Etherlive – Event Technology Experts

07 Oct 2011

Comments: 2

Conference, Connectivity, Event IT, Free Wi-Fi, Technology Venue, Venue Wi-Fi, WiFi, Wireless

Few things in life are as cut and dry as Sinatra vs Gaga or Apple vs Microsoft. The recent industry activity campaigning for free Wi-Fi at venues is a good example of something which should be straight forward, but is in fact a little more complicated.

The ABPCO (Association of British Professional Conference Organisers) recently announced securing more than 100 signatures for its campaign to bring free Wi-Fi to major event venues across the UK. This is a great campaign and should help focus the minds of venues who overcharge for basic access to the internet. Whilst I support the movement I find myself sympathetic to the venues who now find themselves between a rock and a hard place.

The hard place is the overwhelming demand for internet (of any type!). It’s exploding and will continue to do so; from smartphones, tablets and good old laptops, people need to be connected. What are they doing? Quickly replying to that email to keep momentum up in a project, sending photos and video to the office for those that can’t attend the event, using QR codes to look up data on stands, checking their mapping application to plan around the traffic…the list goes on and on and on.

I was enjoying meeting customers at Square Meal just the other week and found myself sitting on the benches outside clearing email, eating a baguette chatting with several others doing the same thing. We were hanging onto a weak 3G signal (hence sitting outside!) instead of paying for access inside. If you needed another data point, apart from thinking how many times today you probably already used the smartphone in your pocket, a few months ago we provided a 300 acre Wi-Fi hotspot over the WOMAD festival and this year internet usage by attendees increased in excess of 250%.

The glow of internet demand, image courtesy of Google

The rock is the cost. Of course nothing is free and installing hundreds of access points across a large venue isn’t cheap, let alone the cost of having significant internet access behind the scenes. If you try to do it on the cheap it will only come back to bite you.

I can see both arguments. Why give something away for free when people will pay for it? Especially when installing a quality venue wide Wi-Fi solution isn’t cheap. Infrastructure requires proper management, not to mention the cost of providing considerable internet backhaul.

Unfortunately venues have few people to blame. Like several other industries they fail to realise new revenue opportunities from their infrastructure, instead opting to continue the ‘pay by hour, day or week’ just as they have done for many years. Customer understanding is also an issue – why at home is their broadband £12 per month and in a venue £10 per day? Whilst some of this is opportunistic pricing by the venue, there are real differences in infrastructure and cost to deliver a quality solution to a venue that works for all users. However this is probably the core of the issue – consistency. Sometimes you get good free Wi-Fi, sometimes you pay £10 and get poor Wi-Fi. This inconsistency leads to frustration, a lack of confidence and drives a feeling as to why anyone needs to pay for it at all.

To me the answer is likely to be a middle ground. Firstly conferences and venues should be investing in greater levels of visibility to what people are doing with their network – for example why can’t the customers be metered against a range of price plans? Risky for the event if it’s simple pay as you go as this could rack up extensive charges, but price points could be negotiated. Secondly it’s setting the right expectations for the network that is in place. By all means offer a free network which is limited to X speed for X time with advertising and then, if you want, pay for more significant access.

The second aspect is that we need to get to a point where venue Wi-Fi is certified or approved in some way so that potential users and organisers have some confidence and guarantee that they will get the service promised.

The final point I would make is that venues should take a leaf from Facebook’s business model (or Google’s). We use their services every day – but have you ever paid for it? Of course they advertise abundantly but actually the most valuable element for them is your data – this could very simply be collected at venues and sold back to the event or other parties. It’s a contentious area but it is happening just about everywhere else.

The discussion will continue for some time no doubt and it will be interesting to see how things develop over the next six months as venues compete to deliver additional services and as customers closely manage their budgets.

Notes from #HBAA2011 workshop

13 Sep 2011

ADSL, Broadband, Conference, Exhibition, Hotel, Technology Venue, Trade Show, Venue, Wi-Fi

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.

Reach for the Sky – Temporary Satellite

30 Jul 2011

ADSL, Broadband, Event, Festival, KA Band, Satellite, Wi-Fi, Wireless

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.

Solar Endeavours

Chris Green

28 May 2011

Community, Environment, Technology

Last week I had the opportunity to meet the Cambridge University Eco Racing (CUER) team thanks to Mark Green (no relation!) of Intel, one of their main sponsors. The event was held to officially launch their campaign for the 2011 World Solar Challenge. I found the team an uplifting example of what can be achieved with true enthusiasm and dedication for what they are attempting to do.

For those who have not come across the World Solar Challenge before, it is a race from Darwin to Adelaide in Australia, a distance of 3,000km across the outback, held every two years, where the vehicle has to be powered entirely by solar energy. If that wasn’t hard enough the race has to be completed in less than 50 hours! A battery is allowed but it is only allowed to store up to 5kW hours of energy, less than 10% of the theoretical energy requirement for the trip. There are also limits on the amount of solar cells which can be used.

CUER first competed in the 2009 event, managing 14th place out of 26 entries – an excellent first attempt, especially when you consider the team is made up of undergraduates and doesn’t have multi-million pound funding like many of these challenges and world record attempts you see in the press. For 2011 they have set their sight on a much higher position and to achieve this they have to overcome a number of hurdles. Firstly, as is typical with student activities, nearly all of the original 2009 team have graduated and moved on, so in many ways they are having to start afresh. Funding is also a big challenge, to the extent that they cannot afford to replace their 2009 entry “Endeavour” so instead they are having to modify it based on information from 2009 and subsequent testing and computer modelling (for which Intel provides a high power cluster environment).

“Endeavour MKII” however is an ingenious piece of work, with many tweaks and changes including significantly reducing the drag factor, changing the battery technology (which caused major problems in 2009), implementing a new car management information and control system, as well as improving overall safety and stability (a key point when you are in a small, light vehicle being passed by an Australian outback road-train!). With all of these changes they are confident the vehicle is up to challenging the more established teams and bringing in a much higher placing.

The core technology can only go so far though; strategy and approach is also key – do you use regenerative breaking which adds weight or work on the principle that you won’t be breaking very often? What do you do when you hit cloud cover – speed through as quickly as possible risking excessive battery drain or hold a steady pace? Even at the end of the racing day (each day must be finished by 5pm) there are precious sun rays that have to be maximised by tilting the car towards the sun.

CUER isn’t just about a race though, they have also created an outreach program for schools with a hands on exercise in building a working model solar racer to help educate pupils about solar energy and environmental travel. The launch event also saw the conclusion of a schools competition run by CUER to design a car of the future, a competition that generated some very thoughtful entries from over 200 entrants. The shortlisted entrants were all invited along to the event to see the car, tour the labs where the team are working on it and take part in a hands-on educational session.

What’s great about CUER is that it fullfils a number of things; it’s a fun and exciting challenge, it helps inspire younger pupils via the outreach programme and it delivers some real advances in terms of technology and design that you can realistically see being used in future vehicle design. Hat’s off to a great team and good luck in October!

You can follow CUER on Twitter and Facebook and look out for the launch of Endeavour MkII around July before it starts its journey to Australia in August.

Endeavour Mk1 soon to receive its makeover to become Endeavour MkII

Finalist in AEO Excellence Awards 2011

28 May 2011

AEO, Awards, Event, Festival, Technology

Etherlive is very pleased to announce it has been nominated as a finalist in the Association of Event Organisers Excellence Awards. Our submission focused on our continued delivery of innovative technology for the events industry, which this year includes femtocells, a crew accreditation system and cordless VoIP in addition to our normal services. The awards, which are held annually, highlight the best suppliers within the events industry so we find ourselves in the same category as 360 Creative Event Services, Melville Middle East and asp, which is praise itself. Winners will be announced on the 1st July.

Can you hear me now? Femtocell to the rescue…

11 Apr 2011

Connectivity, Event IT, Femtocell, Mobile Phone, Technology, Wireless

Mobile phones. Can’t live without them, can’t…well…er…you certainly can’t run an event without them. Mobile phone coverage continues to be a pain point for many customers. It’s normally the same story; everything is fine in the run up to the event but once the attendees arrive, making a call, using mobile internet or even sending an SMS becomes unreliable.

Telecoms operators may install temporary masts at larger events (for varying commercial arrangements) however in many cases these are only linked back to the local town, which may already be near capacity and therefore only compound the problem. Generally the mobile network in the area simply isn’t designed to handle a ‘density spike’ such as a large gathering of handsets all communicating more than is ‘normal’. For smaller and more remote events the situation is even worse, where often there is no coverage at all.

Shouting at the phone doesn't actually help, it just makes you feel better

Providing high density mobile coverage is a complex area, but a femtocell can help keep key staff connected via their mobile no matter what else is going on with the normal mobile network. Femtocell technology is essentially a miniature cell phone mast for a pre-approved list of people. The unit can be linked to the internet services on site and route a number of concurrent calls for the authorised handsets as if they were on the normal mobile phone network. With a range of 150m radius it’s the perfect unit to have at a production enclosure, box office or artist/VIP area.

The pre-approved handsets can be added in a matter of seconds, whilst the unit itself is outdoor ruggedised so can be installed on the same infrastructure which carries other services such as site Wi-Fi, like for example our communications tower light. So what’s the catch? It’s only Vodafone handsets which will work with the unit today. Although not ideal it does at least provide a way of continuing to use the service, regardless of everyone around watching their bars disappear. For non-Vodafone handsets temporary Vodafone SIMs can be provided.

The femtocell has been added to our 2011 services along with some other additional voice communication products such as a specialised wireless handset which integrates with existing VoIP services, all designed to keep an event operations team functioning smoothly.

Highlights from The Gathering

04 Apr 2011