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Beacons Used for Meeting Rooms

Geofencing -- putting a virtual fence around a location and enabling mobile devices such as smartphones to react when they cross -- is something that's been talked about for several years by tech-forward meeting, event, and convention planners. Apple's version, iBeacon, may have finally gotten it right. The technology uses small, short-range, wireless devices that can be placed within a room, throughout a meeting facility, or on a trade-show floor, which not only track when smartphones and tablets, with a compatible app and Bluetooth enabled, are within range, but they can also tell where that device is in relation to the beacon. "iBeacon is a really exciting technology that you will see incorporated into events because it has a lot of functionality," says meetings industry technology consultant Corbin Ball. Some uses are fairly straightforward but very helpful, such as automatically checking attendees into a meeting.

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