Feature| Exhibition World26| October 2010| THE MAGAZINE FOR THE GLOBAL EXHIBITION COMMUNITY WWW.EXHIBITION-WORLD.NETBig brother: with usor against us?Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), likened bysome to being the 'Google' of the exhibitionsindustry, essentially invites Big Brother onto theshow floor. A cutting-edge iteration now beingintroduced, called Fish Technology, gives organisers andexhibitors the most comprehensive data they have everbeen able to acquire on visitors, tracking themthroughout their visit to a show. How does it work? Well, if an exhibitor has aconversation with a visitor and there's a mutual interest,the visitor can press a small button on their badge andthrough RFID the exhibitor's details will instantly betransferred to the visitor's personalised online showmicro-site. In return, the visitor's details are sent back theother way so that after the show, exhibitors can reviewtheir micro-site and follow-up accordingly. With statisticssuggesting around 75 per cent of exhibitor leads are notfollowed up, anything that simplifies the process shouldbe welcomed.More to the point, for an industry that has never beenknown for giving exhibitors the detailed demographicsthey often demand, RFID could provide the answer.Every aspect of a visitor's attendance can be monitored,providing exhibiting companies with detailed statisticsUK exhibition consultant David Pearsonlooks at the pros and cons of a new breed of RFID technology, and asks if the industry is prepared to take it up.such as visitor flow and dwell-time. It also gives sponsorsa more accurate breakdown of delegate awareness,along with an interactive element for more effective ROI. But how does that sit with what organisers are doingnow? Here, Dave Pearson, MD ofexhibition consultancy FineThinking asks why we're yet to seeFish technology in mainstreamuse.Two years ago, whileworking on the FESPADigital exhibition, theevent organiser introduced meto a new RFID technology that,on the face of it, delivered aninteresting new approach tovisitor data capture at events and morestatistics than an event director could shake a stick at.Since then, a lot has been said and published aboutFish technology, but we're yet to see it in use at largescale trade events. As with any new technology, there are lots of grandclaims about the potential of the system, but how does itfit with what organisers are doing now?David Pearson