Credit Where It's Due

For many attendees, one of the most important reasons to attend education sessions at events is to ensure they have the required continuing education they need.

In the past, staff members had to be posted at the door of each session to track people entering and exiting. Robert Lowe, vice president and event architect for Nth Degree, said tracking session credits for one of his company's clients, the RSA Conference, was a laborious process, especially since 15,000 people regularly attended the U.S.-based edition.

“It was very manual and paper-based,” he added. “We had to have someone literally sit outside the door, and there (often) were long lines to sign in and out.”

Four years ago, though, tracking education credits suddenly got a lot easier at the RSA Conference when Nth Degree started using ITN Intl.'s Touch N' Go radio-frequency identification technology.

“It's been really helpful from the standpoint of tracking credits,” Lowe said. “It's made it faster and more efficient.”

ITN Intl.'s Touch N' Go technology allows attendees to have their RFID-enabled badges read by a mobile phone that has near-field communication capabilities, allowing it to read any RFID media, according to Ivan Lazarev, the company's president.

“The data is transferred through a mobile network, and there is immediate access to the information,” Lazarev said.

The Touch N' Go technology is considered short-range RFID, he added, meaning someone has to swipe a badge within an inch of the mobile phone.

Smart-reg Intl., another company offering short-range RFID to track education sessions, calls its reader the Tap N' Go. What makes it different from the Touch N' Go product is, instead of mobile phone RFID readers, either a stand-up or handheld reader is available, according to Smart-reg Intl. President and CEO Arnie Roberts.

Fifteen shows annually use the company's Tap N' Go technology to track education sessions, Roberts said. “(Show managers) want to know, 'How do I know someone really signed up and attended the session?'” he added.

Smart-reg Intl. offers two different options to track credits, Roberts said: a spreadsheet at the end of the event with the name of everyone who attended each session, or print-on-demand kiosks where attendees are able to have their certificates printed onsite.

Judy Osborn, manager of conferences and expositions for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers – Intl. Gas Turbine Institute, said her organization uses the Tap N' Go technology for its tradeshow and education sessions.

The association's annual event has more than 218 sessions, she added, though RFID isn't used for tracking credits, but, instead, to keep track of different types of registration levels.

“We have different costs for three-day and five-day registrations, and there are people who are visitors or others who only are authorized to go to technical sessions,” Osborn said.

In addition, she added, the information obtained by the RFID allows the group to decide what kind of space should be set aside for each session, as well as dictate programming based on attendance.

And, Osborn said, RFID keeps people from straying where they're not supposed to. “It's ironic ... to me that people don't argue with a machine,” she added. “They just know that it's going to check whether they should be there or not. There's a lot less stress.”

Short-range RFID technology isn't the only option for show managers looking to track education credits.

Long-range technology, which usually utilizes overhead RFID badge readers or readers on the side of doorways going into a room, can read information from farther away than the inch needed for short-range badges, according to Roger Lewis, AllianceTech's executive vice president.

“Long-range (RFID) can go up to 50 feet, but a better read range is 20 to 25 ft.,” Lewis said.

He added more than 20 events annually use AllianceTech's RFID technology to track education sessions.

Matt Scanlon, senior meeting planner for the Investment Company Institute, said his company uses the long-range technology at four of the 10 meetings it holds each year.

“Before, we used to do things the old-fashioned way and have people sign in and sign out,” he added. “The trouble with that ... is it's the honor system. People could leave the room and then come back at the end and sign out.”

With up to 2,000 attendees to keep track of, Scanlon said it was much easier to use AllianceTech's overhead RFID badge readers at the doorways of sessions and know where people were at all times.

Experient, which primarily is a housing and registration company, also has partnered with AllianceTech in the past to use long-range RFID technology at the Radiological Society of North America Scientific Assembly & Annual Meeting, held at McCormick Place in Chicago, to track continuing education credits.

“I think one of the things I like about it is, when you see demand on certain sessions, you can prepare yourself in real time in terms of space,” said Terence Donnelly, Experient's vice president. “You can change the setup or you can go to theater-style. You can also change F&B and save a lot on real-time discussions.”

Janet Cooper, RSNA's director of convention operations, said her organization used AllianceTech's RFID technology to track education credits at its show as a “pilot program” the past two years.

There are approximately 1,900 continuing medical education course opportunities available at the show, she added, of which RFID was used for 10 percent of them, or about 213 sessions.

This year, however, RFID will not be used to track sessions at the upcoming Nov. 29-Dec. 4 show, Cooper said. Accuracy was an issue, she added, with credits being tracked during the RFID pilot program in the upper 80th to lower 90th percentile, as opposed to 100-percent accuracy using more traditional methods.

“We'll probably circle back (to RFID) in a year or two,” she added. “We hope the technology will improve.”

The cost may be another reason more shows that track education credits aren't willing to make the switch to RFID, Roberts said.

When the technology was first introduced, Smart-reg Intl.'s RFID-enabled badges cost $2 each, he added, but now they typically sell for 45 cents, but can go down as far as 37 cents with a larger order.

Even so, Roberts conceded, “More people aren't jumping on it still because of the cost.”