We spoke with Bradley Metrock, CEO of Score Publishing, about his experience using SpeechBooth and his advice for other conference organizers looking to incorporate a video booth into their event.
Tell us about Score Publishing…
Score Publishing is a media company focused on both print and digital, but we also have a live events business and our own podcast network VoiceFirstFM, which focuses on voice technology. Our podcast The Voice of Healthcare sponsored a recent event where we wanted to experiment with bringing people together in a physical way around this idea of examining how modern healthcare is interfacing with voice technology.
SpeechBooth is very helpful in that it allows attendees to comment in real time on the proceedings of a conference.
What value did SpeechBooth provide to your event?
To connect the dots for conference organizers: if you pay for SpeechBooth, you get this multimedia that you will have at your disposal. This will cost you 50 cents on the dollar for what you would pay a professional videographer to come in and solicit people, spend all day, and then spend more time editing the video and send it to you.
it allows attendees to comment in real time on the proceedings of a conference. It also lets attendees provide feedback, and comment on the conference itself, as it is happening.
There is a lot of pressure on medium to large-size events to have thorough documentation on what took place. There are a lot of pieces to that – speakers, panels, sessions. What makes SpeechBooth different is it covers the other part of the show. It documents what’s going on outside the lecture hall. You’re giving a luxury of a large event, and making it available from a cost standpoint to a small-to-medium sized event. The concept of being able to video attendees out in the hallway, while they’re taking a break, or at the end of the day when they’re willing to provide feedback. That is a luxury item for a conference. Usually, by the time you realize you need it, you didn’t record it.
What makes SpeechBooth different is it covers the other part of the show. It documents what’s going on outside the lecture hall. You’re giving a luxury of a large event, and making it available from a cost standpoint to a small-to-medium sized event.
What are you going to do with your edited compilation?
Our thought is to use it for marketing on our YouTube channel. It would commemorate the event and we could use it throughout the year as we promote the next event. I could also easily see the raw videos being useful, stripping the audio out and incorporating it into a podcast of some sort. I think the audio files will be useful to have on hand in case we want to highlight a particular person’s comments.
How would you use SpeechBooth in again? Would you change anything?
I would allow people to either share information on whatever topic is at hand for the conference they are attending, or I would provide the opportunity for attendees to use SpeechBooth as a feedback mechanism on the event, intended for the organizers. If the feedback is positive, it could be easily be made public. That’s a very compelling reason for conferences to use SpeechBooth.
We’re directly tied to voice technology, so we have a lot of use for people getting on video talking about the content of the conference. If we were just an event organizer, hired to come in and manage the event, do we care if someone’s talking about content? No we don’t. But as an organizer, do we really care about capturing people talking about how great a job we did? Yes we do. If you provide prompts in either direction: ‘tell us about the content’ or ‘tell us about the conference’ –or both, that’s fantastic. You could even take an event logo, put it up in the top corner of a sign and put the prompt in the center to make it easy for people to see what they should talk about.
As an organizer, do we really care about capturing people talking about how great a job we did? Yes we do.
Do you have any advice for other conference organizers looking to incorporate SpeechBooth into their event?
As you might imagine, it can be intimidating to walk up to a stationary camera, decipher what it is there for, and then engage the hardware to record. You need the express buy-in of the conference from the beginning, their full understanding what this thing is so they can explain to their attendees; what they are going to do with the videos, why attendees should take five minutes to use it. The conference is the only group of people that can communicate that. If done correctly, there’s definitely a use case and a lot of value to a conference organizer.
You can download the full case study here:
Case Study: The Voice of Healthcare Summit [pdf].
For general information about SpeechBooth for Business: speechbooth.com/conferences.
Other useful tips how-to guides:
Encouraging High Use of SpeechBooth at a Conference [pdf]
Selecting an Effective SpeechBooth Prompt [pdf].