Episode 85: Event Tech Innovations: Facial Recognition, Personalized Screens, and Walkout Payments

Jeff: Welcome to Elevate Your Event, your favorite podcast for transforming fundraising events. Join us weekly for expert tips and creative ideas to make your next event a standout success. In this episode, Jeff, Elise, and yours truly dive into the cutting-edge tech shaping the guest experience -- from facial recognition check-ins to personalized LED screens and seamless walkout payments. Plus, we've got some fun detours into holiday debates, sci-fi predictions coming true, and a security story you won't believe. Stay tuned. It's all coming up next on Elevate Your Event.

Mark: Jeff, so you guys have gone to a lot of conferences lately, and you've been learning a ton about the things coming down the pipe -- innovation and the things that people should be excited about when it comes to events and fundraising. I would love if you would share a little bit about your experiences, the things that you've seen, and how we can better all the things that we're doing.

Jeff: This is the Elevate Your Event podcast. Let's talk about all the innovations coming out that might elevate your event. And try to -- some of these things are creepy and cool all at the same time.

Elise: I totally hear that. I went to CES a couple years ago and some of the facial recognition technology -- we're going to talk about that.

Jeff: It can capture hundreds of people at once as they're walking in. We're going to talk about that. We learned all about this.

Elise: Creepy but exciting.

Jeff: It's not Minority Report yet. Do you remember Minority Report? Tom Cruise, he's got a pre-crime division. He got a new pair of eyes. That's what we're going to have to do -- just get our eyeballs sucked out of our head. That's how we're going to hide our identities in the future. He walked into the Gap and they knew who he was, but he was Mr. Morimoto or something.

Jeff: So it's not quite that. And there was a funny story about this -- well, I guess it's not really funny. We'll talk about it because we did talk to some Amazon guys there. So where were we and what are we talking about?

Jeff: Elise and I attended the Axis Drive conference. What's Axis? Axis is the ticketing arm of AXS. Two big ticketing companies out there you've probably heard of -- Ticketmaster and AXS. They kind of split up the venues that they control.

Jeff: Axis was the primary sponsor. Sports Business Journal put it on. It was mostly around sports and venues. We went down there because for us, anything related to venue and the fan experience really translates over to the guest experience. There's not a big difference. So for us, it was: what innovations are happening in the fan experience, and what technologies will probably leak their way into the guest experience? Knowing that most charities aren't super bleeding-edge and innovative, it might trickle down. But we like to stay way ahead of our clients, so we were looking at what's coming around the pipe.

Jeff: Great opening night. Jerry Jones speaks, talking about what the Cowboys are up to. And when you want to talk about -- I don't care if you're a Cowboys fan or not. I'm actually not a Cowboys fan. But we like the Broncos better. When I grew up in D.C., Washington and Dallas have always had an NFL rivalry. That aside, great to see Jerry Jones and look at what the Cowboys are doing to advance the sports business. And he says, "You're not going to believe the innovations that are coming out."

Jeff: So the next day we roll in there. And one of the first things we see is this guy gets up there and the name of his company is Misapplied Sciences. So what they've invented is an LED screen. Standard screen, but it's got some controllers built into it that can control the pixels. A pixel is a unit of light -- a tiny unit of light that drives these screens. These pixels can take on different colors. So what you see on an LED screen is driven by what each individual pixel is showing.

Jeff: They can drive these pixels in multiple directions. I think he said somewhere on the order of a dozen or more directions. So what does that translate into? You and I can be standing in front of the same LED screen, right next to each other, seeing different information. Up to a hundred people at one time could be looking at the screen and seeing a hundred different things. From the exact same screen. And it's personalized.

Elise: Wow, that's cool. I can think of so many awesome ways you could use that.

Jeff: He showed some examples. I think Delta Airlines incubated this project with him. They were his first client. In the Detroit airport -- if you want to go see this in action, you can go to Detroit. When you walk down, you don't have to look at all the monitors anymore to find out where your flight and gate is. You literally walk up to the screen and it's like, "Hey Mark, you're on Delta Flight 342, Gate 12, and it's that way." And I can be standing right next to you and it's going to say, "Hey Jeff, you're on Delta Flight 114, Gate 12, it's that way." All these people coming up the escalators, they get to the top, the screen is right there, and everybody getting off the elevator at the same time is being directed with a personalized message to exactly where they need to go.

Jeff: So how does this work? You have to opt in. And then it has to figure out how to identify you. The easiest way is to scan your face. It uses facial recognition. The cameras connected to this screen are scanning the audience and identifying people. Then they're saying, "Elise is standing there, so I'm going to direct these pixels in her direction. That's what she's going to see. And that's Mark over there."

Jeff: What if I walk up and I'm not opted in? You can opt in through your Delta app and scan your face, or there's another spot where you put your boarding pass down and then it takes a photo of you.

Mark: And what are you giving up? You're giving up personal information, a little bit of privacy, in exchange for what you expect to be a convenience.

Elise: Which is everything right now. That's how it works -- like Facebook, Instagram, email.

Jeff: The only thing that doesn't work that way is the security lines. You're giving up privacy for an inconvenience. Have you ever seen Total Recall? When he's walking down and it's scanning his body and his gun as he walks through? I'm like, how do we not have that?

Mark: It was supposed to be 2018 or something in the movie. It probably could do that, but it would probably be generating so many X-rays and radiation. By the time you exit the machine, you have cancer.

Elise: With as much as Jeff and I traveled in October, we'd be done for.

Jeff: But what if I don't do those things? What are other ways I could opt in? Another way is the screen would see me in the audience and it doesn't know who I am. So it's going to show me a QR code. So while you see your gate, I see a QR code. I scan it with my app and then it identifies me.

Jeff: Where else has this been used? It's been used in venues where you walk around the concourse and the screens up there say, "Mark, we're so glad you came to the Clippers game. You're an awesome VIP."

Jeff: Now let's translate this to fundraising. Your guests are walking in the door and they walk past a screen that says, "Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Druckenmiller, we're so happy you came tonight. You're at Table 12, that's to the right of the stage. Here's where you're located."

Elise: That's so cool. Especially when someone spends money to get a table and then they're getting that kind of experience when they get there. That's next level.

Jeff: It is next level. We can't wait to see how this thing evolves. So this guy gets off stage and we went up to talk to him. I'm thinking with my developer hat on -- how would we build this into our system? He's telling me about how they calculate positioning at the utmost precision.

Jeff: I asked, "Would you be using Bluetooth?" He goes, "No, we wouldn't. We use ultrasound." Your phone can emit ultrasound waves, and they can detect those. And apparently, that is the most accurate way to determine a location. He said in our app, we'd build in this capability. Then we would know who you are because our app would know who the guest is. We would just be communicating to the screen data -- this is Mark Labriola, he's at Table 12, here's his sponsor, here's his guest information.

Jeff: And then, of course, the million-dollar question: does this thing cost a million dollars?

Elise: Right, how much is it?

Jeff: He said no, it doesn't really cost that much more than what you would think a standard screen would cost. They're making their money on the back end through a service. We don't have any more information than that. But we're thinking way out in advance -- what would these next-generation events, these high-end events, what kind of technology would really take them to the top? How can we transform the guest experience?

Mark: Or just keep things moving forward. There are so many things where you go to an event and it seems so archaic and low-tech. There's a piece of paper I have to write on. How are you going to even keep track of this piece of paper?

Elise: We just went to an event and they handed out donation cards. You realize you hired an auction software company, right? Your guests that all have the app on their phone could have just done that through there. But they liked their donation cards. So they just write down the credit card number on a piece of paper. That's real secure.

Jeff: Anyway, so we walk out of that session and then we run into this guy from Wicket Technologies, and he starts showing us this new facial recognition technology that they use for entry. A lot of sports venues are picking this up. We've been in conversation with him. Their stuff is awesome.

Jeff: The way it works is you would opt in. Say you download the Handbid app, you register, and we say, "Do you want to opt in for fast check-in? We're going to scan your face, it's going to be amazing." So you literally walk into the event, we'd have iPads set up with cameras, you stand in front of it, and it pops up on a screen: "Welcome, Mark, your Table 12, paddle whatever."

Jeff: "Oh, you need to get a card on file. See Elise over there, she'll tap to pay your card."

Jeff: And then we go next door to a company called Walkout. It's actually owned by Amazon.

Mark: I've seen this -- where you go into Whole Foods, get what you want, and then just leave the store and it somehow knows what you took.

Jeff: Whole Foods has the handprint scanner. But some of the Amazon Fresh stores are completely unmanned. You just walk out. It scans you when you go in. You have to have an Amazon card on file. You can shop and it knows what you've picked off the shelves. Then you walk out and it builds your cart.

Jeff: We were chatting with him about how that technology works. They've built them to be small and modular so they can stick them into venues. He was showing us some of the venues that had them -- obviously it's Amazon, so the venue he was showing was the Seahawks venue in Seattle.

Jeff: And that's where the security story came up. These guys -- I don't know what city it was, but this guy came out of an Amazon Fresh store and they mugged him. They cut his hand off. They killed him, cut his hand off. And then they went shopping with his hand.

Mark: Wait, what? This is a true story?

Jeff: This is what the Amazon representative was telling us.

Mark: Wow.

Jeff: So what ended up coming out of that was Amazon now has an infrared scanner built into the same system that detects blood flow in your hand.

Elise: Oh my gosh.

Jeff: So now they've advanced the technology. No more handprint -- it just knows who you are and where you're going. Then this all culminates into the next session we went into: the guy who was head of technology at the Intuit Arena.

Jeff: The Intuit Arena is where the Clippers play. It was built by Steve Ballmer, the ex-Microsoft guy. Steve loves tech, as you can imagine.

Jeff: So this guy starts talking about their progression and some of the decisions they had to make and the experience they created. And this is where it gets creepy and cool. The very first thing they decided after they figured out their entire technology plan was: you cannot enter our arena unless you download our app.

Jeff: You can have what's called a teammate model. If you're bringing someone who doesn't have a smartphone -- like Elise's dad, who doesn't have a smartphone -- Elise can sign up for a teammate. And her dad has to go with her everywhere.

Jeff: So you get the app, download it, and you can opt in for a variety of things. You can store your credit card in advance. You can scan your face in advance for easier entry. They saw roughly a 47% take rate on the face scanning at pre-registration. Credit cards were lower. But once people got there and got into the venue, it went up to about 80%. Because people are like, "I get it. I'm going to have a way better time in this venue if they recognize my face."

Mark: Because then when you go get your nachos and your beer, you can just get it and leave. You don't have to pull your credit card out.

Jeff: They use the walkout technology. And not only that, they know how old you are. So if you're under 21 and try to walk out with beers, the turnstile won't open.

Jeff: Here's the thing. They said: if you're going to come to an event at our arena, we want you in your seat enjoying the event. We don't want you waiting in line for the bathroom, or waiting in line to get drinks or refreshments, or waiting in line for merch. We want you buying all of those things. We want it to be efficient and we want you to have a good experience doing all of it without compromising the reason why you're there.

Mark: That makes sense.

Jeff: So they actually track how much time you're in your seat. Not because they care how much Mark goes to the bathroom -- they're worried about whether they're doing a good enough job of getting you back to your seat. They want to minimize the guys walking up and down the aisles with beers because that distracts other fans. They're trying to figure out how to efficiently get you up, grab your beers, and get back.

Jeff: It is a little creepy, but it is cool. They measured how long the bathroom lines were. He said, "Jeff took three minutes." They're figuring out: how long are people waiting in line? What can we do to speed that up?

Jeff: So they came up with all this stuff. Facial recognition technology gets you in. The Misapplied Sciences screens have customized displays just for you. The walkout technology allows contactless payment -- unless you didn't opt in.

Jeff: This is where the credit card on file, which was low at pre-registration, changed once people got there. People were initially thinking, "Why do I need to put my credit card in? I don't know what I'm going to buy." But once they arrived, they realized they could keep their wallet in their pocket if they just put the card in the app. So adoption increased. And people are probably spending more because you're not even thinking about it -- you just grab what you want and leave.

Mark: I'm going to walk behind you and shove a beer in front of you as we're walking out so the system thinks you bought it.

Jeff: So the thing they missed was parking. We were talking about that. The guest experience starts in a lot of events in the parking lot, and we learned that it was the biggest missing piece.

Jeff: The very first thing they had to change was how the entrance worked. They had to rip out all these trees and change the concrete because there wasn't enough room for people to walk in. People were walking through their expensive landscaping. So they ripped all that out and paved it, because people are just going to ruin these trees and they clearly didn't have enough room for people to get into the venue.

Jeff: And they don't control the garages around there. It was a parking company that required you pay at a pay station because they didn't have credit cards at the exit. And people didn't know that or didn't get the memo. Especially when you're excited about going to the concert or event, you're not reading all the signs. So people get to the exit thinking they can pay on the way out and they can't. They have to get out of their cars and go manually pay.

Jeff: So yeah, they screwed that part up. But that's why they're there -- to solve problems.

Jeff: It was fascinating. And then we attended some other types of venues that are going to revolutionize the fan experience. If you are in Dallas, you should probably consider having a fundraiser at Cosm. Cosm is a brand-new venue -- it looks like a planetarium, but the entire dome is the screen with cameras into a sporting event. You look like you're literally courtside, or right on the ice, or right behind the goalie. It's not worth getting into now because it's not directly related to what we do, but I would say it is really cool.

Mark: It's a miniature version of the Sphere in Vegas, in a sense. They both have complicated business models, so it'll be interesting to see how they play out.

Elise: How do you think people are going to adjust to this technology? I think you probably have to have a good enough incentive.

Jeff: They have to see that the trade-off of what they're giving up -- their face and their credit card -- is worth the convenience. Because if we bring this into a fundraising event and you don't give them a better trade-off, they're going to say, "Delete my face." But they will say it wasn't worth it.

Jeff: If you look at what we go through regularly, the conversations that are the toughest with our clients and probably the most complicated are all around registration and check-in. Because our customers are trying to figure out ways to make it better, but the ways they're trying are making it worse. And we're here to tell them there are easier ways and different ways to make it better. These technologies are going to accelerate that further.

Jeff: When someone shows up at an event, we want them in. Everybody wants it to be touchless. "I don't want my guests to stay in line. I don't want them to register." But we want their info.

Elise: I think we have a lot of clients that say, "I don't want to ask my guests to do anything." Or they assume, "This is a big donor, I can't ask them to do that."

Jeff: I think about giving that big donor experience to everybody. I've been a donor at an event where I got treated really great -- all my stuff was in a little folder, I got escorted to a special seating area. That was awesome. But I've also been just the guy who came to an event. "Can I have your name, sir? Your email, please?" It's a headache.

Jeff: But if you could give everyone a great experience and then figure out ways to give an even more leveled-up experience to big donors -- to me, this is where the innovation in the event world has to go. It's the guest experience, and it starts with where they enter. It could be parking or check-in. These technologies are going to allow us to really advance that.

Jeff: I think we have clients who would be all in. "I'm going to give my guests a choice. You want to skip check-in? You want to skip the line? Show me your face." When they're standing in that line and they see people walking right in, you better believe they'll be fine doing it.

Elise: And then I think about even trying to get that extra income -- like maybe you have a little store on site where someone could just take merch and it gets charged automatically.

Jeff: We were actually joking about trying to automate the bar. Everybody's like, "The bar lines suck at events." In a lot of cases, the reason is you just don't have enough bars and bartenders. The guy still has to pour a drink. So you want to speed things up -- get rid of kegs, sell bottled beer. Limit your drink choices. Maybe don't do "any drink you want." Maybe it's two signature cocktails that are already pre-mixed.

Jeff: We have an event where we have mint juleps, an old-fashioned bourbon drink, and a vodka drink. They are pre-mixed, CO2 infused, pressurized so they stay mixed, and we pour them. They are so good. No mixing in highballs and shakers. You can pour a drink fast.

Mark: Maybe just have one of those Elon Musk robots be the bartender.

Jeff: So that was kind of where we think it's going. And then we got back from that and went to another innovation conference. Most of our customers know that our main payment processor is Stripe. And I'm actually a very big Stripe fan. I think they create great technology. It works, and it works really well.

Jeff: Why would we pick them over others? Because everybody asks, "Are there cheaper options?" There may be. We've had them in our platform. The problem is that they don't create a great guest experience. We've worked with other payment providers who have way higher decline rates, and the last thing you want is your guest's card to get declined at the end of the night for something foolish.

Jeff: We used to work with another provider -- I won't name them because it's a bad word in our company -- but we were seeing 25 to 30% of invoices getting declined. And it's for reasons that shouldn't happen. To tell your donor, "I'm sorry, you can't take your item. You're going to have to step over here and call your credit card company." That's a terrible experience. We just haven't had that with Stripe.

Jeff: So we went to a Stripe conference, and we're implementing a lot of that new technology in our apps coming out shortly. Tap to Pay on iPhone is awesome. What we're trying to do is give all of our clients really easy ways to capture payment information without having to purchase expensive equipment.

Jeff: That technology is just built into all of our devices now. It's becoming more and more the way we operate. Now you don't have to have a credit card reader as a merchant. We still will have those. But literally, I'm checking you in at the door and I need to scan your card. You're tapping your card on the back of my iPhone and it captures it. It's fast and snappy and awesome.

Jeff: Payments is the killer app for us. How do we make that easier? We spent quite a bit of time chatting with Stripe about how to streamline that technology and make it easier on our clients. And then we can massively expand the payment options. Right now we have Apple Pay, Google Pay, credit cards, but we can go into international payment models. If you're in China, we can do Alipay. Because Handbid is everywhere you want to be.

Mark: If you want to be in Antarctica, Jeff would have to do a little investigation first.

Jeff: Beyond that, especially with some of our commercial clients, we're having conversations about implementing tax automation. Tax is something that a lot of our nonprofit clients don't really understand and probably ignore, thinking their event is tax-free. In a lot of states, maybe it is, but not every event is tax-free. It varies from state to state.

Jeff: Some states give charities a certain number of dollars in occasional sales. If you're having an auction fundraiser, maybe it's $30,000 in occasional sales, and above that you have to charge tax. Other states have different rules based on the types of items you're selling. Other states say, "You're a charity, you don't have to charge sales tax." It is all over the place, and it changes.

Jeff: On the commercial side, it can vary based on where you're shipping from, what you're shipping to, or even what the good is -- physical good, digital good, food. The Stripe representative told me, "I think we even have bagels toasted or non-toasted as two different items." It's that complicated. It's one of the things we just want to automate.

Jeff: It sounds boring, but as you're thinking about the platforms you work with -- how are they helping you stay compliant? It's actually a common question. Our response used to be, "You're responsible for knowing your own tax laws, and we have a place for you to put that." Now we're going to be able to automate it. That will go a long way.

Jeff: The next thing we're talking to Stripe about -- and some of our NHL teams and sports collectible groups are interested in this -- is really around identity. If someone's coming to your event, I hope you know who they are. But when that person is online and you're like, "Who is jac22 who's spending $8,000? He's got a card on file, but am I going to be able to run it? Is it going to work? Should I ship the items? Is he legit? Is it really his card?"

Jeff: The initiative is called KYC -- Know Your Customer. It's really around stepping through thresholds. I'm okay with you bidding up to $1,000, but maybe over $1,000, I want more information from you. We're talking to Stripe about their identity product where we can stage that in. As a charity, you may never need this. But if someone is about to bid on a $20,000 car, you might want to see their driver's license and make sure they're legit.

Mark: I like that.

Jeff: There's tons more. We have some customers who are part of larger associations. Maybe they're a chapter of a larger organization, and that larger organization controls all of their funding. A lot of times what happens is the local chapter says, "I'm going to go do this on my own outside of what parent company is doing, because if I raise all this money it goes to parent company through Handbid, and then parent company has to distribute it to me. Getting money out of them is hard."

Jeff: I don't think parent companies are hoarding the cash. I think they might have archaic processes. This PTO chapter of an elementary school -- they just need to issue a payment request and get a check. But this lady just wants to go to Walgreens and get some stuff for the auction. She wants to spend $40.

Jeff: So we've talked to Stripe about ways of allowing that money sitting in the parent company's Stripe account to be issued out digitally into their subsidiaries through credit cards. It's kind of cool. We're just removing all the headaches.

Jeff: On the front end with the guest experience -- all the stuff we saw at the Axis conference really opened our eyes to where we need to go. And then on the back end -- how do we make your life easier with fulfillment, payments, tax, and everything else? Some of it is boring, but it's important.

Mark: What do you think?

Elise: My brain is just melting. Brain on future tech. I'm just excited. I think there's going to be initial pushback from people, a little bit. But at the end of the day, they already have my identity.

Jeff: I love the people that are like, "We have a lot of celebrities at our event. I do not want to capture their personal information." I'm thinking, you should go facial recognition because everybody knows their face. You don't have to ask them -- it'll just know who they are.

Elise: I'm excited. I think this is going to be really fun in the next decade -- all the different things that are going to help make events better and more streamlined and more enjoyable and more engaging for the people who come. We want you to blow away your guests with a "wow" -- they feel like they belong here. And you do that by making them feel welcome.

Jeff: Think about the personalized technology of those screens. Just put the cost aside for a second. How cool is that? I've told a really good friend who runs a concert venue in town -- can you imagine walking into the VIP section and it just says, "Welcome, Mark." It just makes you feel at home.

Mark: Now, do you think that my wife and I -- she can watch a Hallmark movie and I could watch an action flick and we could still cuddle on the couch?

Jeff: No. That's -- you'd have your own sets of headphones. I don't know, maybe if you get Netflix to adopt this technology. I'm watching Arnold blowing stuff up and she's in some snowy town in Montana.

Elise: I am all about the Hallmark holiday movies.

Jeff: I am not. That would be an interesting application of that technology. That would save a lot of marriages. "We watched two different movies. It was great, but we got to be together."

Jeff: My wife's always like, "This movie's so dumb." So I have to watch shows like Tulsa King at two in the morning. And then she wakes up and she's like, "Why are you watching that show? It's so stupid." Because I can't watch it at 8 when you're downstairs because you hate it.

Elise: My husband's watching Tulsa King too right now. He's like, "So you're going to go into the office today?" "Sure am." "Good. I'm watching Tulsa King."

Jeff: I got to watch Fire Country with her. That's the worst show.

Elise: No, it's the best.

Jeff: If I have to watch that with the worst acting ever -- and they ruined Max Thieriot. He used to be good in Seal Team.

Elise: It's not about the acting.

Jeff: I know it's not. She's like, "I think he's going to take his shirt off." This is your favorite part. Oh boy, we digressed again.

Mark: Exciting. So this is good.

Jeff: All right. For all of you listening, don't get too freaked out about the tech. Just know this stuff is kind of coming. It's cool. And companies like Handbid, we're trying to figure out where does this fit in the logical progression of what you guys are doing at your events. Stay in touch. We'll let you know.

Elise: Until then, happy fundraising.

Jeff: If you enjoyed our show, please take a moment to leave us a review. You can find us on Apple, Google, and Spotify. Don't forget to subscribe for more great content. And if you're a fan of video, check us out on YouTube. Until next time, happy fundraising.