Monday 3 March 2014

RFID & NFC, Expanding Your Festival Experience



Source: Tech Radar


People these days are becoming more enriched and engaged with technology.  No matter what a person may be doing they are only a reach away from popular social media platforms like FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram to name a few.   If you ever attended a music festival or know someone who has you will see constant updates ranging from status updates, pictures and videos.  New technology in the form of RFID and NFC are changing the way people experience music festivals.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)

This technology was first use in the manufacturing process by tracking the production of a car's and later form tracking packages through warehouses. At Bonnaroo music festival all goers were equipped with these tags to gain entry into the event, in addition they had the chance to link the tags up with their FaceBook accounts.  By doing this it allowed them to simply tap their wristband at stations at any of the 10 stages to perform a FaceBook check-in.  The check-in had details of the time and place which made it easier to find lost friends and even showed what artist was currently playing. There were even booths spread out around the grounds were people could take pictures and by simply tapping their wristband it would be uploaded to FaceBook! In 2012 one of the booths that had been set up generated 20,000 photo uploads with over 250,000 live clicks.


Near Field Communication (NFC)

NFC is simply an extension of RFID but most commonly embedded in our smart phones.  It can be used for this like wireless payments and can make any software or hardware perform a certain task when linked.
At PIAS Nites music festival in Belgium are going to be using this technology in the form of NFC cards.  These cards will allow for users to link their FaceBook accounts to these cards and allow to friend people they meet in real life by simply tapping the two cards together.  It will also allow people to share content with one another by holding an open picture or video up to this card which in turn will upload the content to their FaceBook page.



The possibilities with this technology are endless right now it has mainly been used with FaceBook but with the mass amount of social media platforms it makes tons of room for innovation. From a marketing perspective this is a game changer.  The technology allows companies to effectively create online communities and exclusive content on their festival all of which is user created. It allows for promoters to get a more accurate picture of how successful their festival experience is and what events are being discussed the most. 
Source :RFID Steve

Sources

http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?10829/2

http://www.fastcompany.com/1742315/facebook-friending-tech-test-nfc-belgian-music-festival