Latin America Gets Serious About RFID

Jaime Ramirez, the information systems and technology field manager for Bechtel's Los Bronces Copper Mine, in Chile, was perhaps the most entertaining speaker. He started off by having everyone in the audience do stretching exercises, and then made numerous self-deprecating jokes and conducted a live demonstration of his application, which worked perfectly.

This was the first bilingual event RFID Journal has ever produced, and that created some challenges, but with the help of the LOGyCA team, we were able to pull it off. LOGyCA was a great partner, handling many of the operational details and conducting additional marketing efforts for the event. We also held the conference at the company's facility, which was ideal because it has a conference room that can hold 250 people, as well as a hall for exhibits. LOGyCA also has one of the most impressive RFID labs in the world, so attendees were able to see the technology in action in warehouse, supermarket and apparel-store settings.

What was so great about this event was how engaged the attendees clearly were. We ran our RFID Journal University preconference seminar, and right from the start, there were many questions that were so specific as to make it clear the attendees had projects in mind and had questions about their feasibility. The end users presenting case studies were peppered with questions about the challenges they faced and the benefits they achieved.

I spoke with our exhibitors, who told me the event far exceeded their expectations, both in the number of potential customers attending and the quality of the show. They said we attracted the right people—namely, decision makers.

It feels great, of course, to host a successful event. But what is even more pleasing to me is to see so many companies in Latin America embracing radio frequency identification as a tool that can improve the way they do business.

Mark Roberti is the founder and editor of RFID Journal. If you would like to comment on this article, click on the link below. To read more of Mark's opinions, visit the RFID Journal Blog or the Editor's Note archive.