Usher: Personalized event assistant

[mayankdang]

Ether address: 0xB17434167923fa5404ac6B703f1DBd85620a77F1

Purpose

Usher is the one-stop app for event creators/managers and ticket buyers/event attendees to efficiently engage and interact with one another within a secure ecosystem. It helps the event managers conduct events smoothly by leveraging customer behaviour & venue related metrics, hence allowing them to understand and serve the attendees better. On the ticket buyer side, the app serves as a single platform to manage their engagements with multiple events. They can keep track of all their event engagements at one place, and receive discounts, offers and personalized assistance during the events based on real time location cues.

On the ticket buyer/event attendee side: Ticketing, event information, merchandise information, coupons & discounts, offers & promotions, venue navigation, reward points, social media interactions, transaction summaries, and much more.

On the event creator/manager side: Ticketing, crowd management, personnel allotment, resource allocation, real time monitoring, inventory management, streamlined promotions, venue metrics, customer behaviour insights, customer feedback, and much more.

Problem

Event managers need to have a good understanding of the attendees in order to serve them in best possible manner. They want to develop a rapport with the attendees and engage them personally. The greater the interaction, the more attendees feel a sense of inclusion and enjoy the event.

However, not all event managers and coordinators have the resources or capability to develop an app for themselves, and for each individual event. Creating an exclusive app can become a real headache from the logistics point of view (resource intensive), marketing (rebuilding brand image separately for each event), and even for the folks attending it (too many apps). More often, even for big-events, like Tomorrowland, Coachella, US Open, etc., users download the app once and forget about it, since they don’t want to invest too much and learn the app functionalities only for the duration of the event.

This is the problem we’re trying to solve - engagement with the audience, the backbone of success for any event, big or small, both pre-event and real time (during-event).

Solution

Let’s divide the event into Pre, During and Post event phases and discuss the functionalities that the app will provide for both event creator/managers and event attendees/ticket buyers:

Pre-event

It is very important to build attendee engagement from before the actual event. Ticket buyers can browse the app for event information, while their interactions with the app will allow the managers to gain some initial insight into their customer profile, and accordingly manage preparations.

App functionalities:

Managers:

• Ticket selling platform (Engagement with Aventus protocol)
• Provide event information and updates
• Allow ticket buyers to pre-book meals and merchandise: This helps the organisers and vendors to manage inventory
• Link relevant social media pages and handles with the event, so that any updates made on those avenues are shared with the attendees
• Provide ticket buyers weekly digests containing press releases/movie trailers/news articles during the run up to the event to build up anticipation
• Upload map of the complete arena or stadium or hall, tagging areas allocated for food spaces, restrooms, photobooth, main event, etc.

  Attendees:

• Ticket buying platform (Ticket booking to involve engagement with Aventus protocol)
• Access to event information (schedules, artist profiles, etc) , venue directions and other details like parking, accommodation
• Pre-book meals and merchandise at concessional rates, and for reward points
• Get all social media updates related to the event, and share/spread the hype

During event:

The main utility of this app is during the event, and is centred around location & activity tracking of attendees to personalise the app experience for them. Through this approach, it is possible to bridge the gap between the digital & physical world, and use location cues to provide valuable services to the attendees and insights to event managers.

Recording customer’s activities help in the development of a user profile, which would then be used for recommending future events to users, as well as services & merchandise in-event, real time based on their preferences. Insight to customer behaviour is the most important asset that enables marketers to take intelligent decisions and target segments that are relevant to their product.

Before getting into the during-event functionalities of the app, let’s discuss how we plan on tracking customer location and activity within the premises. Location tracking will be done using these five approaches:

1. Good ol’ GPS: gives us an estimate of where the person is within the premises.
2. RFID tags: RFID bands will be provided to attendees at entrance, which they’ll need to wear during the event. These will get triggered every time the wearer enters or exits a certain area of the venue.
3. Indoor tracking through bluetooth beacons: For indoor tracking, beacons can be pre-installed on the venue that triangulate and provide an accurate estimate for the location of entities. [1][2]
4. WiFi Location Monitor: Mobile devices can be pinged through WiFi signals to get an estimate on location. When the attendees log into the venue WiFi, it is possible to get an even more accurate reading. [3][4][5]
5. Transactional fix: Every time an attendee makes a transaction at a store/stall on the venue, their location will be relayed back.

Most of these methods are pretty easy to setup pre-event and can be easily carried out through a third party. Beacons are the only technology that need some significant investment, both in terms of cost and installation. These will only be used at venues which frequently serve as hosts to a variety of events, like arenas, stadiums and convention centres.

Also, venue maps will be required for each event to link up geo-coordinates to the different sections on premises. This can again be done by a third party, and since most popular venues are re-used frequently, once a database is established with venue details, the process will be easier and cost incurred for this activity will we significantly reduced.

Now that we’ve established how location tracking will be done on the venue, let’s look at the app functionalities for managers and users during the event.

Managers:

• Access to customised dashboards providing the following insights:
  • Attendees’ movement and flow, including queue times, dwell times, wait times and first-time/repeat visitors
  • Spend/Transaction profile from stores/stalls/vendors
  • Inventory information for different stores/stalls on premise
  • Real time ratings and reviews from users
  • Venue heatmap
• Real time crowd management: Managers can take resource/personnel allocation calls based on real time cues. Security and volunteers can be better mobilized this way during the event.
• Real time event updates and important announcements can be provided to app users
• Advertisements and offers can be designed and served based on event trends & location cues; will help promote sales of goods/merchandise and encourage purchase through Aventus tokens
• Ability to tie in social initiatives through a gamified experience (points/rewards for keeping venue clean, sharing social messages, etc)
• Use recommender systems to leverage behaviour profile of attendee from previous event engagements and offer services based on personal preferences

  Attendees:

• Real time event updates like change in schedules, or any emergency announcements
• Access to best offers available at stalls/stores close to them on the venue
• Directions to best alternatives In case of certain stores running out of goods and services
• Directions to the nearest exits/food stalls/merch stores/restrooms/other facilities
• Ability to keep track of all families and friends attending the event with them
• Ability to pay for commodities using points/rewards earned through the app
• Provide real time ratings and reviews for facilities on the venue so that the event staff can act promptly on issues

  Post-event:

  Once the event is done, it is important to collate the data from the event to attain valuable insights. Here are some post-event functionalities:

  Managers:

• Record attendees’ spend and customer activity profiles, and leverage this consumer behaviour to streamline future promotions
• Verify transactions from the event,and send reports to third party vendors for aggregation
• Go over customer feedback, ratings and reviews

  Attendees:

• Provide post event feedback through surveys and forums
• Share moments and experience from event through social media channels
• Go over their transactions and reward points from the event

Monetization

Usher makes sure that every interaction between the users and the events that takes place happens through the Aventus platform, right from purchasing tickets of multi-tiered class to the purchase of merchandise, food coupons and rolling out hot discounted offers to users automatically based on their interests and locational cues.

Insight to customer behaviour is the most important asset that enables marketers to take intelligent decisions and target segments that are relevant to their product. Social events are one of the best ways to market relevant merchandize, since customers are more likely to spend extravagantly in their leisure time [6][7][8]. The option to choose multiple events from a single place and targeting specific ones relevant to the brand, based on the profile of the types of users attending those events is a powerful feature that would be available to the marketers, as well.

The fact that all the transactions, involving users, marketers and event managers would be done in AVT would raise the demand and value of the underlying protocol, that is, Aventus, as well.

Growth Hacking

Since Usher is an inherently social platform, the increase in its adoption can be accelerated by social growth methods, triggering network effects. The increase in such methods would result in higher adoption of the platform from visitors, event organizers and marketers.

• Development of a referral system that would incentivise users already a part of the platform to invite their friends and family. The rewards, which would be in the form of AVT tokens, could then be used to buy tickets for new events and pay for food or other merchandise in the events. This is the primary and arguably the most powerful method to generate network effects.
• The fine points in organizing any event involve logistics (creating a separate app for the event), marketing (both for the event and the app, as , information dispersal and creating hype around the project. Usher facilitates all the above facets of event management, creating a strong value proposition for the event managers. Moreover, event managers can be incentivized to provide a much positive experience for the crowd, either by value recommendations facilitated by strong location cues (obtained by wifi triangulation installed by the managers), or by active crowd management by keeping tabs on the crowd behaviour provided by our statistics dashboard and avoiding the development of hot spots during the event. Again, the incentives would be in the form of AVT tokens, which would further add to the circulation of the crypto-currency, and add to its future adoption. The positive experience would be quantified by ascertaining the nature of reviews received by the crowd during and after the event.
• Incentivising the adoption of the platform by major marketers is another strategy that can be employed. The marketers would be incentivised on the basis of the number of merchandise that they could sell, or the number of food items or drink that they could sell to the customers. Keeping track of the number would be easy, since all the sales take place through AVT tokens via Aventus protocol.

We want users to think of Usher when they think of anything from music concerts to movie ticket bookings, to operas or even football matches.

FAQ's

Who is this app for?

This app is for all the social people who like to go out to different types of events, from bar crawls to movies, from operas to stand-up comedies. Event managers can use this app to list their events on a safe and reliable platform that is trusted by the crowd. Marketers and advertisers can use this app to target different crowd segments based on the user interests and provide real time offers to them during the event based on location cues employed by the event coordinators. We aim to build a robust and hassle-free ecosystem that makes the whole process from event discovery, ticketing, interaction and feedback more secure, reliable and friendly for all parties involved.

Is user data safe? How are you providing recommendations?

The feedback loop takes into account the events attended by the user, their movement, flow and their spend and transaction profiles. All the data stated above is stored on the blockchain, which makes it really transparent to track the parties involved who have access to the data. Since the data that is stored is not linked explicitly to the user profile, the identity of users is secure. Moreover, if the user wants, recommendations and user profiling can be turned off from the main settings dashboard. This would disable any form of user feedback. The availability of this option and the overall transparency involved in the complete process would lend trust to the crowd.

Why blockchain?

The usage of blockchain ensures transparency in ticket booking process, and makes sure that the users are in control of their data. Since the data and code is not run on a central platform, and is distributed on the ethereum network (Dapp), the enhanced transparency affords a sense of safety and credibility to the platform.

What is the need for a unified app for all events, when there are separate apps for each event?

Currently, the engagement and information dispersion related to events happens in a disorganized manner, involving different apps, social media pages and instant messaging platform groups. The nature of this ecosystem does not facilitate uniform information dispersal, and more often than not, creates unnecessary hassle for the users. It is our view that a single app facilitating all information related to multiple events would make the lives of all the players easier. Along with ensuring relevant recommendations of new events to the users, it would also help in the building of trust and rapport with the users, by providing them with personalized content related to events, based on their preferences.

How is Usher related to Aventus?

Aventus aims to build a protocol that makes the process of ticket booking fairer and transparent. Usher is a layer on top of Aventus, since it streamlines the complete process from event recommendations, ticket booking and engagement building both prior to and during the event. It would, in a sense, be a complete ecosystem that facilitates the whole event attending experience. Payment of merchandise and food coupons using Aventus would lead to a much higher adoption and demand for the AVT tokens, and would lead to an escalation of its prices, increasing its valuation as well. Hence, Usher is a rational addition to the Aventus umbrella that aligns with its vision and scope.

Footnote

I would be happy to answer any other questions about this plan. Please email all the queries to mayank.dang.42@gmail.com. I would try to answer those as quickly as possible.

Usher aims to be the one-stop app that comes to people’s minds world over, when they think of anything from movies to concerts, from operas to even football matches. If you like this idea, I request you to vote for it. Please go to https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1DVdtzHpfoCoem6iRSz67Br3Cews1kTC5dnhzLbJlEx8, and select “Usher”. If “Usher” is not among the listed options, select the option “Other” and fill in “Usher” in the field provided. Thank you very much.

References

[1]: Indoor positioning system based on BLE beacons (https://locatify.com/blog/indoor-positioning-systems-ble-beacons/) [2]: Bluetooth low energy beacons (https://www.infsoft.com/technology/sensors/bluetooth-low-energy-beacons) [3]: Wifi triangulation (https://www.accuware.com/products/locate-wifi-devices/) [4]: Real Time Location based Tracking using WIFI Signals ( https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e79d/1c63c615b164526dc88283306e9aa21d3e46.pdf) [5]: Wifi indoor triangulation (https://www.infsoft.com/blog-en/articleid/40/indoor-navigation-using-wifi-as-a-positioning-technology) [6]: Trends Impacting Festival and Consumer Events (https://eventbrite-s3.s3.amazonaws.com/marketing/britepapers/Britepaper_6newtrends_webVersion.pdf) [7]: Merchandise revenue in sports markets (https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/hospitality-leisure/pdf/changing-the-game-outlook-for-the-global-sports-market-to-2015.pdf) [8]: Youngsters will spend trillions on live events as long as they get a discount (https://www.forbes.com/sites/leeseymour/2016/01/15/millennials-will-spend-trillions-on-live-events-as-long-as-they-get-a-discount/#7eb0c3cb65ca)

[annikamonari]

This proposal has been approved.

[LegalEngineering]

Congrats! Nice idea.

[mayankdang]

Thank you! :)

[annikamonari]

@mayankdang Please edit the top post to have your Ethereum address so we can give you your reward.