Last week, we held RFID Journal LIVE! Europe—UK, in London, England. The one-day event attracted roughly100 attendees. During a break, a gentleman from a global manufacturing company approached me, saying he was very impressed by the presentation offered by Constantina Vlachou-Mogire, a senior conservation scientist at the Historic Royal Palaces, who spoke about using active RFID temperature and humidity sensors to protect delicate tapestries.
I asked why he found that particular presentation so interesting, given that his company produces avionics and doesn’t manage works of art. “We have to monitor temperature and humidity to protect our products,” he explained. “This could be a solution for us. I am so glad I came to this event. All of the presentations were excellent.”
|
 |
It was clear that he was surprised by the conference’s quality. I also had a similar experience in Oslo a few days prior, at our RFID Journal LIVE! Europe—Scandinavia event. A gentleman from a regional retail company told me how impressed he was with the presentation provided by Carlo Nizam, Airbus‘ head of value chain visibility and RFID. “His strategic approach is something we can really learn from,” this individual told me.
I’m always pleased when attendees tell me they obtained a great deal of value from our events. You can tell from their reactions that they expected our conference to be filled with people giving sales pitches, and that they were pleasantly surprised to hear one great end-user presentation after another. And because they don’t know what they don’t know about RFID, they come away with a lot of learnings they didn’t expect to receive.
It’s particularly gratifying when attendees learn from presentations that seem unrelated to their particular industry or application. Bombardier Transportation conceived the idea for its track-safety program when an executive from the firm attended a session at one of our previous events about an oil platform evacuation system (to learn more about the track-safety application, see Atlanta’s Transit Authority to Test Bombardier’s Rail-Worker Safety System).
The positive feedback we’ve received from those who have attended our conferences—more than 95 percent say they would recommend our events to a colleague, while 75 percent indicate they obtained new ideas for how RFID can benefit their business—justifies the investment we make in getting end users to speak at our events. Hearing how other companies benefit from RFID validates the technology and offers people confidence to invest in it. And a growing number of businesses are investing in and benefiting from the technology—which is great, since it means we have an ample supply of new potential speakers.
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.