QnA: Digital nametag that can do audience response, agenda, etc.
Question from "Anonymous" on formspring.me:I'm looking for a digital nametag that can do audience response, push agenda changes, etc. nTag offers such a tag as a service, but I want to own the technology and use it myself. Seen anything like that?
Answer: Just hooked in Twitter and WordPress into formspring, so let's see how it rolls... (*edit* other than making the post title the entire question, the answer is, "Pretty slick!" Just made some format changes, and voila!)
While a lot of companies are trying to become the next big thing in meeting management technology, they all have slightly different takes on the form factor. nTag is one of the only ones I've seen that is a nicely integrated part of the name tag, if that's what's important to you.
I'm excited to see the new iml ARS, http://www.imlworldwide.com/beyondvoting/, which looks more like a BlackBerry than anything. As the smartphone and flatscreen industries continue to innovate, I see no reason why we won't soon see nearly flat, iPhone sized, touch enabled name badges in the next couple of years that will do it all.
As for your purchasing question, think long and hard about wanting to own that technology. It's the backend that makes it all work and opens up the true power of these devices. Unless you have a team of developers standing by to write your own software, it's probably going to be a while before any "off the shelf" software is going to deliver on nTag's promises. I think about the ARS system we bought for thousands of dollars only around 5 years ago. The software has only been updated once by the manufacturer, and looks horribly outdated compared to modern PPT and Keynote presentations. Though the hardware is still rock solid, the software behind it takes the polish off pretty quick for those that have seen more current devices.
