide range of events connecting thousands of users. Outside we will also have one of our communications tower lights offering CCTV, Wi-Fi and public address as well as an economical lighting system. This can be found on the Aceplant stand (169) at the end of Avenue G.

Recently we announced that Etherlive has joined ESSA (Event Supplier and Services Association), alongside ongoing membership of the AIF (Association of Independent Festivals) and the ASAO (Association of Show and Agricultural Organisations). As well as actively participating in these organisations we also offer special services to fellow members.

We will have plenty of staff on hand to discuss event requirements and provide cost effective solutions to a broad range of connectivity, communications and other event IT needs.

Steve Birnage and I were fortunate enough to talk at the HBAA (The Hotel Booking Agents Association) 13th Annual Forum this week on their theme of Future Vision. We based our workshop on the concept of a ‘technology venue’ using each of the various ‘floors’ to represent a technology and how, for example, any service offering (near the top of the building) needs a good foundation at the bottom.

We went on to discuss the many other floors which are all critical for eventually delivering a great customer experience. Attendees where really keen to engage and we got some great questions especially as many are focused on winning business for the 2012 Olympics, opportunities which will have high expectations for connectivity on site. A quick summary of the main points below;

The foundation – High speed, dedicated uncontended internet access is a must. Many venues still attempt to share one connection between rooms, bars and conferencing facilities but this won’t meet many conference organiser requirements these days. We have recently upgraded a London customer with significant bandwidth for their conferencing facilities entirely separate from them having great connectivity for their bedrooms.

Ground floor – A good, reliable wired network which is managed by a third party or venue with appropriate support can make deploying services and performing upgrades later on quite straightforward. Here we were using examples about running fibre between key points in the building (either at design or re-fit) to ensure high speed services can be delivered without causing massive headaches. We used the term ‘managed’ a lot within this section but really the key is to ensure services can be changed quickly remotely.

First floor – Reliable Wi-Fi networking. Separate to the internet or network on site it is critical to ensure a wireless network is deployed to deal with the appropriate requirements in mind. For example a conference room which seats 500 needs to have the wireless infrastructure to handle that. New technologies can really help here – like 802.11n mesh wireless networks which can be extended by just plugging in access points which automatically extend coverage however this is dangerous to do unless your environment will automatically minimise interference or you have an appreciation of what channels other access points are using.

Second floor – Make sure you have the support lined up since there is nothing worse than investing and not realising value. Not only should venues have technical support, be it in house or outsourced but also staff should be familiar with the functions and features so they can represent it to customers and prospects who may ask.

Third floor – The critical revenue generation floor – here venues should be thinking past charging for the internet access and looking at sponsored hijack pages, content driven micro sites, support for live streaming and perhaps a strategy about how to re-use customer content in terms of video (perhaps for those who could not attend).

Those key areas got some great interaction from the audience. Many of whom have made significant investment in technology but continue to look for opportunities to maximise return. It was also great to have discussions with several of the larger hotel brands who are committed to contracts and are keen to ensure contracts continue to keep a focus on innovation.

Our latest investment in the new KA band satellite equipment means more flexibility when providing internet connectivity for temporary events.

Satellite internet connectivity can offer significant benefits to customers who are looking for a solution which can be setup in less than 30 minutes and support high speed email and web browsing. The system uses a 0.8 metre diameter dish which needs Southern facing sky to provide download speeds of up to 10 Mbps, similar to a normal ADSL line. The dish communicates with geostationary satellites located in orbit approximately 36,000 kilometres above the equator so is not suitable for all uses but we can advise on where and when satellite works well. Included with the dish and modem is pre-fetch technology which reduces the load time of websites.

In conjunction with Etherlives mobile networking equipment the satellite internet connectivity can quickly be shared out through Wi-Fi networking for press, production crews and exhibitors. In many cases satellite services may be used for first day services followed up with higher speed connectivity as the site builds.

More information on our satellite service is available from our website here or give us a call

Deploying satellite has never been so easy. Image courtesy of Google.

For some time we have been really keen to get together a group of thought leaders from the events industry to discuss a range of technology related topics. With a fantastic team effort this event, which we called ‘The Gathering’, was held on the 30th of March at Lords futuristic media centre. Each of the four panels was focused on a specific area of technology with industry experts giving practical guidance, their opinion and answering questions from the audience. The notes below highlight some of the points raised but a lot was covered in the five hours so they are just a very small window on the discussions . To keep the discussion about technology in events going we aim to keep the twitter hashtag #eventtech for questions and comments.

Ticketing and Cashless Payments – Tom McInerney facilitated a panel involving Paul Pike from Intelligent Venue Solutions and Darren Jackson from Ticketscript discussing the latest innovations.

• Many events are now becoming aware of the customer data associated with tickets. The opinion of the panel was in many cases this is worth more than the face value of the ticket as events should be starting to build profiles from their customers which can then be the cornerstone of many other activities (such as loyalty schemes).
• Loyalty systems may take the form of branded cards or RFID wristbands but the important element to consider is using these in more than just a ‘closed loop’ way, perhaps opening them up for eating out in the local area or purchasing merchandise providing another revenue stream for the event.
• Paul Pike discussed trials which are under exploration for this year which would see significant steps in making cashless events a reality.

Social Media – Chaired by Ian Irving the panel included Andrew Cock-Starkey from Lords and Jonathan Emmins from Amplify discussing how events can use social media before, during and after an event.

• Ian discussed how events should continue to focus on using social media as a core element, enlarging the community past just those that attended.
• Lords Andrew Cock-Starkey talked about how they have developed a large following for their Twitter feed, using it for continuous commentary on matches and a channel for last minute tickets (which can then be tracked back using offer codes to get quantifiable value).
• There was lively discussion on managing the ‘negative’ aspects of social media too, engaging with, rather than ignoring those who are complaining.
• Many of the panel thought the key technologies of the future would be live streaming content to those not at the event and ensuring that those attending can access online resources.

The Gathering taking place at Lords Media Centre

Event Vision – Tom McInerney chaired a discussion between Dan Craig, Loudsounds and Dale Barnes from Virgin Media focused on the key technology elements events will be focused on in the future.

• Dale talked about how as a major brand when he is asked to deliver services in temporary events locations it really helps to have a technology person to engage with and discuss practicalities. The requirements from sponsors will only become greater as events continue to look for ‘partners’ who can contribute to the event not just push product X.
• The panel discussed how events which take place at the same locations year after year will become more focused on what investments can be made. Not just in terms of water and power but also internet presentation. In many cases arranging service over multiple years can generate significant savings.
• Dan discussed how events are continuing to invest in backend systems to simplify event management but also share data quickly with suppliers so everyone has up to date information. Tools like Dropbox and Google documents were sighted as invaluable but increase the pressure on IT systems at events.

Applications - Joanna Wales from Ascot Racecourse, Adrian Strahan and Chris Green discussed the key elements to a successful application and the challenges which still surround creating an app which gains traction within what is becoming an increasingly crowded market.

• The panel shared their experience of working applications released by several large customers, and that by working within the businesses to find the different things the application could deliver was critical to its success.
• Chris discussed the issues of delivering a ‘cross platform’ application (i.e. one which works across Android, Apple, Microsoft and Blackberry) this continues to be a challenge however planning for a multiple release during the design and creation process can avoid painful re-working later on.
• The panel discussed the Edinburgh Fringe application as a great example of an application that was really useful and improves the event experience.
• Many of the audience thought that applications should be free for events, since trying to charge generally puts off those that might find it valuable. Some discussions identified that a good app will encourage more people to attend and get more out of the event.

Real World Experience – Chris Green, Mike Lang and Tom McInerney fielded questions from the audience and discussed how some of the customers they partner with had developed an on-going technology strategy encompassing many of the topics that had come up during the day.

• Several questions from the audience focused on how smaller events can take advantage of technology without huge investments. Chris discussed how many technology services can be delivered for growing events – the key is to ensure enough lead time as solutions which have to be delivered in a rush tend to more expensive. There is also opportunity to share some of the costs of connectivity between events that use the same locations.

In summary a fantastic day to network, meet new contacts and learn. We hope to run The Gathering again and are really excited about developing the forum and taking on the feedback from the attendees.