Synchronisation

Removing the boundaries between online and onsite!

The problem

A long time ago in an event far far away, delegates had to register by post or fax. This was obviously very labour intensive and therefore expensive for event organisers but a necessary evil if you wanted people to pre-register for your event.

Then in 1993 the “World Wide Web” became available to the public and started a meteoric rise to popularity that changed the World forever.

In the events industry, the advent of web based event registration systems meant that organisers could enjoy cost reductions in attendee registrations because the attendees could now register their own attendance at an event online rather than posting or faxing a registration form to someone to have the details typed into the badging system.

There has always been an issue with this though. There comes a point when the data needs to be onsite and generally, the registration company has to shut online registration in order to move that data onsite ready for use. After this point, anyone wanting to register must do so onsite by filling in a form and passing it to a registration operator to have the details keyed in.

There are some systems out there that if setup correctly, will allow online registration to stay open during the event but they generally require a lot of setup and are not within the reach of organisers of “normal” events.

With the advent of web capable mobile devices (ipads/tablets/phones/etc) then it makes much more sense to allow people to register online on the train on the way to the venue so that when they arrive, they can get a badge and be into the hall straight away with the least labour being consumed onsite resulting in cost reductions to the organiser.

Added to this, if an event organiser wanted to register or badge attendees in multiple physical locations that are not connected together with a normal computer network then it’s quite difficult because of the issue of exchanging data between the sites. If you update an attendee’s record in location A (for example if the spelling of an attendee’s name had to be corrected) then those details will be different to location B.

The Solution

RefTech has been working for a long time to alleviate these problems and we believe we have the most advanced systems in the world to deal with these problems.

Using our industry leading EventReference system it is possible to setup an online registration system from scratch in a few minutes with any number of attendee types (Visitor/Exhibitor/Press/etc) and then have each attendee type asked different questions during the registration process.

When it comes to moving the data onsite, it is a simple process of starting up RefSync and entering a username and password into it. This system then creates a local copy of the database and synchronises all data from the online system into the onsite system.

The best part is that this is a real-time bi-directional sync so if an attendee is registered or changed onsite then those details will be synchronised back up to the online system within seconds. It also means that online registration can stay open throughout the duration of the event if the organiser wishes and any registrations that happen online will also be synchronised into the online system in real time.

Of course, we all know that the internet is a great tool but that internet connections can be “less than reliable”. Luckily, with our systems, the temporary loss of the internet connection has no disastrous effect on the onsite or online registration systems. Each will continue to take registrations as normal and there will be absolutely no performance change in onsite registration or badging. Of course, the synchronisation can’t happen during this loss of connectivity but as soon as the connection comes back, the system will catch up with all of the changes on both sides.

Using Technology Effectively

At RefTech, we are realists when it comes to technology and so this whole system has been designed in house from the ground up to be as simple and robust as it is possible to be and to use the most basic of internet connections.

In most places now it’s possible to get a low cost internet connection (although in some venues this might still have to be by use of a mobile internet dongle due to the venue not understanding the idea of “low cost”!).

The good news is that even with a “pay as you go” mobile internet dongle that only has a 2G connection we can still maintain a completely useable synchronisation service. In most countries, PAYG dongles can be purchased for around £30 and used for as little as £2 a day (less if you buy a week’s worth of connection at a time).

Alternatively, some hotels provide a free (or cheaper) internet connection that only allows web browsing. Because of the way we designed our synchronisation tools, this type of connection is also perfectly usable.

Because of the design of the system, it is as easy to setup one badging system in a venue as it is to setup three different badging systems in three different hotels around a city and one badging system in the venue with a total of 20 registration points*. Attendees register at any of the hotels and their details can be corrected/etc but then once the details have synchronised; those details are updated at each of the other badging points in the other hotels and venue. (Synchronisation between all systems typically takes a maximum of around 20 seconds – plenty fast enough to beat the attendee to the venue!).

*Please note we’re using 4 locations (3 hotels plus the venue and 20 registration points) as arbitrary numbers for example purposes. The system can easily support any number of registration systems in any number of locations.

Of course, geographic location is irrelevant in this case so it would be possible to have a registration desk setup at an airport from where a charter flight is departing and badge attendees as they arrive for their flights.

Going a stage further, we are working with tablet devices so that now it is even possible to have a hostess with an internet connected tablet (or even one of the new generation of larger phones) who can mark attendees as arrived at their departure airport before they get onto their flight to the venue. At this point the organiser (who is probably already sitting at the venue) will be able to see in real-time who has checked in for the flight and who hasn’t. The hostess checking people in can even add notes that the organiser will be notified of.

Conclusion

At RefTech, we believe we have the most advanced event technology in the world and are always striving to come up with better and more innovating solutions to help event organisers to deliver better service to their clients.

We also hate it when technology is used just because it’s there and doesn’t serve any useful purpose.

Using our synchronisation technology, we are able to deliver amazing benefits that event organisers have only been able to dream of until now at prices that are not going to cripple your event.