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 rade shows and world's fairs have long been the launch pads and proving grounds for technologies that seemed fantastic yesterday but are familiar today - think of fax machines and cell phones, or PCs and light-emitting diodes.
In this third and final installment of "Techno Files," we present three more technologies that exhibitors are ushering from the fringes to the forefront on the trade show floor. They may look as if they have more in common with "Blade Runner" than your business at first, but they bring futurist Bruce Sterling's keen observation into sharp focus: "What I thought was fifty years away, was only ten years away. And what I thought was ten years away . was already here. I just wasn't aware of it yet."
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Geo-social apps are used to deduce the physical location of another party. Relying on data fed from satellites, cell-phone towers, or wireless access points, these programs are capable
of pinpointing a person's position to within 15 feet of his or her exact physical location. While usually associated with a global positioning system (GPS) of 24 satellites that ring the planet (which President Reagan declassified in 1983 for commercial applications), geo-social apps can also fix your location based on your cell phone's proximity to cell-phone towers.
Once you download geo-social apps and set them up on your cell phone or tablet PC, you typically use them for one of three major functions: navigation (finding your way from point A to point B, possibly with info from users to help you dodge speed traps and avoid traffic jams); shopping (locating restaurants, boutiques, or other retail destinations near you, possibly alongside users' rankings of those places); and socializing (connecting and communicating with various online communities).
How fast is it taking off?
 According to the "Geolocation: Risk, Issues and Strategies" report from the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA), approximately 28 percent of U.S. adults use some form of location-based mobile apps, including the services mentioned above as well as others that are trying to put themselves on the cyber-map, such
as Whrrl and Blendr.
Using geo-social apps can mean much more to your company than appearing to keep pace with the cyber Joneses. The "Marketing Via Geosocial Apps: Why and How" report from Cambridge, MA-based
Forrester Research Inc. suggests that while geo-app users skew young - 75 percent of heavy users are between 23 and 45 years old - they're also hugely influential. Calling this group "superconnecteds," "conversationalists," and "critics," Forrester points out that they are twice as likely as the average U.S. adult online to pass around information about a product or service, as well as more prone to share promotions they encounter, including coupons and discount codes.
"While social media continues to grow, more exhibitors are asking attendees to 'check in' at their booths with location-based services like Foursquare, Gowalla, and Facebook Places," says Richard Norby, the vice president of creative services at Live Marketing Inc., a trade show and event-marketing firm headquartered in Chicago. "Consider experimenting with location-based services by offering special deals or giveaways for those who check in at your booth or event. Think of the ripple effect that happens: One person checks in, thereby notifying their entire network of where they're at. Talk about getting additional exposure for your company and brand."
How are exhibitors using it?
Making its first appearance at the 2011 International Consumer Electronics Show, General Electric Co. wanted to showcase its products that are designed to manage consumers' residential- and automotive-electricity needs in a world where energy may soon go from surplus to scarcity. Among the nearly 20 products the Fairfield, CT-based company demonstrated, was the WattStation, an Yves Behar-designed electric-vehicle (EV) charger that reduces recharging time from as much as 18 hours down to
as little as four. But just because the exhibit was about electricity didn't necessarily mean it automatically possessed buzz. So to generate interest in GE's products, especially with key technology bloggers, the company created a unique game it dubbed "GE Desert Quest" that used CES and the iconic Las Vegas Strip
as the game board itself.
Before the show, the company invited influential bloggers to take part, while during CES, staffers invited guests visiting the exhibit to join in. The rules were as simple as a scavenger hunt, because that's exactly what it was: After scanning a Quick Response (QR) code with a smart phone at noon on the first day of play, participants received a sequence of clues that hinted where to locate a series of EVs with recharging stations next to them. Once people Sherlock'ed their first stop - perhaps it was the EV at the Luxor or the MGM Grand hotels - they checked in with GE through the location-based app, which then "recharged" the app's virtual battery. If they didn't hit all six stations by day's end, participants were in jeopardy of draining their virtual battery and losing the game.
Scrambling to find the EVs before their power units pooped out, scavengers pored over clues GE supplied at each stop. GE also brought the game to life by adding a sprinkle of social media. Not only did players help each other through the game app's link to Twitter, but they also racked up extra points for tweeting or posting a Facebook update about the game and GE's eco-friendly technology. To stoke attendees' interest, GE set up a leader board in its booth, where a digital map displayed each player's location. By the game's conclusion, dozens had taken part, with the winners scoring prizes ranging from a Vespa to a Green-themed vacation to Costa Rica. But perhaps the biggest winner of all was GE. The geo-centric game drew more participants than expected and resulted in more than 5,000 hits on Google.
While GE showed how geo-social apps can be effective for engaging attendees through competition, Cisco Systems Inc. demonstrated how they can create camaraderie just as effectively. With an average of more than 140 exhibitors and 10,000 attendees, Cisco Live is an unusual hybrid of a proprietary trade show and a corporate event. When Cisco launched the education and training event for information technology (IT) professionals in 1989, the San Jose, CA-headquartered company drew an audience of just 120. Now held in far-flung cities such as Las Vegas and Melbourne, Australia, the event draws almost 100 times that initial crowd. But with so large a group of attendees hailing from Moscow to Milwaukee, the company wanted to create a community out of the rather disparate demographic. So to foster a sense of global solidarity among its attendees, Cisco turned to a custom geo-location application.
Starting six weeks before the show opened in London, Cisco e-mailed and snail-mailed all registered attendees information introducing what it called the "Cisco Global Events social mobile app," along with directions on how to get it. Available for iPhones, iPads, iPod Touches, BlackBerrys, Androids, and Windows 7 mobile devices, the app was free to download. When attendees stepped onto the convention-center floor, or logged into the virtual program, they could use the app to check for session times, for example, but also to see who else had checked in.
Not only could guests find out who had arrived at the same location - a function similar to Foursquare or Gowalla - but once they had that information, they could chat with other guests, see who was attending this or that session, post pictures of Cisco Live, earn points towards random prize drawings, and even form impromptu meet ups. Long after the event was over, users could still use the app to check in, chat with their cohorts, and catch up on personal and IT-related items. Now extending the app to future Cisco Live conferences and various other global Cisco programs, the company has a base of close to 6,000 (and growing) users. Helping attendees maintain the I'm-with-the-only-people-who-understand-what-I-do nexus that makes a trade show unique, the app Gorilla Glues the bonds that start to form during a convention but often don't sustain past it.
Where can I find out more?
The GPS World website dispenses constant updates on the business and social uses of location-based software and services (there's a helpful glossary, too). For those with more curiosity than time on their hands, the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum posts a quick summary online of how this technological marvel works. The HowStuffWorks online guide to location-based services also supplies a succinct, but informative, take on the tech topic.
Finally, you can check out the book, "Checked-In: How To Use Gowalla, Foursquare and Other Geo-Location Applications for Fun and Profit," by Herbert Tabin and Craig Agranoff. The tome will help you get your bearings with the technology.
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The next wave of computer-human interfaces, gesture recognition uses a series of mathematical algorithms that allow computers to interpret, then respond to, body motions and even facial expressions as subtle as a nod of the head or the blink of an eye. The machines read these movements through input devices, such as wired gloves, where magnetic or inertial tracking devices transmit the position and movement of the hands; controllers, such as joysticks, Wii remotes, and computer mice, that use accelerometers, gyroscopes, and other sensors to relay movement and meaning to the computer; and cameras, which use various software algorithms to interpret the images they record.
How fast is it taking off?
Research into gesture recognition using camera-based computer vision began as far back as the 1990s, but the technology behind it stayed in
a developmental limbo for more
than a decade. Until the 2009 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), that is. There, Microsoft Corp. debuted its Project Natal, which would later launch in 2010 under the name Kinect. A motion-sensing input technology for Microsoft's Xbox 360 video-game console, Kinect could translate facial expressions, gestures, and voices into on-screen actions from busting a dance move to swinging a light sabre. Selling 8 million units in its first 60 days, Kinect achieved the status of "fastest selling consumer electronics device in history" according to Guinness World Records Ltd.
That technological tipping point spurred an outpouring of so many products so quickly, Forrester Research predicts that by 2016, gesture recognition will be integrated into
virtually every computer medium, from your smart phone and tablet
PC to the ATM machine.
"Gesture-recognition technology is intuitive and will draw people into a booth for games or other experiences," says Corbin Ball, CMP, a technology consultant and author of "The Ultimate Technology Guide for Meeting Professionals. "Input devices like it are definitely the wave of the future."
How are exhibitors using it?
Economy cars have about as much soul as top-40 radio - and are about as much fun to drive as the auto-tuned songs are to listen to. So when Kia Motors America Inc. planned its exhibit at the Los Angeles Auto Show last year, the Seoul, South Korea-based company found a way to put
a little funk and fun into its brand
with the help of gesture-recognition
technology - and giant hamsters.
 Kia found a clever way to hotwire attendees' interest with a sophisticated gesture-recognition system that engaged visitors by entertaining them. Designed by EWI Worldwide, a Livonia, MI-based live-communications agency, the system was made up of a 20-by-12-foot pearl-white linoleum dance floor next to a freestanding 22-by-35-foot rear-projection screen positioned in the middle of the booth. When visitors cruised in, they stepped into a 4-foot-diameter circle, which caused their image to appear instantly on the screen - along with one of three hoodie-wearing hamsters. Part of an ongoing marketing campaign that began in 2009, the rapping rodents had become immensely popular (one YouTube video of the "Hamstars," as they became known, amassed more than 13 million views). Thus, the sight of them boogieing on the projection screen understandably drew in passersby familiar with the television commercials. But once curious booth visitors stepped onto the dance floor, the promotion morphed from the orthodox to the unusual.
The computer system scanned guests' location, movements, and even height. Then, the system inserted a hip-hop Hamstar next to their image on the screen. With LMFAO's song "Party Rock Anthem" booming in the background, the Hamstars beckoned the guests to get down with them. Each Hamstar could dance with an attendee for up to 30 seconds, but as soon as one Hamstar exited the scene, another one would take its place, for as long as attendees kept dancing. Everyone who hoofed it with the Hamstars had the option of receiving a video of the experience via e-mail.
The results were as fragrant as that new-car smell. Expecting perhaps one to five people at a time on the floor, Kia found 10 to 20 were dancing at any given moment, with another 30 to 40 standing at the perimeter watching or waiting to join in. Plus, attendees parked themselves on the dance floor for an average of 20 minutes, nearly four times what Kia expected. Moreover, the connection guests made to Kia extended past the show: Fifty-six percent of people who had their Hamstar dance video e-mailed to them also opted to join Kia's mailing list, a result about 10 percent better than anticipated. In light of Kia's 2011 sales revving up roughly 54 percent, using motion-sensing technology in its booth proved to be much more than just the same old song and dance.
But gesture recognition isn't just about entertaining visitors more effectively - it's also about informing attendees more efficiently. That's the moral of Avtex Inc.'s experience with the motion-sensing tech. At the 2011 Minnesota High Tech Association (MHTA) Spring Conference in Minneapolis, for example, it would have had to jam its 10-by-10-foot booth with a forest's worth of brochures, signs, and other physical forms of literature to tell visitors about all the services the new company now offered. Instead of congesting the modest space with enough paper to qualify for an episode of "Hoarders," however, the company turned to gesture recognition.
Working with nParallel LLC, an agency that specializes in brand-communication strategies for trade show exhibitors and retailers, Avtex devised a simple but appealing way to draw in attendees. Inside its booth, the company placed a 46-inch LCD screen in portrait mode coupled with a Microsoft Kinect system against the exhibit's back wall. Worried that the motion-tracking system might feel intimidating, Avtex found an ingenious way to make what might have been something mystifying into something more matter of fact. Customizing the screen using a Microsoft Kinect software-development kit, Avtex designed the interface to resemble a giant cell phone - something virtually every attendee was sure to be familiar with. The mobile-phone metaphor was instantly understandable to attendees, who wandered in and, with little prompting from the staff at hand, started to interact with the large screen.
Using gestures that mimicked the way they use their cell phones - e.g., pinching, zooming, tapping - visitors quickly accessed textual as well as audio and video info on the company. To gather attendees' contact info when they were done, Avtex also offered to put them in a drawing for U2 tickets in exchange for their name, company, phone, and e-mail details. Fifty visitors entered the contest, 25 percent more than the company anticipated. But the real payoff wasn't just the lead info, valuable as it was. When Avtex contacted several of the leads later, they mentioned the impression the futuristic gesture-recognizing screen had left on them - and by extension, the impression the company had made. Since then, Avtex has worked the technology into other exhibits as well as a traveling road show, drawing in crowds and spreading the word of its talents through its technology.
Where can I find out more?
Microsoft researcher Bill Buxton offers a free online PDF on gesture-based interaction that covers the technology's capabilities and challenges, while the "Gesture Recognition Review" website gathers a wide variety of links to published studies and books explaining the background and future of the technology. An explanatory video, made by Microsoft and posted on New Scientist magazine's website, offers a fascinating visual
explanation of how Kinect "sees" a body and defines its movements.
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Tracing their origin back to Charles Wheatstone's 1838 patent for a stereoscopic viewing device, 3-D displays generate lifelike pictures that seem to possess height, width, and depth. The process behind creating
these images usually combines a picture-taking system that records images from two different perspectives and a special viewer or pair of glasses that merges the two perspectives into a single, hyper-realistic image. Some of the real-as-life imaging is even considered "autostereoscopic" - that is, liberated from its dependency on special eyewear.
How fast is it taking off?
Three-dimensional displays were omnipresent at the 2011 CES, where companies exhibited 3-D DVD players, cameras, laptops, televisions, and cell phones as well as LCD and plasma screens. Whether requiring spectacles or not, 3-D technology is spreading at the speed of an Internet meme.
DisplaySearch, a business unit of market-research firm NPD Group Inc., predicts that all 3-D displays (monitors, laptops, phones, etc.) will grow almost 28,000 percent from an anemic 700,000 units manufactured in 2008 to an astounding 196 million
units produced in 2018. But that estimate may turn out to be overly tentative: Insight Media LLC, a Norwalk, CT-based market-research and consulting firm that focuses on the electronic-display industry, estimates that 2011 sales of 3-D displays topped 95 million, reaching more than half the number DisplaySearch projected would be sold six years from now.
 "When it comes to 3-D imaging, exhibitors will rush to this new technology and embrace it faster than any other display technology introduced in the last 20 years," says Ivan Lazarev, CEO of ITN International Inc., a Bethesda, MD-based firm which helps create mobile-marketing, lead-management, and attendee-tracking solutions for events and trade shows. "The ability to show solutions in 3-D without the actual product being displayed will revolutionize face-to-face marketing."
How are exhibitors using it?
The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) had a challenge that was almost as daunting as sending astronauts to Mars. The Baltimore-based STScI is the science and operations center for the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Besides researching galaxy evolution, and educating the public about the cosmos, the institute's diverse duties also include seeking out astronomers at science conventions and encouraging them to apply for research time on NASA's publicly funded HST.
But with an exhibiting budget as small as space is huge, STScI needed a creative booster rocket to give its program some thrust. So for the 217th Convention of the American Astronomical Society last year, it purchased a $2,000, 55-inch Samsung 3-D monitor. STScI hoped word of the monitor, set on a floor stand in the booth, would spread faster than the speed of light - especially when attendees found out what was on it: hard-core space porn.
When attendees cruised into the exhibit, staffers led them to the 3-D display and handed them a pair of "active system" glasses. Staffers flicked a switch on the glasses that sent a an electric charge through the liquid-crystal lenses. When that happened, each transparent lens started to alternately darken and lighten, automatically synchronizing with the screen and allowing the content to appear in three dimensions.
After visitors donned the specs, what they saw was literally out of this world - a series of six 45- to 60-second-long 3-D visualizations of iconic images the history-making HST has captured since its launch in 1990, including the eye-of-Sauron-like Helix Nebula; and the "Red Bubble" Nebula, a sphere of glowing pink gas six light years in diameter.
Even without any pre-show promotion, the 3-D images were hard to ignore. Designed by the same "astrovisualization team" who worked on the popular "Hubble 3D" Imax movie in 2010, the psychedelically intense imagery pulled attendees in from the aisles like a tractor beam. Tantalizing the audience with the very same kinds of objects they could observe on the HST itself, the STScI hauled in 800 of the conference's 2,900 attendees - nearly twice what it hoped - using 3-D display technology to show them they could boldly go where most astronomers have never gone before.
If STScI used 3-D to bring the final frontier to the show floor, Mercedes-Benz employed it to secure its status as a leader of the pack when it comes to automotive technology. Now a division of Daimler AG, the Stuttgart, German car maker wanted to prove its latest products were still on the cutting edge of automotive technology. But in an industry bumper to bumper with high-tech wonders, Mercedes-Benz sought to add another dimension to its marketing. A third dimension, to be precise.
Working with Dimensional Communications Inc., an exhibit house in Northvale, NJ, the company's domestic branch, Mercedes-Benz USA LLC, decided it would race ahead of the competition by becoming the first car maker to produce a 3-D film for a major automotive expo. Selecting the New York International Auto Show as the venue at which to debut the motoring
movie, the company positioned a 16-by-9-foot rear-projection screen inside the 14,000-square-foot booth. In addition to the massive screen, there were also four more 46-inch 3-D LCD monitors situated around the booth that would display the same content.
When attendees steered in to the booth, staffers passed out pairs of Mercedes-Benz-branded polarized glasses. After visitors donned the specs - similar to those moviegoers wore to watch "Avatar" - they were treated to a six-minute film that showed the new S400 Hybrid E-Class Cabriolet and the Mercedes SLS AMG GT3 race car careening over the Pacific Coast.
Filmed near Santa Barbara, CA's ocean-side Sandpiper Golf Course, and other California-dreaming locations, what might have been a banal blandishment in 2-D became so realistic in 3-D, you could almost feel the sun shining. Running nearly 50 times a day on each of the five screens, the movie drew in an estimated 50,000 viewers over the course of the show and several other events combined, 20 percent more than the company anticipated. By using 3-D to imply the company's tech leadership, Mercedes-Benz proved to attendees that you don't have to rely on the metal of car models alone to prove your technological mettle.
Where can I find out more?
HowStuffWorks' online resource offers several primers on 3-D television, projectors, glasses, and more that help bring the technology into sharper focus. The Stereoscopy News website supplies news and background info on virtually every aspect of 3-D technology from gaming, movies, and cell phones to trends, technical standards, and history, as well as a list of 3-D related conferences. A glossary from the 3D@Home Consortium and the MPEG Industry Forum 3DTV Working
Group will get you up to speed on nearly 250 3-D-related terms. If you want to delve deeper into the big picture of 3-D, Keith Fredericks' book "The Future of 3D Media" examines intriguing ways he believes 3-D will merge with social media.
The future may bring even stranger wonders - monitors that deliver customized content based on your emotions, machines that implant memories, and even holograms you can feel. Adapting your program to these marvels might seem as puzzling as it is frightening. As the tech visionary Stewart Brand said, "Once a new technology rolls over you, if you're not part of the steamroller, you're part of the road." But no matter what you see rolling your way, you can avoid becoming technological roadkill by keeping in mind an old African proverb: "Tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today." E
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