A different way to connect festival sponsors with attendees

During a festival, sponsors contribute to the attendee experience and entertainment. It’s very unlikely to attend a large festival without noticing heavy signs of branding across the grounds. Ranging from exclusive vendor booths to branded stage names and traditional banners, sponsors have become an integral part of a festival’s success.

Sponsors aim to build genuine connections with participants through innovation. According to a recent study, millennial attendees perceive brands that sponsor festivals as more authentic and trustworthy. As we live in a world where data is the new gold, being able to follow up and form a lasting relationship with your prospective clients is essential. As expected, festival-goers don’t like to lose their precious time with providing personal details, especially in this environment.

What if sponsors could collect valuable data from attendees with a simple tap of the hand?

Great news! Oveit Interact is the game changer in this case.

Sponsors using Oveit Interact

To collect data as a festival sponsor with our solution, the process is straight forward and user friendly. There is no need to ask individual attendees for personal information and manually input it. Instead, the NFC chip placed inside the branded wristband does the magic. Sponsors can create unique accounts and personalize the interaction screen as they wish. After each interaction, participants give their consent and agree to share their information with sponsors (GDPR compliant).

At the end of the festival, you can simply export the collected information from your account by pressing a button. If there are no add-ons attached to a particular ticket category, the interaction can only take place once. In other words, if someone tries to connect with a sponsor for the second time, the App will notify that an interaction has already occurred.

Austrian Airlines using Oveit Interact to connect with participants

Attendees using Oveit Interact

Recently, I attended a festival with a variety of brand activations (sponsors) on site. All of those activations were completely unique and truly inspiring. I found it annoying to participate in their campaigns, because I had to repeat myself every time to provide relevant details, such as my e-mail address or phone number . But guess what … I still did it because their freebies were quite amazing and worth claiming.

With Oveit Interact, providing those details in an environment where music is banging in your ears is not necessary. You can simply enjoy those cool freebies with a tap of your wrist.

Oveit Interact interface (it can be fully customized to represent your brand)

Main takeaways

As previously mentioned, data is the new gold. Oveit Interact enables festival sponsors to step up their game and collect valuable information in a matter of seconds. As for keeping in touch with the ones who passed by your booth, you can customize the follow-up email and the App takes care of sending it out after each interaction.

As for the attendees, it is important to mention that sponsors don’t have access to sensitive information. The information collected comes strictly from the registration form, included in the ticket purchase process. With that being said, don’t hesitate to contact us for additional information!

We pledge our tech against Coronavirus: 8 ways to fight the disease

More and more people are being reported as infected with the COVID-19 virus which causes the Coronavirus Disease. As many communities all across the world are being challenged by this epidemic we, as citizens of the world need to stay united and ask ourselves: what can we do to help?

This is the exact question we’ve asked ourselves. Can our work fight against this epidemic? Can we use tech against Coronavirus?

The answer is yes, we can. We are already a company dedicated to supporting local communities. Now we pledge our technology and support to any community affected about the Coronavirus outbreak. No strings or costs attached.

Photo credit by CDC on Unsplash

Here’s how we can help:

1. Use cashless and contactless payments to avoid spread of the Coronavirus disease through cash

The most common way for coronaviruses to spread is through person to person transmission. You can check details here . Don’t forget when getting your news – always trust verified sources, especially on health issues.

However, Covid-19 can survive on different types of inanimate objects for up to 9 days, as estimated by a March 2020 study published in the journal of Hospital Infection. This, in turn, allows inanimate surfaces such as money to become sources of infection.

Our contactless technology has been developed for usage in closed loop environments such as events, venues and hospitality resorts. This means places and areas where many, many people congregate.

How can you use this tech against Coronavirus? You can use Oveit Pay to allow cashless and contactless payments in areas that are not yet accustomed to these new means of payments, thus reducing potential dangerous interactions.

Contactless payments tech against coronavirus
Contactless payments tech for everyone

If you want to reduce the exchange of currency in your community, thus reducing infection chances, we are here to help. Do reach out. We are ready to help without any cost.

2. Access control to quarantined areas

Oveit was designed to manage access to very large events or venues. Therefore it is built for speed, reliability and flexibility.

Access control tech against covid-19 virus

How can you use this tech against Coronavirus? Quickly set up an access management system to quarantined communities.

The system can operate either using NFC cards (the same technology used in contactless payment cards) or biometric facial features, if you need a higher level of security and less contact.

While we are not experts in the field we assume that just as with all large gatherings, you will need different access rights and roles. This can be easily set up for let’s say medical professionals, logistics personnel or general public.

3. Use tech to manage patient history and tracking in improvised treatment spaces

Given its mild symptoms, longer incubation and high infectivity rate, Coronavirus infections tend to spread very fast. This leaves public health facilities stretched and new treatment areas have to be added fast. With high stress and lacking sleep medical professionals need technological help to maintain patient data and trace-ability.

Our system is based on an infrastructure of managing visitors access, interactions history and journey. It is also built to run anywhere, in the cloud, with mobile interfaces.

NFC wristbands tech against Coronavirus infections
Medical NFC wristband for patient tracking and history

How can you use this tech against Coronavirus? Deploy the patient tracking and history system anywhere, without complicated hardware and software setup.

All that’s needed is NFC wristbands which can be shipped fast, mobile devices which are probably already available to anyone and an internet connection.

We can also help you connect the collected data to external, more specialized health management systems.

4. Tech against Coronavirus: rationing for goods, services, medical supplies and fuel

We’ve developed a system where any person that joins a specific group (whether it is an event, venue or community) can get access to specific items. We call these things add-ons.

The add-ons can be fixed (let’s say everyone gets a certain quantity of food) or it can be changed according to needs.

Let’s say everyone is entitled to the same amount of goods such as food or water but some specific cases need a bit more medical supplies.

US Gas stamps
US gas stamps for the 1973 oil crisis. They were printed but never used.

In times of crisis or disaster relief, the community used to issue specific tokens, such as the 1973 oil crisis stamps (see right).

How can you use this tech against Coronavirus effects? Access to the rationing can be done as previously mentioned via cards, wristbands or biometric usage. It can also be built into citizen apps where they can track usage, remaining ratios and more.

Historically the issuing of such tokens used to be cumbersome as it entitled certain logistics that were hard to manage, such as printing, shipping, distribution, managing identities and more. Now everything is digital and can be used in an instant.

5. Edge economies for communities that don’t have access to internet

All of the above are fine and all but sometimes crisis bring down core infrastructure such as electricity or internet.

Our technology is used in places that are usually unreliable, have a high technological stress and where deployment has to be done fast and securely and people are sometimes under the influence of unknown substances. Namely: festivals and large venues.

We’ve developed a system where areas that are either not connected to the internet or have unstable internet connections can have a local economy based on local hardware. They will hold a distributed ledger of value, transactions and allow monetary and value exchange until core infrastructure is restored.

We packed this into a hardware-software product we call the Edge Box and it looks like this:

Edge technology for affected communities
The Oveit Box helps communities that are disconnected from the internet and need a local way of managing value transactions. We think they’re especially useful in crisis situations and during festivals.

How can you use this tech to fight against Coronavirus caused outages? Using the Edge Box we can help you set up edge payments in your community that can operate as independent value exchange media for your citizens, local businesses and allow life to continue until life returns to normal.

Why is it called edge? Because it operates at the edge of the cloud.

6. Build a local economy that can operate even if disconnected from the outside world

In times of need communities tend to create economies naturally but they are usually unsustainable because of the usual underground distribution and analogue means of trading.

We think that in such extreme cases the community can still operate like a closed economy where specific actors in the economy can exchange with one another. Basically businesses can be onboarded and citizens can access their goods via virtual payment tokens that can be purchased either with traditional currency or with government issued credits.

Basically this shrinks the overall concepts of the open economy (the one we are all accustomed to) and offers it to a local community.

How can you use this tech against Coronavirus caused economic distress? This will allow the natural flow of goods, money and services that exist in that economy to operate in a quasi-normal way, all while being digitally connected to the financial system (bank, card payments and such)

7. Setup time banks

As Investopedia notes “Time banking is a system of bartering various services for one another using labor-time as a unit of account […]. Labor-time units can be credited to a person’s account in the time bank and redeemed for services from other members of the time bank. Time banking can be considered a form of community currency.”

This idea has been around for quite some time but it hasn’t really gained much traction outside of small communities. The reason? Scalability and safety issues when managing these types of ledgers.

How can you use this tech against Coronavirus caused economic problems? In closed environments such as a quarantined community, this can work as a very good exchange medium. Imagine the bakery providing bread and its value being accounted by the time being spent to manufacture the bread. The currency, time, can be exchanged afterwards into goods from other local sources.

Here’s a brief video describing the concept:

In quarantined communities exposed to Covid-19 work becomes a problem. Large gatherings are stopped and the trading of basic goods can move in the underground economy, cause supply issues and increase criminal activity.

8. Enable crypto payments to ensure economic continuity

This doesn’t necessarily affect the communities infected with Covid-19 but in times of crisis the financial system can be overwhelmed. For example in the case of the Yes Bank bankruptcy in India the cash withdrawals have been blocked.

In troubled financial systems such as Venezuela’s ecosystem, even very large institutions such as the Central bank and largest gas company are contemplating switching to Bitcoin as means of payments. The failure of financial policies has left the country unable to manage financial flow and has lead to civil unrest.

In extreme cases pandemics can bring the economy to its knees. In such cases the social structures are overburdened by existing efforts in disease containment. The disease is treated as an war effort and everything outside of it becomes second. Cryptocurrencies can work as stable coins in times of high economic stress and alleviate stress on governmental structures.

If you think these solutions can work for your community, we are very happy to help and we are always on the call to offer advice, help or our pledged services.

And again – this pledge means using our solution is free for any community affected by the COVID-19 virus and any help requested is confidential and on a need to know basis.

Stay safe!

Organizing events with millennials in mind

Millennials or Generation Y as others like to call them, were born between 1982 and 2000. In the US, millennials represent half of the people in employment and are the largest generation in the country’s workforce. At a global level, this exclusive club of 1.8bn people account for roughly a quarter of the world’s population.

According to a recent study, this generation cares more about experiences and is less materialistic in nature. The event industry is all about delivering memorable experiences and organizers must get creative to retain millennials for future editions.

Entertain millennials through technology

Millennials are tech-savvy and expect to attend events that embrace technology. Begin with the simple things that make a big difference, such as registration. The registration process should be mobile friendly and paperless. In 2018, 58% of online traffic came from mobile devices, while 42% from desktop. Generation Y has a big contribution to these numbers, with mobile devices being the preferred way for web surfing. Forget about physical tickets and send them electronically.

Instead of printing out brochures with event related information, include those details into a branded mobile app. The App can keep your audience entertained and up to date with event related news. It can be used as a networking tool as well. Face to face interactions are still a priority for this generation, despite their online presence. Allow them to match other attendees with similar interests and aspirations by using a dedicated event App.

Content quality

The average attention span is down from 12 seconds to 8 seconds according to a recent study. This is how long it takes for your audience to lose interest during a boring presentation. For organizers that focus on designing events with millennials in mind, providing entertaining content is essential. To achieve that, you can set up a pre-event discussion with the help of social media. This way, you enable your attendees to express their views and expectations. Based on their preferences, reach out to experienced speakers that deliver content in a professional and interactive manner.

Make it sustainable

Classifying as the first generation to grow in a world where climate change finds itself in a continuous debate, millennials tend to be very concerned when it comes to environmental sustainability. They admire progressive companies that take action and contribute to a better world. Your event makes no difference and should approach a sustainable culture to become a success.

Oveit is a tool that allows organizers to design events with millennials in mind. It offers a fast & secure payment alternative, a friendly registration process and on-site entertainment with a simple tap of the hand. If you want to convince yourself and give it a try, feel free to drop us a line!

Closed-loop vs Open-loop payments for festivals

There is no doubt that implementing a fast and secure payment solution is essential for the success of your festival. The existing payment alternatives in today’s world can create long-standing debates among event professionals. To avoid contradictions, the available resources enable festival organizers to identify the solution that most suits their needs.

Adopting a closed-loop payment system for you festival gives you access to live reports, after-event data, faster transaction processing, pre-event revenue, offline transactions, lower payments processing fees and tailored experiences (rewarding your loyal customers).

Let’s understand the big picture and identify general characteristics of closed-loop and open-loop payments for now.

General characteristics of closed-loop and open-loop models

Closed-loop payments – think of closed-loop payments as a solution that works in a defined economy. Gift cards provided by companies have a payment mechanism that allows clients to use them solely at participating locations. That’s an example of a closed-loop economy. As the administrator of such economy, you can establish to a certain extent who is using it and where it is used. It allows users to pre-load funds into a digital wallet, linked to a payment device such as a card or wristband. Although, remaining funds can’t be spent outside the defined economy, consumers can withdraw the remaining balance. In a closed-loop environment, banks or other institutions are not part of the transaction process. As an administrator, you have access to customer information and purchase behavior.

Open-loop payments – the open-loop system is connected to banks or other similar institutions that act as intermediaries. It can’t be controlled by a single entity and it allows consumers to pay at different locations approved by the card issuer. This payment model allows clients to withdraw funds from an ATM (extra fee involved) and to make purchases at stores or online. Businesses that use the open-loop model don’t have access to customer information, because intermediaries (banks or other institutions) own it.

Now that you better understand how these models work, the focus will shift towards the closed-loop model and its applicability for a festival or event.

Pre-event revenue

To maximize the efficiency of a closed-loop system and increase your festival revenue, choose a solution that allows participants to add funds in advance. This way, attendees can buy their favorite beverage and food from the moment of entry, eliminating the need of visiting a top-up station on site. As an organizer, this enables you to cover your festival costs by using the pre-top-up funds strategically. Participants that choose to top-up their virtual accounts online won’t have to worry if their balance has fallen under a certain amount. The ‘Auto top-up’ feature takes care of that. The end user App developed by Oveit can easily achieve that.

Reward your loyal attendees

In the open-loop environment, rewarding your loyal customers based on purchase behavior is very unlikely. As previously mentioned, banks or other institutions are the absolute owners of transaction history and customer information.

On the contrary, a closed-loop model doesn’t involve any intermediaries in the payment process. As a festival organizer, you can be the administrator of a closed-loop economy and create multiple sub-economies with Oveit. On top of that, you can collect information from your attendees and use it to offer better experiences. For a festival, attendees can redeem rewards using an NFC wristband or card. By doing that, you can identify individual preferences and surprise your clients with personalized rewards and experiences.

Transaction speed

For a large festival, the transaction speed is vital. The open-loop system requires the bank to approve every transaction and it can take about 7-8 seconds to process. Imagine how would that work for a festival with 100,000 attendees.

On the other side, transactions take 1-2 seconds to complete in a closed loop environment. Without any intermediaries involved in the payment process, waiting time is reduced, resulting in more sales and satisfied customers.

Offline transactions

Processing offline transactions in the open-loop environment is risky and often not possible. Festivals usually take place in fields or other remote locations. Setting up a stable internet connection is definitely not an easy task to accomplish.

The closed-loop payment alternative enables organizers to process sales on-site without an internet connection. Participants can top-up their digital wallets and vendors can charge for food, drinks and merchandise. The only downside of operating offline is that reports won’t update in real time. Oveit is a hybrid solution and if internet goes down, the party goes on!

Insights into vendor sales

The closed-loop payment solution available on Oveit is much appreciated by festival vendors. Each vendor has a dedicated account with access to detailed reports. Applying different filters enables them to see all products sold within a date and time range.

Running out of the most requested products is a thing of the past with Oveit!

OveitPay product report

Oveit integrates cashless payments with Eventbrite

Many event planners use Eventbrite to handle their event needs. You may be one of them. If so your registration and access control is streamlined. We have great news: you can now handle cashless payments in Eventbrite by just clicking a button. This will increase your revenue by 30 to 60%.

To do this we are directly connecting to Eventbrite. Why this news? Well, in the past year we’ve been moving towards providing Economy as a Service tools. These tools are cashless payments, add ons and visitor wallets and they are now used by many festivals and venues.

To make this process easier we made an easy to use integration for our users. You can now connect your Eventbrite account and sync events with Oveit.

Benefits of connecting your Eventbrite account with Oveit

With a direct integration you can now:

  • Increase in revenue: You will be earning around 30% more with cashless payments and we want to make this easy for you. That’s why now you can embed cashless payments in Eventbrite with ease.
  • Streamlined event registration and access: Sell tickets independent of platform and connect tickets with NFC/RFID wristbands. Your visitors show up, show their tickets, you scan them and pair them with NFC wristbands. That’s it. Now you can scan them on multiple entries, connect them to digital wallets and more.
  • Omnichannel data from your visitors: Omnichannel means “all channels”. That’s online, mobile, in real life etc. Online to offline and offline to online you want to understand them better. Oveit is really, really good at telling you what’s happening on the ground, in the real life. With our new integration it’s also very good at telling you what’s happening on all other channels as well. You get data from online, real life, from intermediary access points, to purchase behavior and more.
  • Extend the ticket with add ons: Tickets allow visitors to enter your event. With add ons you can create intermediary check points, prepack goodie bags and t-shirts. You can even pre-sell goods and services which visitors can claim at the event. By tapping their wristbands.

Cashless payments in Eventbrite

With Oveit’s technology you can quickly connect the tickets to your internal event economy. Because yes, your event has an economy and we’re helping you be a part of it.

Tap and pay

How does this work? You onboard vetted food and beverage vendors on the vending side. On the paying side you create topup points or allow visitors to connect their credit card. Money is topped up on NFC wristbands and spent at the vendors. Simple, right? And it gets better: In between it’s you, the all mighty event planner, acting as the facilitator of your event economy.

This business model allows you to operate payments in your event, festival or venue and charge a certain fee to your vendors, all while improving your visitor experience.

This way you get an increase in revenue, very useful data on purchase behavior. Simply put: you provide an amazing experience all across the board.

Start your cashless payments experience by pressing a button

Everything is one click away. Create an Oveit account and connect your Eventbrite account by pressing the button below.

Sync cashless payments to Eventbrite
Sync payments with Eventbrite

And remember – if you need any help – we’re here to help you.