I was speaking with the manager of a production facility about a possible use of radio frequency identification at his plant. I told him that RFID could absolutely do what he wanted to do, but that he would need to select the right tag for his product. I asked him if he planned to attend our RFID Journal LIVE! 2017 conference, and he responded, “I want to go, but my boss thinks we can save the travel money by just doing research online.”
That’s terribly short-sighted. There’s a lot of great information online. I know, because RFID Journal publishes a ton of useful material. Our articles always try to quote the end user of a deployment in order to get an objective view of a deployment we are writing about. But RFID Journal LIVE! is different—it is three days of intense education.
With an All-Access Pass to RFID Journal LIVE!, you can learn in three days what it would take a year to learn from just researching on the Web. Plus, you get to interact with people who have deployed RFID systems, sell RFID systems or have researched the value of RFID systems. LIVE! gives you access to these speakers, so you can ask your questions and receive an unfiltered answer. What’s more, you can speak to academics who have studied RFID’s value in retail or manufacturing or the supply chain.
The exhibit floor also consistently delivers unexpected value. If you watch the video on our About RFID Journal LIVE! 2017 page, you will find a consistent theme among the attendees interviewed: they were surprised by the number of solutions being exhibited, and by the variety of solutions.
Many people attend LIVE! and discover products in the exhibit hall that they didn’t know existed—products that perfectly meet their needs. I’ve been covering RFID every day for the past 15 years, and each year I discover something new in the exhibit hall that I wasn’t aware of, something that is being released at the event or something about which, for whatever reason, we just never wrote.
I’m very proud of the quality of the articles we publish, and I think they deliver a lot of value, but if you are considering using RFID to solve a business problem or improve your operations, there is no substitute for immersing yourself in the world of RFID at our LIVE! events. A wealth of knowledge is shared with attendees, and there is a certain amount of serendipity—the unexpected opens your eyes to new possibilities.
I believe that the time and money of attending an event like this will easily deliver a return on investment, because you will wind up with a better, less expensive solution and probably avoid some costly missteps. I hope to see you at the event, taking place in Phoenix on May 9-11.
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, the Editor’s Note archive or RFID Connect.