Skift Take
Conference sessions that incorporate a second screen experience not only benefit the user, but the next generation qualitative analytics are now helping event organizers improve content strategy.
Adoption of second screen technology is growing across the consumer sector, with Google reporting in September last year that 84% of television viewers use another device to source and share info related to what they're watching.
Tapping into that behavior, Disney developed apps that sync up with movies like TRON and Pirates of the Caribbean to provide supplementary content. Big sporting and entertainment events are also building second screen content, such as the recent announcement about Intel and ESPN partnering to offer real-time data about contestants' performance at X Games Aspen.
For the last two years, the conference industry has been pushing similar tech experiences to varying degrees of success in the form of audience participation apps, such as sli.do and conferences i/o. During live sessions, attendees can answer polls and pose questions via those apps to augment the value of a speaker presentation or panel discussion by making them two-way conversations.
The Freeman event company is now driving event app technology into a new era through a series of recent developments and acquisitions, including new advances in measuring live audience engagement.
A little background first.
Long a dominant player in event management and logistics, Freeman launched its FreemanXP digital creative agency in 2013 to provide experiential event marketing services.
In December, the company unveiled Freeman Digital Ventures to "accelerate innovation and provide investments and partnerships that support the increasing impact that technology and digital advances are having on the brand experience category." Kicking that off, Freeman officially partnered with the DoubleDutch event ap
