The CFTPA tapped into the power of the Apple iPod Touch to turn its annual convention into a paperless conference. By Angela Kryhul, May/June 2009
Marc Seguin, vice-president of feature film and technology, CFTPA
Anyone who’s ever dragged a delegate bag full of conference brochures and reports back to their hotel room knows just how much of that material never makes it home. The one thing delegates won’t add to their suitcase is a mountain of paper.
For three days in February, the Canadian Film and Television Production Association (CFTPA) tapped into the power of the Apple iPod Touch to turn its annual Prime Time convention into a paperless conference. The digital delegate bag eliminated the need to print 111,000 sheets of paper and to produce and distribute hundreds of video DVDs.
All 560 delegates were handed a brand new Touch preloaded with a custom-designed application featuring 12 functions — everything from programme details and speaker profiles, to a venue map, video ads and an instant-messaging tool.
Using the Touch to achieve a paperless conference was the brainchild of Marc Seguin, vice-president of feature film and new technology for Ottawa-based CFTPA. Seguin says the idea came to him early in 2008 when CFTPA staffers were up to their eyeballs stuffing bags with material for that year’s conference.
He had recently purchased his own Touch, so it just clicked that the unit’s large storage capacity and high-res screen would be perfect to showcase film and video — the group’s raison d’etre. “We needed to guarantee that every delegate that came to our conference could experience it in the same way,” Seguin explains. “It was the only device of its kind that could do the job I was looking to do.”
Seguin estimates that about two-thirds of the printed material distributed at previous CFTPA conferences was actually being left behind in Ottawa hotel rooms by delegates. “We’re a small conference… If you get the NAB Show or the Cannes Film Festival to do something like this, can you imagine how much less paper you would use?”
When Seguin discovered that no one had ever developed a conference application for the Touch, he began a year-long journey to pull together financial support and worked with partners to develop and execute the initiative.
ALL ABOUT THE APP
The surprise hit of the conference was the Social Network function — a simple instant messaging tool that allowed people to connect with each other. More than 2,500 messages were exchanged over the three days.
“We were stunned at how quickly the word got out about the social-networking tool and the volume of traffic,” says Kevin Ford, president of Parliant Corporation, the Ottawa-based company that created the CFTPA application. “Most of those messages were about ‘meet me at the north door, we need to talk.’ Just short, quick things like that.”
The tool also proved to be quite nimble. During the first day of the conference, an attendee asked whether they could broadcast a message to all delegates via the Social Network function. “It was one of those ‘what a great idea’ moments,” says Ford, “so it also occurred to a sponsor to ask for the feature. Since we were lonely at the support table, we were able to add that application in the afternoon, which is the way it should be in a service industry.”
The CFTPA conference application included 12 functions: Welcome, Tutorial, Program, Panels, Map, Sponsor Videos, Member Videos, Video Ads, Publications, Social Network, Settings and About. Most of the information was offered in both English and French.
“I knew that the options are endless, but my pocketbook isn’t. Everything comes at a price,” says Seguin, who remembers spending quite a bit of time with Parliant boiling down his long wish list of functions to ones that reflected what the CFTPA really needed and could afford. “We decided to do less and do it really, really well.”
Delegates were able to view welcoming videos from conference organizers, a venue map showing the session rooms, dozens of videos, sponsor ads and material, like brochures, that would have otherwise been printed. The Program function, for example, included the entire conference agenda and allowed users to drill down to see session descriptions, speaker bios and colour photos.
The CFTPA gained valuable knowledge about how people chose to navigate the application. One tool that was not well used was the Panels function, Seguin says. It was meant to duplicate the one-page quick reference guide many conferences hand out every day in printed form. But CFTPA delegates chose to instead source that same information in the Program function.
The annual Canadian Film and Television Production Association (CFTPA) Prime Time convention goes paperless
The Publications function proved to be a great place to store brochures, press releases and other information, but some of it was difficult to read and navigate because a number of suppliers hadn’t formatted their material for the Touch.
It’s that kind of trial-and-error learning that is so valuable to other conference organizers. Dr. Michael Oh, associate professor, Department of Neurosurgery, Drexel University and University of West Virginia, attended the CFTPA conference specifically to see the Touch application in action.
He’s taking his observations back to the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS), which holds an annual conference for as many as 3,000 delegates and generates a considerable amount of paper such as scientific abstracts.
“One of the key things is [the Touch application] gives readier access to information, and that’s what we want at our scientific meetings,” says Dr. Oh. “I think that’s one of the ways it’s going to be an enabling technology and not just a gimmick.”
PAPERLESS AT ANY PRICE?
Going paperless isn’t cheap. Seguin says the initiative cost thousands of dollars to develop and execute. The total cost was covered via cash and contra, but doesn’t reflect the real cost, because many of the conference partners provided thousands of dollars worth of services pro-bono.
“I financed this essentially using three sources of revenue: there was a slight bump in registration fees, I found sponsors specifically [for the device], and I achieved a number of cost savings in my existing budget,” Seguin says. That included the elimination of printing costs and purchasing delegate bags. Still, the CFTPA ran a deficit that will be amortized over the next few years, Seguin says.
The cost of executing a similar programme for the AANS could be a stumbling block, Dr. Oh admits. The CFTPA opted to give a new Touch to every one of its delegates (the cost was just under the retail price of $230 each). A similar move by the AANS could run as high as $700,000, and that doesn’t include the cost of developing an application or on-site support, Dr. Oh says.
It makes sense to tap advertisers and other supporters for financial support, but sponsorship packages — that typically include recognition in the show programme or other printed material — need to be restructured.
The CFTPA had its app designed so that ads popped up every time delegates turned on the devices. Advertising messages were also placed strategically within all of the functions. The sponsor videos, member videos, and video-ads tools allowed supporters to run any length of video, from a five-second clip for Westwind Pictures to a 22-minute video for the Ontario Media Development Corporation.
All of the provinces and territories belonging to the Association of Provincial Film Funding Agencies (APFA) contributed funds to help get the initiative off the ground, says APFA chairman Richard Brownsey.
“It positioned us as supportive of an initiative that was environmentally sound and technologically sophisticated,” says Brownsey, who is also president of British Columbia Film.
Brownsey says he was very impressed with the user experience: “You could put [the entire conference] in your jacket pocket. There was a lot of information that was available…it was very intuitive, so you could actually follow the conference quite easily.”
Parliant’s Ford says it took some convincing before advertisers believed this new medium would perform better than the printed Conference Program. “We were on the show floor polling advertisers and there wasn’t a single one who didn’t feel that they got better value.”
If the CFTPA decides to do the same thing next year, Seguin says he will likely try to offset costs by soliciting ads from services like taxis and limos, hotels and restaurants. He’s also considering a registration discount for anyone bringing their own iPhone or Touch to the next conference.
Still, Seguin understands that in a recession, every cost is under the microscope. “We’re a small organization, we run on a shoestring budget. I figured out how to finance this with the goodwill and generosity of several partners,” he says.
The CFTPA board of directors will soon decide whether the Touch will do a repeat performance at next year’s conference. Seguin will present a full de-brief at a June board meeting.
“Ultimately, it will be up to them if we do it again,” Seguin says, “I have no doubt that our board members understand the significance in this initiative, as they themselves are leading entrepreneurs who produce innovative television, feature film and interactive media content.”
—Angela Kryhul is a Toronto-based freelance writer.
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